SLI or Crossfire?

[Demon Dave]

for months i've been planning to build myself a new super-duper gaming rig. i'd had it all planned out and was going to go for a 6600GT, and then buy another one later when i could possibly afford it. but now ATi have announced their version, Crossfire. Now i can see that this is going to be a hundred times better than SLI if it will do what ATi claim (i.e. work with any X800 or X850 card, as long as one is a crossfire edition, work with any game etc). ATi say that in order for it to work though, you'll need a Crossfire compliant motherboard. The trouble is, i can't seem to find any. Is this because there aren't any out yet? If it is, is there any idea as to when some will be out?

also, recommendations on motherboards and graphics cards would be highly appreciated. especially since i've never built a PC before

[Luckeh!!!!]

crossfire isn't even released yet.

[Demon Dave]

i know, but it won't be long. I was reading today that a Crossfire X850 will be out sometime this month

[bwtmc]

Two 6600gt cards are a waste of money. You'd be better off either going for a single (Preferably Sapphire) ATi 9800 Pro (If you're broke) or a single Nvidia 6800 Gt Card, then adding the second when you have the money / when performance is no longer sufficient.

In short, two 6600gt cards, can't match one 6800gt card. I haven't really read about Crossfire, but there's no huge difference between ATi/Nvidia, one or other has an edge in price/performance in each generation of card - but there's not going to be any huge leaps you're going to miss out on right now. You might find one of the benchmarking forums useful.. www.futuremark.com etc.

[Thermodynamics]

I could go on and on for ages about the two... but I have to get back to my new gaming rig [wireless broadband pending- tis why I have been absent for a while]

This article should tell all you need to know....

http://graphics.tomshardware.com/gra...602/index.html

If I had to choose- I'd go crossfire, beyond a doubt- the only thing which could change my mind is how the Ati chipset ends up performing.

If I had to choose between SLI or a single card- I'd choose single card. About 2/3 games are "SLI enabled" ie. *only* 2/3 of new games actually take advantage of SLI, not to mention that in certain games, the increase in performance is barely noticable. This is the Achille's heel of SLI- the software needs to have been written with SLI in mind.

Crossfire, on the other hand, is entirely different- details can be found in above link.

So single cards- if you can afford it- Nvidia's 7800GT [€630+], though it outrageously expensive, only a fool with far too much cash would buy it. Then Ati's X850 XT [€500+], Nvidia's 6800 GT Ultra, Ati's X850XT [my baby... its gorgeous, I have one!].

If its your first rig- get a big case. Big. So you have plenty of room to work inside with- really helps a great deal.

If its a gaming rig- I presume its gonna be an AMD socket 939. Good mobo's: [all Nvidia

Single card: Epox 9NPA+ Ultra

SLI: ASUS A8N

Both are good boards- both come with all the cables you'll need, good documentation and are sturdy and reliable.

I just built a PC, so if you have any other questions, feel free to pm.


Crossfire will be available within the next few weeks- its worth waiting for.

[meglamaniac]

Originally Posted by bwtmc

Two 6600gt cards are a waste of money. You'd be better off either going for a single (Preferably Sapphire) ATi 9800 Pro (If you're broke) or a single Nvidia 6800 Gt Card, then adding the second when you have the money / when performance is no longer sufficient.

In short, two 6600gt cards, can't match one 6800gt card. I haven't really read about Crossfire, but there's no huge difference between ATi/Nvidia, one or other has an edge in price/performance in each generation of card - but there's not going to be any huge leaps you're going to miss out on right now. You might find one of the benchmarking forums useful.. www.futuremark.com etc.

Several errors here.

Firstly, a dual 6600GT config will outperform a single 6800GT at lower resolutions. They match at around 1280 x 1024. Any higher than that and the 6800GT is the way to go. It may seem obvious that higher resolutions will be used, but these days resolution is often restricted by LCD panel displays. For example, my 17" panels won't support a resolution above 1280 x 1024 even if I wanted to use it.

