AMD CrossFire Vs. Nvidia SLI Scaling Analysis

[mapesdhs]

Cleeve writes:
> That's quite untrue.

No it's not. I've read dozens of reviews of the 460, including SLI, checked dozens of shop
sites since launch, hundreds of prices. Whether it was months ago or now, this IS the case.


> You can get 480's off of newegg for as low as $440 right now. When the 460 1GB was
> $240, it cost $480 SLI'd.

That's totally skewing things, comparing the *cheapest* current 480 to old high 460 pricing.
It's very misleading. Now compare to current cheapest 460s and again 460 SLI costs less by
miles, and is faster. Why compare a current cheap 480 to old high 460 pricing? That makes
no sense.

Using Scan, the cheapest 1GB 460 here atm is 124 UKP (Gigabyte, 715 core) , whereas the
cheapest 480 is a massive 328 UKP, ie. 80 UKP more expensive.

You mentioned newegg (not a site I normally look at since I'm in the wrong continent), I see
they have several 1GB 460s for $200 each (and much faster than the cheap Gigabyte
I mentioned too), so again your claim is false. QED.


> I'm not going to retrofit every article I've ever written every time there's a pricing change.

In no way whatsoever did I remotely suggest changing every article you've ever written,
why would you say such a thing?? I'm just saying that in this case the graphs are clearly
wrong. People will infer 460 SLI is more expensive than a 480, when it's not, by anything
from a useful to huge margin depending on location & vendor.


> ... People will see the current prices when they look to buy.

Or they won't even check after having drawn a conclusion from an inaccurate graph.

What I meant was, at any time, a typical 460 SLI is cheaper & faster than a typical 480
(whether one chooses to compare using the cheapest possible card of each type or not),
and that absolutely is true as I've just proved (always has been). Pointing out a distorted
case using pricing from two different time periods produces no useful information.

Have to say I'm amazed you think otherwise...

Ian.

 

[mapesdhs]

PS. Note that I'm always referring to 460 1GB here of course.

 

[cleeve]

That's totally skewing things, comparing the *cheapest* current 480 to old high 460 pricing.
It's very misleading.

It is not.

When the atricle was written, the GTX 460 was $240, $480 SLId.
That was the *cheapest* GTX 460. This price has only come down very recently, because of the 6850 launch.

When the article was written, the *cheapest* GTX 480 available was $460.

I'm not going to price out the most expensive cards, I don't recommend buying them so why would I pretend they're more important than the reasonably priced models?

The pricing I used is therefore quite viable and I am more than satisfied with it. Even now, the price differential is a mere $40.

If that's not good enough for you, we'll have to agree to disagree.

 

[mapesdhs]

$40 where you are, a massive $130 here. You could at least add a note or something. Oh well...

Ian.

 

[cleeve]

$40 where you are, a massive $130 here.

Ah! there's the rub. Tom's Hardware is written with US pricing in mind - we can't analyze world pricing markets, that's not a reasonable goal.

Sorry mate, but you'll have to look locally for pricing out of the US. The data is still valid, but you're going to have to use your own valuation as far as local pricing is concerned.

 

[cigarjohn]

Excellant post. Very informative. For gaming I would recommend the Radeons but if your more into the Fermi and Cuda technology, I would steer towards the GTX 470, 480's and possilbly the new 500's with their possible 512 Cuda cores.

Peace!

 

[lradunovic77]

Benchmark tells you one thing but in reality Crossfire is horrible. I tried Crossfire with two and three HD5870, just horrible experience.