Is 2 Better Than 1?

[adamgulka]

Hey, so i was just wondering, say i was to buy a graphics card for $200, would it be better to have one $200 graphics card or have 2 $100 graphics cards?

 

[katiklysm]

1 $200 card, for sure.

Were your budget higher I would entertain the idea of cost efficiency being a driver to go for 2 cards in SLI instead of a single card. But it would have to be at least a $400 budget for a pair of 650Ti Boost to even consider it for me.

Get the single $200 card

 

[Neospiral]

Well, that greatly depends on which cards you're going to pair. As a rule of thumb, it's generally not worth it to dual GPU cards that are below at least mid-range performance. In this case, a $200 card will probably give you better performance than two $100 cards.

 

[adamgulka]

1 $200 card, for sure.

Were your budget higher I would entertain the idea of cost efficiency being a driver to go for 2 cards in SLI instead of a single card. But it would have to be at least a $400 budget for a pair of 650Ti Boost to even consider it for me.

Get the single $200 card

I have a $1000 budget, here is my parts as of right now.
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz 6-Core Processor (Purchased For $132.00)
Motherboard: Asus M5A97 R2.0 ATX AM3+ Motherboard (Purchased For $106.00)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (Purchased For $74.00)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (Purchased For $70.00)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost 2GB Video Card (Purchased For $190.00)
Case: NZXT Phantom 410 (White) ATX Mid Tower Case (Purchased For $125.00)
Power Supply: Corsair Builder 600W 80 PLUS Certified ATX12V Power Supply (Purchased For $86.00)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD/CD Writer (Purchased For $26.00)
Other: TAX ($63.00)
Total: $872.00
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-07-09 20:04 EDT-0400)