Dual graphics cards

Skerries

is it worth crossfiring/SLIing a new and an old card together these days?

Digital Solitude

Depends on card, budget, resolution and needs, but in general I wouldn't say so

MarkAnthony

Pain in the bum, worth it in two scenarios IMO:

(i) Current top of the line GPUs don't have enough power to do what you want (e.g. 980Ti)

(ii) You got an absolute steal on a second card - for example some of the very cheap R9-290s that were floating about and you're going to run that config for 3+ years and forgo pascal/polaris and you aren't jumping on the VR bandwagon.

TerrorFirmer

For me never worth it unless you get the 2nd card at something close to free. It's just a pain - endless issues, bad profiles, games not supporting dual cards, scaling that can be as low as 10-20% in some games, bugs, etc.

The only scenario I can see it, is it you have a lot of money to spend and you wanted dual 980Ti's or something beyond what the fastest single card can offer.

cursai

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

For me never worth it unless you get the 2nd card at something close to free. It's just a pain - endless issues, bad profiles, games not supporting dual cards, scaling that can be as low as 10-20% in some games, bugs, etc.

The only scenario I can see it, is it you have a lot of money to spend and you wanted dual 980Ti's or something beyond what the fastest single card can offer.

Just read this about ten mins ago. http://www.pcworld.com/article/3036760/hardware/the-impossible-has-happened-radeon-and-geforce-come-together-in-directx-12.html

Luck100

I've had SLI 670's and 970's over the past few years. I have to say I've hardly ever had any issues at all, it mostly just works. I tend not to jump in to new releases right on launch day so I avoid 99% of the problems (and these days big releases seem to have loads of problems on launch day, not just SLI).

Of course, just because it works doesn't mean it's the best choice. I went from a single 670 to dual 670's because I got the second card at a very good price. I was also able to re-sell that 670 later on without losing that much. I bought dual 970's shortly after they launched because I wanted more power and there was no 980ti or Titan-X at the time.

TerrorFirmer

Sli is definitely better than Crossfire in that regard.

Eoinmc97

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

Sli is definitely better than Crossfire in that regard.

In power savings yes, but in performsnce, XDMA performance and scaling has surpassed SLI now, so I assume nVidia themselves might forgo the SLI bridge in Pascal.

glynf

Skerries wrote: »

is it worth crossfiring/SLIing a new and an old card together these days?

Unless you are running 4K or multi monitor its a waste, a single top tier card is plenty for most games. If you are planning to go Crossfire or SLI, Nvidia usually tend to have been driver support. From what I see these days, AMD are a lot better than they were-but still lag behind. Nvidia in my experience are also a lot quicker to issue fixes, though Crossfire has some very nice features that nvidia does not, like mixed resolution eyefinity setups, PLP layouts etc.

The only reason I still run two cards is I game on 3x1 surround at 120hz, and want to keep my 90fps+, and tbh unless a game is properly optimised for SLI (or xfire) I often disable one 980ti as any gains from the second card is negligable, and often gives worse results than a single card.

Even with good aftermarket coolers, two cards throw out a sh!t load of heat, I never need the heating on if I'm gaming for a few hours.

You also need to be careful about your cases airflow as the top card can easily hit +10 deg C over the bottom card, require a higher wattage PSU especially if you are overclocking.

TerrorFirmer

Eoinmc97 wrote: »

In power savings yes, but in performsnce, XDMA performance and scaling has surpassed SLI now, so I assume nVidia themselves might forgo the SLI bridge in Pascal.

I was talking about driver support. I always find Crossfire is more likely to be problematic in newer games than SLI overall.

Eoinmc97

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

I was talking about driver support. I always find Crossfire is more likely to be problematic in newer games than SLI overall.

Crimson updates have been nice and fast lately, so that does alleviate the wait one would have to wait. However, most Gameworks games usually suck with CF.