Tri Sli or 1 Good Card?

3val

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Would it be better to get one high end graphics card, lets say a GTX 295 or a 4870 X2. Or would it be better to get 3 mid range cards, like 9800 GTX, GTX 260, 250, or 4850, 4870 and run them in tri sli?

-3val
 
I say one good card, like the GTX 295. Regular SLi scales way better than Tri-SLi as far as I know. I don't know what the difference would be in performance though.
 
Hmm.. tri sli would spread out the load, but it would be a lot hotter thus reducing performance. I guess lol
 
Would it be better to get one high end graphics card, lets say a GTX 295 or a 4870 X2. Or would it be better to get 3 mid range cards, like 9800 GTX, GTX 260, 250, or 4850, 4870 and run them in tri sli?

-3val


ATI cards don't support SLI, they run in Crossfire.

I'm going to run 2x 4890s in crossfire.

Idk what the difference in performance would be, but if you have more cards, you need a better PSU and cooling.
 
It's not really about the heat/load. It's more about the SLi architecture. It never scaled perfectly with 2+ cards. What this means is adding another card doesn't give 100% more performance. For example, adding a second card to a one card setup may only give you a 70% increase rather than a 100% increase that makes sense. Adding another card to that setup may only increase performance 30% and so on.

Basically you will get a performance increase, however its not a guaranteed percentage.

Yeah, sorry forgot to mention that SLI is for Nvidia video cards, and CrossfireX is for ATI video cards.
 
It's not really about the heat/load. It's more about the SLi architecture. It never scaled perfectly with 2+ cards. What this means is adding another card doesn't give 100% more performance. For example, adding a second card to a one card setup may only give you a 70% increase rather than a 100% increase that makes sense. Adding another card to that setup may only increase performance 30% and so on.

Aye. This.

Go with 1 high-end card imo.

Or something like a HD 4870 X2
 
Yep, go with the single card. GTX 295, or a 4870x2. Go with the better deal, or the one that comes with a better game/deal. I'm no fanboy, so saying which one is better is negligible. Physics/Cuda on the Nvidia graphic cards are doing way better than the equivalent of ATI graphic cards, so that could way in your decision.

If you have time to wait, you could wait for the DX11 cards coming from ATI later this year/early next year. Expected to be way faster than the current DX10 cards while being at the same price point as the 4850/4870/4870x2 when they came out.
 
Yep, go with the single card. GTX 295, or a 4870x2. Go with the better deal, or the one that comes with a better game/deal. I'm no fanboy, so saying which one is better is negligible. Physics/Cuda on the Nvidia graphic cards are doing way better than the equivalent of ATI graphic cards, so that could way in your decision.

If you have time to wait, you could wait for the DX11 cards coming from ATI later this year/early next year. Expected to be way faster than the current DX10 cards while being at the same price point as the 4850/4870/4870x2 when they came out.

Aye the HD 5800 series is going to be unveiled Sept10, and hit the market in october or so.
 
1 good card ftw...that way as ppl said above, your pc wont heat up as much as consume less power...also u can upgrade in the future without having to sell ur 3 cards.
 
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