Video card question

S

SteadyEddy

New Member
This may sound like an odd question but what is the point of SLI or crossfire? Does it take 2 not so top of the line cards and makes them perform better or do you need better cards to get an awesome performance? Or are there other factors involved as well? If someone could just explain that to me i would appreciate it. Thanks in advance!
 
From my understanding it just means you can link two together.....regardless of their independent performance. I think it is a wow factor thing for computer geeks. I know my father uses two sli cards to run some advanced modeling programs at work. He says they get hot as a mutha
 
To me, there are 3 reasons to sli/crossfire

1. Lets say that bought a 5850. Now two years down the road I can't max out all of the games that I want to play So I pick up another 5850 at a much lower price than when it was new. This will boost performance and let you run your 5850 for a bit longer.

2. Buy 2 lower end cards to try to add up for better performance. The added benefit for this is that you get double the memory. For example you could get a 5870 with 1gb, or 2 5830's with 1gb each for a total in your crossfire of 2gb.

3. The wow factor/ Because I can. Some people find it necessary to have overkill rigs. So they buy the best cards to sli/crossfire, just so they can hit 90+ fps on games that are demanding on your hardware.

I'm not really an expert on sli/crossfire I'm sure that there are other benefits.
 
salvage got it. great for upgrading down the road or when on a budget. you can crossfire lower end cards or the top of the line. right now the highest crossfire number supported is 4 (i believe nvidia's max is the same).
 
my question is

ok i have a xfx geforce 260 GTX i was wondering if i bought a different 260 of another brand would i be able to do sli anyways or do i have to have the extact same card
 
bigl2007 said:
ok i have a xfx geforce 260 GTX i was wondering if i bought a different 260 of another brand would i be able to do sli anyways or do i have to have the extact same card
Click to expand...

you need another 260 but you can get a different brand and still do sli.
 
bigl2007 said:
ok thats great then i was lil worried about that so imma get another brand then :)
Click to expand...

I would match the specs of both of the cards that you plan to run in SLI. I don't know if that could create problems or not. Maybe someone has a better idea if that works.
 
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