Why is SLi crap?

[Noni]

Ok not as such "crap" but why doesnt it work how i would like it to?

E.G. 2 cars means x2 times power. its more like 10-20% increase right?

Hope someone can clear this up. Thanks

[neo265]

Re: Why is SLi crap?

Ok not as such "crap" but why doesnt it work how i would like it to?

E.G. 2 cars means x2 times power. its more like 10-20% increase right?

Hope someone can clear this up. Thanks

Not too sure but I do know that games do have to be specifically written to fully utilise SLI but there is a lot of performance lost in synchronising both cards together.

[imported_Sawell]

Re: Why is SLi crap?

Ok not as such "crap" but why doesnt it work how i would like it to?

E.G. 2 cars means x2 times power. its more like 10-20% increase right?

Hope someone can clear this up. Thanks

It's 1.9x the performance of a single card afaik.

[Mr. ADHD]

Re: Why is SLi crap?

My guess is...it's like using 2 processors. If the software doesn't support multiple processors, that is it splits up tasks for each processor..it won't work faster.

You can run more graphics intensive programs ...but you can't run 1 program any faster unless it's designed to take advantage of the SLI.

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

...I'm no techie....I just watch Call for Help.

[imported_Sawell]

Re: Why is SLi crap?

...I'm no techie....I just watch Call for Help.

Same here, I just read the shiney bit on the front of my gfx card box :p but yeah, it's probably dependant on the game being suited to SLi.

[Flanker]

Re: Why is SLi crap?

For one, the amount of improvement through SLI is dependant on the game. Yea, it has partly to do with the design, partly to do with conflicting hardware, and some other stuff.

2 cards != 2x the power.

The performance increase will be somewhere around 20%-60% more than that of a single card.

[Sir. MatDef]

Re: Why is SLi crap?

...I'm no techie....I just watch Call for Help.

Lucky bastard, comcast has finished the rape and pillage of techtv, and the only (mildly) good show left might be xplay. I miss Leo. :cry:

[rombaft]

Re: Why is SLi crap?

some games have 50% performance gain, other ones 10% etc...

you have to understand you still have only one CPU, or maybe a dual core, but those are bottlenecks for SLI systems.

also you loose big performance at dividing the tasks.

SLI systems are good for gaming at very high resolutions with things like AA, AAF, .... all at max because those things are 100% vid card work not CPU .

The best thing you could do is buy the best or one of the best vid card out there, only one, and with the saved money, you buy a new one a year or so later, that new one will then be the top at that time.

this will give you the best performance for the money, and will give you the newest technologie at the moment (4.0 shader moel and stuff like that) , people investing in very expansive SLI systems have about the same performance a year later then people with one single brand new top of the line card, and the guys with the top of the line card of the moment have all the latest technologie

[Papi4baby]

Re: Why is SLi crap?

SLI is not crap it is and awesome technology, i just believe it is not cost effective for the general computer guy.

[Eddy01741]

Re: Why is SLi crap?

Dual vid card tech (sli and crossfire) are only used to their greatest extent at extremely high resolutions (at least above 1600x1200 is good). If you play on 1024x768, you should definetly not get SLi. If you have a big ass 23" monitor, SLi could help you a LOT there.

[DanOfEarth]

Re: Why is SLi crap?

I suspect that part of the bottleneck might have something to do with the PCI 16 slots divided into two 8 slots. Even though I've had guys tell me that wouldn't matter, when questioned they couldn't come up with proof otherwise. I got so far into it that I've spent some coin on what I think might be evidence. There were only two MOBOs out there that sport the true 32 slots:
A. The Tyan Thunder, which only runs the Opteran chip.
B. The Dell board that only runs the Intel chip.

