Features - QOTW: Have you ever used SLI or CrossFire?

[Athrun1234]

Ran 2 4870's, 2 5770's and 2 GTX460's and there was always a 'bad card' which failed after so many months... So I run a single mid-high range card (GTX770).

[NiPPonD3nZ0]

Once upon a time, a loooong long time ago... I've ran two nVidia GeForce 6600 (not even the GT's) in my venerable Gigabyte GA-K8NXP-SLI with a Opteron 144 ... it was good enough for nVidia to let me sign in to SLI club and they gave me an copy of Dark Void (a game a kinda enjoy) for free!!

1st Gen PCIe... Those were the days... I had time and pacience to play...

I'm feeling old now... damn!

[aidanjt]

Never. I've never needed it. Single card acceleration has always been far more efficient than SLI/X-Fire in every respect. I own a 24"/92 DPI monitor, and I've never cared about anti-aliasing so feeding it with enough pixels isn't too taxing for a mid-high end card, so that's what I buy every few years with a new desktop when new software/titles start feeling sluggish.

[Octodog]

I've only ever used a single card.
Less power. Less heat. Less noise. Less to potentially "go wrong" with a system. Less effort.

As for the type of card I usually opt for, it's either a couple of notches down from "current best", or it's last year's best.

[george1979]

Nope, I when I built my system I bought components that would allow me to use either xfire or SLI but I never did it. When I upgrade to Haswell later this year I'll just buy a mobo for features other than dual cards. Too much hassle.

[jnutt]

I ran 2 GTX460's in SLi but I got issues with my sound card. When I changed to a single GTx660Ti the sound issue disappeared. Must have been a PCi bus issue. System runs sweet now. i suspect I'll stick with a single solution from now on.

[Cyklondx]

I don't see how normal typical user would need two or more gpu's. I understand those who use 'em for crunching data - its reasonable to gain some performance. No one really plays games in 4kx4k resolutions - just few nobodies -
I myself had up to 3 GPU's on one mobo with 6990 + 2x 6970 for crunching BOINC ~ its a lot of hassle getting them to run in sync and configuring project to feed them as should. Next part is the overheating issue my gpu's ran at 80-100'C on hotter days if by cooled down by fans. Waterblocks can cost a lot of work and money to actually implement them.
The other issue is the noise just let those radeons go over 50% its like old hoover or jumbo jet staring off. But once i've switched to 7970 directcu II from asus its quiet and gpu is fairly cool not going over 67'C which is great thing since my cpu i5 2500k 4.2GHz OC runs up to 60'C with watercooling corsair h80 after a month of non-stop crunching.

1 GPU for normal user.
2 GPU's if you want to show off your friends or you actually use the gpu's for something
3 BOINC crunching data / 3dsmax
4 or more you just have 2 much money.

[samuraiweasel]

Never had enough dough floating around for SLI or crossfire despite having owned motherboards that supported both...it always seems that value for money is in the midrange single cards...

[gabwebsite]

I used to have 2 GTX480 in sli. Switched for one gtx680 wich is slower so I'm thinking about getting aa second one .


You get so much power huge fps on every game that support it.

[AGTDenton]

Tried Crossfire with some 4850's but didn't get on with them, everything needed tweaking to the nth degree just to avoid texture defects or to gain performance, in the end I replaced them with a single GTX285 which was completely hassle free. Never tweaked a damn thing in its life time, now thats been replaced by a 680 and so far rock solid performance. A long story I've ended up running it at 8x PCIe but everything runs on high even on PCIe 2.0.

Now that I know 8x isn't actually that bad, I'm going to consider SLI on the next build with a cheaper MOBO.

[hiyayhi]

I have a HD6990 in my system so yes. I use CFX.

[hoggson]

nope. lol

[Willzzz]

Ran 2 4870's, 2 5770's and 2 GTX460's and there was always a 'bad card' which failed after so many months... So I run a single mid-high range card (GTX770).

And if your single card fails?

[danroyle]

was using two 7950's in crossfire but recently sold them and went to a single card as it is less problematic than two and less power hungry

[CK_1985]

Have to say I'm surprised by the number of people saying yes to this question... although this is the HeXus forum so I guess it's not a truly random sample!

Never tried it myself, and no plans to either - was always put off by the thought of micro-stutter, noise/heat concerns and being so dependent on driver updates. Plus I'm currently half way through a transition to SFF computing so multi-GPU setups completely off the menu for the foreseeable.

[Lil-Diabo]

I had 2 8600GT's in Sli at one point.
Had 2 of those XFX Fatality cards, looked really good
Wasn't really the performance boost I was hoping for/expecting thou

Been single cards since then, currently have a 7950