Graphic Cards State of Crossfire/SLI

whatsinaname

whatsinaname

Skilled
How many people here are using a dual GPU setup? What is you experience?

I got a new monitor earlier in the month so wanted to upgrade my GPU. I have a SLI/CF capable motherboard so I just bought a second 4870 1GB to try to hold me over till I did a full system update later in the year. Installed it yesterday, and I see stuttering in three separate games. (PES 2011, Medal of Honor, Torchlight).

Many forum posts online talk about the Crossfire being mature enough to run out of the box. Is that something you people see as well? Do you have to keep finding hotfixes for each game you want to run? Is this something out of the norm and a unique issue with my setup (which I think might be the case)?

So, basically post your experiences with gaming on an SLI/CF setup.

tl;dr - CF does not work for me. Have 2 4870 1GBs for sale. :p

Edit: PS: ^^ That was a joke. The 4870s are not for sale on TE. I was not trying to get around the market rules. Don't ban me.
 
THe thing about multi gpu is that cpu quickly becomes a bottle neck. You need a decent overclock on the cpu to see the diff. It is definitely not for the faint hearted. You need patience and also need to be tech savy enough mess with drivers, patches, and os to work out issues when you face them. But then, you know therw are those who are content wirh just console gaming and there are those who go to the trouble of building gaming pc's.

My overall expr with 4850 cf has been good enough that iam ready to go with sli/cf again.
 
Lord Nemesis said:
THe thing about multi gpu is that cpu quickly becomes a bottle neck. You need a decent overclock on the cpu to see the diff. It is definitely not for the faint hearted. You need patience and also need to be tech savy enough mess with drivers, patches, and os to work out issues when you face them. But then, you know therw are those who are content wirh just console gaming and there are those who go to the trouble of building gaming pc's.

My overall expr with 4850 cf has been good enough that iam ready to go with sli/cf again.
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I hadn't realised that CF/SLI are in that state. Most single GPUs work out of the box now. I've gone months between driver updates on my single 4870 and not had any problems with any games. I had hoped that CF would work out of the box. (It's been about 4-5 generations I think?). CF was tempting as I only had to spend ~100$ more to get decent performance at 2560x1600. I don't have the patience anymore for continuous driver updates/hotfixes/game profiles. I am getting lazier as I get older. :p

Anyway, will try to sell my two cards. Placed an order for the 6950 2gb yesterday. Will unlock shaders and should hopefully be set.
 
Been using XfireX Hd4890. Nothing like it to be honest. But as Lord Nemesis pointed out, the CPU really quickly dries out and cannot supply enough data to the subsystem. One has to be able to OC his CPU to the max and be vigilant with drivers. You could say the system becomes more 'sensitive'. Multi GPU is the true feast for a computer hardware enthusiast....!

Gaming wise (if the cards are not too old) you will never run out of horse power for the 3D. Drivers for both companies are much more mature then they were 3-4 years ago respectively for SLI/XfireX. Most games realize the multi GPU system too.

One GPU is not enough...! :)
 
Having used a pair of 4850 GPUs back when it was released alongside the 4870 512MB, it was fun back then with the definite advantage in most games I threw at it. Although I had to do a lot of tweaking to get the things right. Not limited to just the Catalyst drivers but patches and hotfixes. Thank god one of them decided to die on me later which is when I switched to a single 4870 1GB. And it has served me well until now.

Decided to pick up the 6950 1GB later this month-end.
 
No idea about CF, but I've been using a pair of SLI machines with GTX570s/i7-2600 & GTX460s/i7-950.

The only issue that I've faced has been certain games NOT being optimized for SLI. Basically you get 0 speedups in them. Otherwise, it's been a nice experience overall.
 
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