GTX 650 Ti Boosts in SLI is the much better option, mainly because SLI is superior to Crossfire. This has been made apparent in several recent reviews where they exposed Crossfire's severe frame latency problems and a tendency for the drivers to lack proper game support. 7870's are faster on paper, but according to the reviews, they stutter and don't deliver a smooth gaming experience.
On the other hand, SLI and specifically GTX 650 Ti Boosts in SLI have been praised as having none of the dual GPU issues associated with Crossfire, while delivering top-end performance, faster than a 7970 or GTX 680, for a fraction of the cost.
Quote:
"After running the GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost SLI through our test suite, I have to admit that I'm impressed. The duo delivered performance easily matching and often exceeding much more expensive single-card options such as the GeForce GTX 680 and Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition, and they don't cost as much. SLI multi-GPU scaling works well with all of our titles except for F1 2012. Scaling by going from one to two GTX 650 Ti Boost cards is around 70%, even with F1 2012 taken into account. Unlike AMD, NVIDIA does a good job of maintaining its SLI profiles, so you should be able to play new games without a long wait for multi-GPU support. However, the risk that a game will not be supported still exists, and you might, at worst, end up with single-card performance. This is in my opinion, given the massive performance-per-dollar advantage, an acceptable tradeoff. I would definitely recommend a GTX 650 Ti Boost SLI setup to a friend looking to spend as little money as possible on a high-end gaming rig."
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_650_Ti_Boost_SLI/23.html
Quote:
AMD CrossFire Performance - A Bridge over Trouble Water?
"Where AMD has definite issues is with HD 7970s in CrossFire, and our Frame Rating testing is bringing that to light in a startling fashion. In half of our tested games, the pair of Radeon HD 7970s in CrossFire showed no appreciable measured or observed increase in performance compared to a single HD 7970. I cannot overstate that point more precisely: our results showed that in Battlefield 3, Crysis 3 and Sleeping Dogs, adding in another $400+ Radeon HD 7970 did nothing to improve your gaming experience, and in some cases made it worse by introducing frame time variances that lead to stutter."
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/Frame-Rating-Dissected-Full-Details-Capture-based-Graphics-Performance-Tes-12
"We have found that as we continue down the product stack to lower performing graphics cards, the problems of AMD CrossFire technology are creeping up more often. At single monitor resolutions, tested here as 1920x1080 and 2560x1440, the Radeon HD 7870 CrossFire configuration showed the same problems we saw in our initial article once again in titles like Battlefield 3, Crysis 3 and Sleeping Dogs. But as we saw in our previous piece problems are creeping up in DiRT 3 and Far Cry 3, game that previously didn't exhibit problems. The issues of runt frames continues to haunt the AMD CrossFire technology. It would appear that as the GPU becomes the bottleneck to bigger degree, which occurs in our testing as we keep the settings the same from the GTX Titan down to the GTX 660 Ti today, CrossFire results in more runt frames, more often and in more games."
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/Frame-Rating-GTX-660-vs-HD-7870-plus-HD-7790-HD-7850-GTX-650-Ti-BOOST/Summary
Quote:
Inconsistent Framerates and Stutter
"We've been talking about these issues for as long as we've evaluated multi-GPU performance in games. It doesn't take special software, or benchmarking, or frametime analysis or frame by frame rendering to experience and discover these issues. All it takes is actually sitting down and playing games to see and feel the differences between NVIDIA SLI and AMD CrossFire. Since we began our real-world evaluation method in 2003 that simply entails us playing games with these video cards just like gamers do, we've been able to see and feel a difference between SLI and CrossFire that we've talked about in every SLI and CrossFire evaluation.
It (Crossfire) is commonly inconsistent in framerate, has large peaks and valleys, dips and drops, and ups and downs as you play each game. It is erratic, and when you compare it to the two NVIDIA SLI configurations you notice these are smoother, more consistent, and less unruly. We've noticed this for years, we've seen it, we've talked about it, and it is very evident the more GPUs you add. Game players notice this change in FPS, they feel it as they play, and to compensate for it you have to aim for higher framerates out of CrossFire to bring the smoothness back. It is a reality right now, and one needs to keep this in mind when shopping for multi-GPU gaming solutions. While there do exist some granular testing to perhaps explain it, all one has to do is sit down in front of both setups and you will be able to tell which is smoother."
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013/04/22/nvidia_geforce_gtx_titan_3way_sli_review/10#.UYgPKRPn-Uk
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