Calling all NEW SLI ppl

[Solaris17]

I havea question now iv done some googling and iv come to a few conclusions but i need some advice from my sli buddys at tpu...you see i need info so this is only really for new sli members that can remember the diff...or perhaps if you can remember you can join to....you see im going to be going sli...but im only now if i dont get a second cad for my b-day ill buy one myself however b4 i spend the money i need to weight the benifits...now i know on paper sli is amazing..but playing games with it you DO NOT usually see the x2 performance boost of 2 cards...so my question is to you sli members on new/high stressing games...UT3 Crysis recommended...how much of a preformance gain did you see? im relly intrested in crysis but other games will give me an idea if you dont have that comparison....would you happen to remember the FPS b4 and after? do you maybe remember ~ how many you gained? was it worth the extra $160?

[dazed554]

I had a bad first experience with SLI. I bought an additional 8600gt a few months back and saw almost no difference at all. When I tried changing the mode to split screen rendering instead of alternate frame to see if that would be better, I got about half the fps that I used to get in Call of Duty 4. This wouldn't have bothered me if I knew that the game was not optimized for SLI, but I believe that it is considering it even has an option in the menu for SLI.

[DaMulta]

8800GT + 8800GT = WIN

COD4 I got twice the frame rate, NFS PRO Street it helped alot.

It depends on the game, but it seemed to work better than CF.

[Solaris17]

cool than you think another 9600 will be worth it? im going to get cod4 but i play NFS pro street crysis UT3 UT2004 etc alot im thinking it will benefit and i expect in my older games it wont help any but i wanted to make sure b4 i dropped $100+ that i woulodnt gain 5FPS in crysis though in crysis thats a huge leap im gonna want more than that...and even if thats all ill get if i get a whole nbunch mroe fps in another game it will out weigh the diff.

[DaMulta]

For another 100 yes it would be worth it in my book.

[erocker]

9600's are the best scaling Sli cards Nvidia has ever made! Absolutely worth it! Crank up that AA!:)

[btarunr]

Yes, it's amazing to see how with just 64 shader units it could perform that well. SLI brings out the best out of two 9600 GT cards.

[sneekypeet]

9600's are the best scaling Sli cards Nvidia has ever made! Absolutely worth it! Crank up that AA!:)

If this is a fact....I say get it ....my 7600 I thought scalled incredibly well, if the 9600 scales better..I agree with the investment of two!

[jbunch07]

my 8600gts's scaled amazing i know they are old but just fyi with one card i would get 5.5k in 3dmark06 and with 2 i would get about 10200...i hear the 9600's scale really well but not sure about the cards?
oh and crysis was unplayable with 1 card....but with 2 i had about 30fps on 1024x768 with a mixture of high and medium settings...mostly medium though

[warhammer]

You do notice the difference look at the fur bench mark I can hit the over 6000 score in sli.
As far as games go COD4 1600 x 1200 FPS jumps 150 to 250 ETQW same res sits on 100 the eye candy is maxed out single player.
As far as online goes res 1600 x 1200 eye candy reduced so you can at least see through smoke the thing that you do notice is how bad some server are with there lag.

If I was going to build a new system I would go multi GPU if the price was right.

The crysis info bellow was on my old system
CRYSIS
1x8800 GTX (626Ghz)
Run #1- DX10 1600x1200 AA=No AA, 64 bit test, Quality: High ~~ Last Average FPS: 22.71

Run #2- DX10 1600x1200 AA=4x, 64 bit test, Quality: High ~~ Last Average FPS: 13.79

8800 GTS 512 x2 in SLI (650Ghz)
Run #1-DX10 1600x1200 AA=No AA, 64 bit test, Quality:High ~~ Overall Average FPS: 39.76

Run #1- DX10 1600x1200 AA=4x, 64 bit test, Quality:High ~~ Overall Average FPS: 11.555

[Solaris17]

ok sounds cood thankis all sounds like i will go sli on my own if i dont get another as a gift :)

[wolf]

midrange cards are always the best to SLi imo, theres the most gains to be seen. and we have all seen how well 9600GT's scale :D totally worth the extra.

[mrw1986]

I'm a dumbass and have 2x 8800GT in SLI. Try me.