But technically, the AMD 57fx is still the fastest chip when it comes to games....until the FX59 comes out in the Spring. (oh, you think it will come out in December like they say?.....riiiighhhhtttttt. )
Now the ASUS 8N32 Deluxe is out if you can find it. It's got 32 slots, fits the FX57, runs more voltage to the RAM, etc, and is way more condusive to overclock. All of you DFI Lan Party guys are going to being smoked!!!! Period.
And I'm going to prove one way or another what's going to happen with 32 slots (I almost had to get one out of Tokyo until I got lucky with Monarch.com).
In all of the reviews, they've stated that running dual cards only gives you a 25% boost....that's never been a secret. But they couldn't say why.
Oh, it's because of programming they say...the games don't support it. That's like saying the reason why your toilet is stopped up is because the water doesn't support the type of pipe. Gentlemen, you've got a clog in your bandwidth.....somewhere. And it might....just might, be the slots into the card.
Now the above logic doesn't apply to dual core chips because the programs can indeed somehow take advantage of the dual processors, splitting the commands and rendering to the different chips. This will probably work because all 3D programming relies heavily on floating point math, which (I believe) is still processed mostly in the CPU at this time.
That being said, I'd love to get some (polite) corrections on some of this info. Oh...keyboard cowboys need not respond.

FYI - How do you get rid of that inaccurate rank next to your name....I'm a Gunnery Sergeant.

[Flanker]

Re: Why is SLi crap?

Well, I think that if you're going to go 7800GTXs SLI'd, then the point of running at 1024x768 is kind of nulled. Who would WANT to run 1024x768 with Dual 7800GTXs.

And the video card does most of the floating point ops now.

[rombaft]

Re: Why is SLi crap?

I suspect that part of the bottleneck might have something to do with the PCI 16 slots divided into two 8 slots. Even though I've had guys tell me that wouldn't matter, when questioned they couldn't come up with proof otherwise. I got so far into it that I've spent some coin on what I think might be evidence. There were only two MOBOs out there that sport the true 32 slots:
A. The Tyan Thunder, which only runs the Opteran chip.
B. The Dell board that only runs the Intel chip.

But technically, the AMD 57fx is still the fastest chip when it comes to games....until the FX59 comes out in the Spring. (oh, you think it will come out in December like they say?.....riiiighhhhtttttt. )
Now the ASUS 8N32 Deluxe is out if you can find it. It's got 32 slots, fits the FX57, runs more voltage to the RAM, etc, and is way more condusive to overclock. All of you DFI Lan Party guys are going to being smoked!!!! Period.
And I'm going to prove one way or another what's going to happen with 32 slots (I almost had to get one out of Tokyo until I got lucky with Monarch.com).
In all of the reviews, they've stated that running dual cards only gives you a 25% boost....that's never been a secret. But they couldn't say why.
Oh, it's because of programming they say...the games don't support it. That's like saying the reason why your toilet is stopped up is because the water doesn't support the type of pipe. Gentlemen, you've got a clog in your bandwidth.....somewhere. And it might....just might, be the slots into the card.
Now the above logic doesn't apply to dual core chips because the programs can indeed somehow take advantage of the dual processors, splitting the commands and rendering to the different chips. This will probably work because all 3D programming relies heavily on floating point math, which (I believe) is still processed mostly in the CPU at this time.
That being said, I'd love to get some (polite) corrections on some of this info. Oh...keyboard cowboys need not respond.

FYI - How do you get rid of that inaccurate rank next to your name....I'm a Gunnery Sergeant.

yes, you have a bottleneck, beeing your CPU not the PCI-e slots, even if they are devided from 16x to 2x8 , because the bandswitch that curent vid cards use hasn' reached the 8x speed of an pci-e slot at all (even not the 512 GTX) , they even don't reach the speed of an AGP 8x slot , PCI-e major advantage is that it can deliver more power true the slot at this moment.

And, do not forget, deviding the tasks on both vid cards is a very demanding task , this is why you loose lots of FPS power, but still the bigest problem is your CPU

[evogre3n]

Re: Why is SLi crap?

ugh, there is no performance decrease.. 8lanes are not even fully used by the 7800GTX 512mb, which happens to be the fastest card on the market.

All this talk about having more lanes is ********.

[NoSoup4You]

Re: Why is SLi crap?

The decrease is actually due to the way SLi works. Because all of the functionality etc, is handled by the cards, it actually ADDS to their workload since they have to mesh the pictures and then send it out. So yes there is a slight decrease in performance (vs. theoretical full performance).

This is where Crossfire (ATI's SLi config) kinda kicks SLi's ass. Because neither of the cards has to determine what to send (its all pre-determined by software) both send out a video signal to the same monitor (there is actually a "Y" cable) thus meaning both cards can run at full bore and just spit out what they are asked to render.