Secondly, a 9800 pro is a complete waste of money. The cheapest 9800 Pro I can find at the moment is £81.66. You can pick up a 6600GT starting at £104.97. For the sake of ~£20 would you REALLY suggest using a card that's an entire generation older? Pay the extra twenty and get a card that's faster, runs cooler, and supports hardware HD decoding among many other benefits.

Lastly, there are significant differences between Xfire and SLI. SLI is limited to certain applications, XFire is not. SLI only supports one colaborative render mode, XFire does not (afaik it's either 3 or 4). SLI requires two cards of the exact same model (preferably from the same manufacturer), XFire does not. SLI requires an addiional proprietary bus connector, XFire does not (data is shunted over the PCI-e bus). In short, given the choice go for Xfire (just so you know, I have an nVidia card so I'm not an ATI "fanboy").



Anyway, back to the original question.

DD, it depends on your budget. From your original post I guess you can't afford a 6800GT/Ultra. If you could I would suggest that over a dual setup simply for simplicity's sake. Nevertheless, if you want to buy NOW you're more or less stuck with the 6600GT + SLI at a later date option.
If that's the case, I'd recommend the Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe which is the board I'm using, although I have no intention of ever using the SLI ability.

Regarding XFire, you could have a long wait.
The timescale between nVidia first announcing that SLI had been launched, and it actually being available to the likes of you and me, was over a year. Of course, it remains to be seen if ATI will be quite this sluggish - one would hope not, as they're playing catchup so have more of an incentive to get it right first time.
This page shows partners who are supposedly offering products supporting XFire, but I can't seem to find any mention of it on their sites so getting an XFire system together in the near future doesn't look likely.


For your reference, I use a single GeForce 6600GT, slightly overclocked in 3D mode (540Mhz core, 1150Mhz mem) and play halflife 2 / doom 3 happilly enough at 1280 x 1024 at medium or higher quality settings. Doom 3 is a little tricky because the higher settings expect much more texture memory to be available. HL2 allows for more user control of graphics features, so I can turn on everything - although things like AA/AF are not on their highest setting, obviously.
Anything else not as recent flys along - things like Zero Hour, Max Payne 2, Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow all run fine.
The rest of game related bits of the system are an Athlon64 3000+, 1GB (2 x 512MB) Ballistix PC3200 RAM, and an Audigy2 ZS.

[djbass]

Originally Posted by meglamaniac

For your reference, I use a single GeForce 6600GT, slightly overclocked in 3D mode (540Mhz core, 1150Mhz mem) and play halflife 2 / doom 3 happilly enough at 1280 x 1024 at medium or higher quality settings. Doom 3 is a little tricky because the higher settings expect much more texture memory to be available. HL2 allows for more user control of graphics features, so I can turn on everything - although things like AA/AF are not on their highest setting, obviously.
Anything else not as recent flys along - things like Zero Hour, Max Payne 2, Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow all run fine.
The rest of game related bits of the system are an Athlon64 3000+, 1GB (2 x 512MB) Ballistix PC3200 RAM, and an Audigy2 ZS.

Actually, despite having advanced rendering engines I find HL2 & Doom 3 scale quite well.

Consider this, I run both games at the same resolution (1280 x 1024) because it's native to my LCD. I have all the fancy features and graphics settings cranked up, and they run smooth as silk. Yet I only have a Geforce 4 Ti 4200 running at half its bandwidth (AGP 4x, my MB doesn't support 8x). My processor is a 1.8Ghz Pentium 4 without hyperthreading, and I have 512Mb 800Mhz RDRAM, and an Audigy Platinum Ex.

So far the only game I have not been able to run is Battlefield 2, and that's because of the GF4's lack of support for the newer pixel shader.

[meglamaniac]

That's because both games autodetect the DX capabilities of the card and adjust accordingly, so even if everything is turned on it's not necessarily being rendered.
Quick case in point, the water in HL2 is very different on a DX8 card vs a DX9 card.

