What is the better route SLI or ATI Crossfire?
- Thread starter efx2003
- Start date
Marcus_X
Expert N00b
SLI Remains Superior
So why not recommend ATI's CrossFire? For starters, the whole external cable connector thing still really bugs a lot of users, it's nowhere near as elegant as SLI's implementation. And the fact that you have to pay more for the CrossFire Master Edition card than for the standard version.
Nvidia supports mixxed vendor support too, so you can search and combine 2 different brands (the same type of card though, with equal memory) for your personal requirements. This could come in handy when you don't buy 2 cards at the same time, prices on certain brands tend to change fast.
Finally, unless you're a die-hard ATI fan with lots of money, the results just don't warrant the cost (of course, you can probably make the same argument about high-end NVidia cards and SLI but Nvidia offers SLI on cheaper models too).
Both setups deliver excellent image quality, but when it comes to brute power, an Nvidia SLI setup walks away the clear winner.
So why not recommend ATI's CrossFire? For starters, the whole external cable connector thing still really bugs a lot of users, it's nowhere near as elegant as SLI's implementation. And the fact that you have to pay more for the CrossFire Master Edition card than for the standard version.
Nvidia supports mixxed vendor support too, so you can search and combine 2 different brands (the same type of card though, with equal memory) for your personal requirements. This could come in handy when you don't buy 2 cards at the same time, prices on certain brands tend to change fast.
Finally, unless you're a die-hard ATI fan with lots of money, the results just don't warrant the cost (of course, you can probably make the same argument about high-end NVidia cards and SLI but Nvidia offers SLI on cheaper models too).
Both setups deliver excellent image quality, but when it comes to brute power, an Nvidia SLI setup walks away the clear winner.
Marcus_X
Expert N00b
For AMD cpu's the ABIT KN8-SLI
For Intel there's the ASUS P5ND2-SLI
The Abit KN8-SLI is a socket 939 motherboard and supports most new AMD cpu's, and the ASUS P5ND2-SLI supports socket 775, after reading the replies on this product on Newegg.com I can only advise you to thouroughly check supported CPU types from the manufacture's website since there are a lot of user reviews that have had unpleasant experiences with cpu's that didn't work with this model.
Hope this helped you again a little, oh yeah........both are around $ 100,-
Greetings.
For Intel there's the ASUS P5ND2-SLI
The Abit KN8-SLI is a socket 939 motherboard and supports most new AMD cpu's, and the ASUS P5ND2-SLI supports socket 775, after reading the replies on this product on Newegg.com I can only advise you to thouroughly check supported CPU types from the manufacture's website since there are a lot of user reviews that have had unpleasant experiences with cpu's that didn't work with this model.
Hope this helped you again a little, oh yeah........both are around $ 100,-
Greetings.
Big B
HWF Godfather
Gigabyte's K8N SLI Pro was $85 at Newegg, and I believe that Foxconn has a nF4 SLI board under the $100 mark as well. I don't think you'd want them if you're looking for some nice overclocking, but if that's not an issue, they'll work well.
Crossfire is coming into it's own, albeit slowly. If you look back about a year or so ago, SLI wasn't as refined as it is right now. ATi has simply gotten into the multi-GPU race late and requires time. One thing I really like about Crossfire is that ATi is allowing it to work on some Intel chipsets (i955, i975, maybe a few others) besides their Radeon Xpress Crossfire chipset. nVidia could do that too, but I don't think they're willing to do that just yet. I imagine that they're doing quite well with SLI being an nForce 4 exclusive...however, if ATi starts seeing success with Crossfire outside of the Radeon Xpress, nVidia could decide to fight back and start allowing SLI on non-nForce platforms. Time will tell.
Crossfire is coming into it's own, albeit slowly. If you look back about a year or so ago, SLI wasn't as refined as it is right now. ATi has simply gotten into the multi-GPU race late and requires time. One thing I really like about Crossfire is that ATi is allowing it to work on some Intel chipsets (i955, i975, maybe a few others) besides their Radeon Xpress Crossfire chipset. nVidia could do that too, but I don't think they're willing to do that just yet. I imagine that they're doing quite well with SLI being an nForce 4 exclusive...however, if ATi starts seeing success with Crossfire outside of the Radeon Xpress, nVidia could decide to fight back and start allowing SLI on non-nForce platforms. Time will tell.
Exfoliate
Geek Trainee
SLI is more mature, supported, and cheaper and the ABIT-SLI mobo is pretty much the best you can do in that price range. However Crossfire is really showing some serious potential lately. In fact two X1900XTX's in Crossfire outperform nVidia 7900GTX's in quadSLI so there's obviously something going right for ATI.