SLI/Crossfire Vs. Higher End Card.

Seriously. I have been reading and reading and it's looking to me like the benefit of connecting 2 cards is not all that efficient. The reports I read very the increase in performance. It seems to me like there's a 15-30% increase depending the hardware you use. It's starting to look like a big gimmick to me. I also understand that there are quite a large number of games that have problem with multiple video cards setup having the gamer to either disconnect the second card or wait for patch.

That being said I understand that it's cheaper then just buying a higher end card but doesn't the higher price gives you not just an extra "UMPH" but a great improvement?

I would like to hear from the people here about what they think on this whole matter.

I don't know much about this matter but I do know your right about the game support thing. Just about every time AMD releases new driver updates I read the update notes and there is almost always a fix for crossfire support for some random ass game that doesn't work properly with it

30% was the old standard for SLI/XFire. I believe it has since improved to about 70% increase or so; again depends on card, game and settings.

However SLI/XFire is great for enthusiasts, however for budget minded gamers it's not. Unless you are buying the second card discounted after you already own say 1x GTX 280, you buy another on eBay to upgrade but cheaper.

Personally I say, just upgrade that older card to the new mid-high range like the 560ti/570 or ATI equiv (not up to date with ATI atm).

@Demoskinos said:

I don't know much about this matter but I do know your right about the game support thing. Just about every time AMD releases new driver updates I read the update notes and there is almost always a fix for crossfire support for some random ass game that doesn't work properly with it

Which AMD card are you using. I've been eyeballing the 6870 for my build. Are you happy with it or have you got plans to switch?

@Mordukai: I'm using a 5570 HD its starting to show its age so I'd like to upgrade if funds allow but I'm running Saints Row 3 and Skyrim on High settings with minimal issues. My thoughts are if you were going to plop down for two cards anyways why not go for one of the 7000 series cards. At this point they have a huge overhead on what any game can reasonably throw at them and you wouldn't have to deal with the compatibility issues that a 2 card setup brings.

@Mordukai: Multicard configurations are not always guaranteed to work as they should, either due to driver issues or just plain lack of support for them in a significant number of games. Buying a single higher end card is what I would go for, since you at least know you'll be getting consistent performance in most games with that one card than with two or more.

I recently upgraded from an 8800GT to a 6850 (by no means a high end card, but it was cheap and my 8800 was starting to show its age), and so far I'm pleased with it. It seemed to have an issue with SR3, but that is now fixed with the 12.1 preview drivers.

I would recommend getting either a 6950 / 560Ti, or a 6970 / GTX 570. Last I looked (which was a while ago now) the 6950 was cheaper than the 560Ti, and the 570 cheaper than the 6970. Whichever of those fits in your budget, I would go for the cheaper of each pair.

Always buy the best card you can then add a second one down the road. That's the rule I've heard countless times.

Yeah, the scaling on 2 cards (X-fire or SLI) is better than it used to be a while back, especially with high resolutions. That being said i have AMD 6950 crossfire setup and it can be a pain in the ass. There are some games that work beautifully with my 6950's without a hitch, but then there are other games that have issues with it and require tweaking to get it to work properly. With Skyrim there were alot of issues with crossfire setups at launch (bad scaling, screen flickering etc.) and it took a while for AMD to get properly working Catalyst drivers out and for some users it still requires driver tweaks for it to work.

If you're not enthusiast, just forget about dual card setups. If you're not ready for endless hot fixes, messing around with your drivers, using third party tweaking software, loading different profiles for different games, just go with one powerful card.

@KamikazeCaterpillar said:

Always buy the best card you can then add a second one down the road. That's the rule I've heard countless times.

I just bought a GTX 570 and was hoping to do this down the road. I assumed buying a second card down the road would be a cheaper alternative to upgrading the card that had the power of two 570s SLI.