Gaming and SLI... does it really work?

[AstaLaVista]

I have heard mixed things about this so I want to ask you guys what is your experience with it.

All my specs are there but I want to ask the following. There is a guy selling me 1 EVGA 8800GT at a very good price (I have 1 ECS 8800GT), my questions are:

1.- Would I be able to run both on SLI?

2.- Would I really be doing my gaming gameplay any good or not much.

As an example... right now I can play crysis (with Crytek ingame recomended settings) at 1280 x 1024, everything set on Medium and seat of the pants FPS at +30. CPU & GPU running at about 45 to 48 degrees.

My native resolution is 1680 x 1050, if I add the other card, would I be able to hit this resolution and play on High as an example or what's the best I can get to.

Thanks

 

[ChrisJust66]

1. Yes you would be able to run both in sli. As long as the cards are the same series then you're fine.

2. It would help your game play but don't go and think it's going to double your frame rate, cuz it's not. Well technically you could I guess, if you max your fans out and overclock them as high as they'll go. I have 3 8800 gt's in sli and I like it. Crysis is really cpu intensive, so while adding another card will help for that game (and trust me it does help) overclocking your cpu would help alot more. But that's crysis. Not really a good game to decide whether to use sli or not. I have a crap ton of games and sli helps with a lot of them. For instance ,BF 2142 I can max out with one card, except the AA and occasional frame rate dips, but they aren't major. It gets kinda choppy if I set it to 8x. But with 2 cards in sli, 120 frames a second at max settings, including 8x AA.

As for 1680 x 1050 at high, I couldn't tell you. The monitor I use for now only goes to 1440x 900. I think I run mine on high, with the physics down a bit, along with the other settings. I haven't played it in a while. I can sort of play it on ultra high, but come on, I'm not stupid and don't want to play a game at < 20 frames a sec.

All in all it helps, and I think it's worth it. Especially since you're getting a deal on it.

 

[HexManiac]

In some cases, SLI is a winner. Crysis on Very High at 1600 x 1200, Warhead the same, CoD 4 silky smooth. But it does cause problems (usually driver related) elsewhere. Mass Effect inside the Citadel was a slide show (but nowhere else) and The Witcher has torches and light sources showing through walls. In both cases, disabling SLI fixed the problems. Luckily one card in those cases was enough. But my cards are getting long in the tooth so I don't know how long I can say that.

 

[Mr GRiM]

I would go for it, you have the board for it so you might as well use it for what it was designed for. Check that you have enough juice in that PSU, 600W might be pushing it.
I just bought an add on PSU, the Thermaltake Toughpower Power Express 650W, for my upgrade to a GTX260 216 core. It was allot cheaper to go for this option rather then buying a more powerful 850W or Higher, you do need two free top drive bays for this set-up, so that might be a problem if you don't have any.
Here's the Link W0158 Purepower Power Express 650W

 

[AstaLaVista]

When I had 2GB's of Ram and XP, I had my E6300 at 2.86Ghz but even at idle it was averaging 50c even with all the fans at Max and with the Artic Pro 7. My HDD died and I reverted to default setting thinking it was due to OC'ng my GPU & CPU and even though I had copies of what I did on the Bios to OC my CPU, I ended up leaving at original settings.

Now that I have dual boot with Vista x64 and 4GB's of Ram, I have some reservations of OC'ng my E6300 again due to the fact that while I am not a total putz when it comes to computers, understanding the lingo and what everyting does it what confuses me and deters me from trying on my own.

For instance, I tried oc'ng my GPU with the help of Nvidia latest Ntune but I need to up the Speed, Shader and Memory by itself and I don't know how to increment those things, I would love it if the software would up the others when I up one of the options.

I may bother you guys on the Overclocking forums to see if someone wants to take a gander and help me through it... I don't want to go Water Cooled though.

 

[ChrisJust66]

Yeah, one word of advice, don't use ntune. I tried it against what others said and overall I think it sucks. Use Rivatuner if you use anything. I had so many stability issues with ntune it wasn't even funny.

 

[Timford]

I'm thinking about going SLI with two 9600's. That would run crysis well on my system. As CPU intensive as it is, quad core has my back xD. RAM is something I odn't have though.

 

[AstaLaVista]

As cheap as RAM is that's what you're lacking? pfft

My problem is just that I am a cheap bastard, I passed up a deal on an E7200 the other day for about 90 bucks... arghhhh!

Forgot to mentioned, before the meltdown with my rig, I also had found a nice Rivatuner guide and I lost that as well so I had to revert to the eye candy ntune from nvidia.

I'll start looking for it again I gues.

I just pulled the pin on 2 of these puppies, I am hoping they won't cancel my order and if they follow through, that my Mobo/CPU/PSU will handle them!!!

EVGA 896-P3-1267-AR GeForce GTX260 Core 216 SC Edition 896MB DDR3 PCI-Express 2.0 Graphics Card

Why did I buy two when I don't want to spare 90 bucks for a new CPU? well... because of the prices here!

Amazon.com: EVGA 896-P3-1267-AR GeForce GTX260 Core 216 SC Edition 896MB DDR3 PCI-Express 2.0 Graphics Card with Lifetime Warranty: Electronics

That's right! $ 119.99 each... yeah, its gotta be some kind a mistake!