[Thermodynamics]

Originally Posted by meglamaniac

That's because both games autodetect the DX capabilities of the card and adjust accordingly, so even if everything is turned on it's not necessarily being rendered.
Quick case in point, the water in HL2 is very different on a DX8 card vs a DX9 card.

Agreed- Pandora- very very few grpahics options when compared to Painkiller or HL2. The only way you'll notice the effects of pixel shader 3 techonology, AA x4 etc. is being able to switch them on and off- so sure those games run fine- that's great- but they *could* look so much better. Its back down to the same old question, do you want a machine that will run the game, or a machine that will have the graphics meeting their full potential? Balance between price and performance, as always.

Crossfire test setups have been seen around the place, at THG for example, and that was quite a while ago. I would say by the end of July, though they might be a bit tricky to get your hands on.

For reference:

Epox 9NPA+Ultra
AMD 3800+
ATi X850XT
1.5 GB Corsair
17" TFT
and the usual perihperals
came to about €1900 which would be £1200-1300 which is pretty affordable if you want a good daming rig- m only problem now is I have nothing to play :-(

[bwtmc]

The last 9800 Pro i bought was around £69 on Scan, it's a decent mid-range choice and hardly limiting or poor value with the games he's going to play. For me, that's the best option below £100, and I consider that a reasonable boundary to look at.

Given that Demon Dave does have good money to spend, I can't really see that investing in a (much more expensive) 6600Gt x 2 solution is going to be at all practical or suitable. I'd consider the 6800Gt card a realistic option given what his consideration of a Crossfire setup and adding one at a later date, as it becomes more limited and it's price falls. Or more preferably :\ just waiting to buy a new card. Focusing on low 1024x768 and below resolutions really doesn't look relevant for a "super duper gaming rig." I'd probably follow up on a new monitor anyhow if it can't meet 1280x1024. Decent LG/Acer 17" TFT monitors tend to go for around £125 now, and if you're serious you'd already have or consider purchasing a more than capable CRT monitor.

I tend to favour Abit mb's always have, but the original ASUS SLi setup is nice and fairly cost-effective.

With something like £1200-£1300 you could achieve almost anything reasonable right now. Crossfire looks great, though you're hardly going to have the card in your hands before the end of the year.

[Androme]

Originally Posted by bwtmc

Decent LG/Acer 17" TFT monitors tend to go for around £125 now, and if you're serious you'd already have or consider purchasing a more than capable CRT monitor.

If it's a super duper gaming rig, then he'll want a low-response time (in ms) - most of the £250+ do anyway. True, CRT's are the bomb (I am using a sexy ViewSonic CRT) but my 19" is so amazingly huge and heavy I wouldn't paying a premium and with some slightly imperfect pixel response on screen heh...

If you can afford it, then go for the BenQ FP91V+ I'd rate that top notch - it's very fast with a 6ms response time. 19-inch too - can be purchased from dabs at £336. I wouldn't recommend the blistering Viewsonic VX924 with a 4ms response time because it's not really anything special with noticable blurring on screen. I know I know, the response times would have to be even smaller for it to be eradicated but I digress. If you're going for cheaper alterantives, get the L17PS from VideoSeven.com - at only £147 it's not bad. Cheap and cheerful. If you can afford a bit more, get the CTX F773(L) from ctxeurope.com - £181 for good stuff.

[djbass]

You know I used to be a hardcore advocate for CRT monitors, but I gotta be honest LCDs are leaps and bounds over what they used to be.

As it is I'm currently using a BenQ FP71E (17") LCD, and at a 12ms response time I'm yet to notice any blurring in games or movies. The only issue I've had so far is some slight gradation in certain colours, but except for still images I never notice anyway.

[Androme]

I actually found out for LCD's to be picture perfect (no pixel graduation blurring), the response time has to be under 1ms... I'm pretty sure Viewsonic will get it in a year or 2.