Crossfire VS SLi

[RichPLS]

According to Annandtechs review, the A8R32 is currently one of the best overclocking boards beating the nForce4 boards.
New is 8 phase power compared to the A8R

 

[sylvez]

the new improved crossfire chipset (i think its 3200) by ATi looks promising
=]

 

[Heyyou27]

That's true.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

I haven't really seen too many benchmarks in which the X1900 XTX beats 7800GTs. Too many times people refer to the tom's F.E.A.R. benchmark tried to use softshadows with antialiasing, which the game does not support.

Although a single X1900 XT is a great deal and offers expandability, where two 7800GTs do not.

Well if you look at Xbit's review;

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/radeon-x1900xt-crossfire_9.html

It beats 2 GTXs a bunch of times (BF2, HL2, FartCry first test [probably beat 2GTs in the second one], Project Snowblind, SeriousSam2) .

Even then I wonder about the drivers optimizing for game like Warehammer, where the X1800 outperforms the X1900.

Overall I'd say they were close. This review unfortunately doesn't show the GTs, but what I remembered the X1900XT usually took the day. But like you say that may be select reviews and with selective settings.

I still haven't seen many X1900 vs 2xGF7800GT reviews. I'd look to be sure but busy at work. There are alot of X1800 versus 2xGT, but completely different story of course.

Still either way, your cards have and will hold up well, and when they don't they'll usually be close except for the times when SLi offer negative or no benifit.

 

[frozenlead]

Unless you truley NEED another 30% of power and have an extra 600$, then go for sli...but otherwise, i'd stick it with a single ATi card.
ATi cards have never failed me, as many NVidia's have.
I've purchased like 40 ATi cards for myself and other people and have never encountered a performance or hardware problem, its always the thing that works.
i can't say the same with the NVidia's...all of them i use lead to random system crashes and blue screens....bahhhhh not to mention poor(er) performance.

singlecard=ati
dual (but only if truley nesessary)=nvidia.

but i'll be making a crossfire system soon, when ati makes the new rdx chipset.

otherwise, i'd stick with a single x1900xt.

AMD Athlon XP 2800+ 2300MHz (reached 2600MHz as max so far)
AOpen AK77-600MAX w/VIA KT600
368MHz 1536MB DDR RAM
524MHz 128MB AGP 8x RADEON 9600xt
Maxtor ATA133 120GB 8MB/B 7200RPM
Seagate ATA100 120GB 10MB/B 7200RPM
Western Digital ATA100 160GB 8MB/B 7200RPM
Thermaltake Volcano 12 Heatsink + 6700RPM fan
X-Dreamer II case

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Well I'm not a fan of one company over the other, they both suck at times, only Matrox is wonderful and smells fresh as a mountain meadow...

Anywhoo, dual card ATi does pretty well too ass the majority of the reviews show. The ability to also crank up the AA to a point where the next level is outperforming the competition's level below is pretty imptressive.

However both, have their strengths and weaknesses, alot is game dependant, but for the main features you get SLi and Xfire for I'd still favour the good AA performance.

 

[k2000k]

The term SLI and Bang For Buck is an oxymoron. Crossfire or SLI it doesnt matter, it is just a giant schizzam to rob people of their money,

 

[Heyyou27]

I don't care if Battlefield2 runs better on an X1900XT when I can already run it with 8XSSAA and 16XAF, Half-Life2 has always been an ATI game, and we all remember Far Cry running better on an X800XT vs. a 6800 Ultra. Never played Project Snowblind, and never will. Also the X1900XT can use OpenEXR HDR and Antialiasing, making the X1900 better for Serious SamII.
Although, games like Doom3, Enemy Territory Quake Wars, and Prey will all run better on my 7800GTs. (Doom3 engine based OpenGL)
Plus, I play F.E.A.R. on 1280x960 with 4XMSAA and 16XAF with an average framerate of 70FPS with my largest drop to 41FPS; runs good enough for me.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Although, games like Doom3, Enemy Territory Quake Wars, and Prey will all run better on my 7800GTs. (Doom3 engine based OpenGL)

I don't doubt that 2GTs will win, it's obvious by the benchies, but saying OGL has anything to do with it alone is a little stale nowadays. As the tests show, nV doesn't own OGL like they used to. They still have a bit of an advantage, but top playable settings for D3 and Q4 still goes to ATi with Xfire beating SLi, Riddick is favourable to nV. Single card performance in Q4 the X1800XT beats a plain GTX, and a GTX-512 beats and XTX, so I'd say that's a toss up to and not due to OGL preference.

BTW, be sure to check out the HQ issues in the nV cards that make it extremely hard to compare the two levels of quality for apples-to-apples. Your same complaints about F.E.A.R. are even more so for nV and their HQ settings. If we compare apples to apples you may find that the nV cards are usually slower in D3/Q4.

The era of set advantages is over, it's more about application specificity, like F.E.A.R's performance X1800 vs X1900.

Just like you say playing F.E.A.R. at 12x9 with AA is good enough. But when comparing max, it's a question of who does better overall, and when it comes to Xfire versus SLi the advantage is clearly more and more in ATi's court for max playable settings throughout a wider number of games/applications.

 

[Heyyou27]

It's fine either way. I'm upgrading in the summer, and I'm sure these 7800GTs will hold out until then.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

It's fine either way. I'm upgrading in the summer, and I'm sure these 7800GTs will hold out until then.

Oh most assuredly, they are solid throughout.

And if you're upgrading in the summer hopefully there will be something like the G80 to consider, and if they aren't out by then, wait 'til they or the R600s come out, because jumping to something of the current generation at that time will likely be buying just before a nice change.

 

[Heyyou27]

I'm ignoring the G71.

It's going to be hard; if Nvidia doesn't have OpenEXR+AA support they won't be getting my money.