SLi, or no SLi?

[AD-15]

hello,

I am in a bit of a dilemma, should I go with an SLi option for my new PC or not? I could save money, and be able to have more PCI slots for expansion cards.

Does SLi actually have any benefits other then faster frame rates??

Thanks!

[Clunk]

have you got 2 nvidia cards? will you be getting 2 nvidia cards ever? if so, you will need an sli board, if not, you will be fine with the 965/975 chipset boards. if you have a monitor with very high resolution, then sli will give you some performance gains, but to be honest, the cost isnt worth the money in my opinion.

[ExceededGoku]

Yes I completely agree with Clunk, 2 x the price for 1.5 x the performance (at best).. do the maths

[Speedo]

SLi is not worth it, imo. However most SLi boards will allow you to use the second x16 slot for any pci-e card you fancy, at full whack. Nice expansion option if you'll ever be using a raid card or similar . Same goes for Crossfire etc boards however!

[Blackmage]

yes, for sli if you want more poweer in the future then sli will add a nice upgrade path

[kalniel]

SLI is a very nice marketing trick to get you to spend more on both motherboard and cards. It's really not worth it, even for future upgrades.

[Salazaar]

New GPUs come out so fast that by the time you can really afford/justify a second board there'll be a new one out that's twice as fast for the same money.

[AD-15]

hello,

Thankyou everyone!

So can I use any PCI express card (not graphics card) in the secondary 16x slot? Is there seriously any card that will use that much bandwith!!?!?!?!?!?!?!

Also, aren't there graphical benfits too SLi too, or is it just more speed?

[Madafwo]

Just the speed thing at the moment.

SLI is a bit of marketing genius by Nvidia because one of the main selling points is "Buy a lower end card and add a second when you have the cash" which is great, but Nvidia stop making that card after 6 months, so unless you can afford to add a second card every 6 months it's pointless.

Also, usually you can sell the lower end card to buy the next one up which will double the performance for aroudn the same or less than buying a second card of the same level to get SLI working, which usually only gives you 50% extra performance.

SLI. The big con in my eyes (he says with an SLI board)

[kalniel]

Well, technically there is SLI-AA as well, which uses the second card to provide a higher level of anti-aliasing. I've never heard of it working all that well, as most single cards can do good AA these days anyway, and the price you pay for just an extra bit of AA is astonishing.

You can use any PCI-Express card in the x16 slot, yes. But if you've got an SLI board it's quite likely that you're not actually routing any channels through the second slot unless you set the jumpers up for two lots of 8x.

No there's nothing that can use that bandwith. But by the same measure, no graphics card can use that amount of bandwidth either