SLI worthiness?

[cdietschrun]

I have an 880GT and bought new processor, mobo, and ram and am considering going the full route and getting a new PSU and second 8800GT and another HDD.

My only hold back is it worth it for SLI? I remember hearing back before that it wasn't worth it too much. For the record I game and have 2 screens, one being an HD screen. The 8800GT is only $150 or so.

Comments please!

[DrFoo]

I think it will net you about a 50% increase in power. I don't really think it would be worth it. You could sell your 8800 GT and buy a Radeon 4850 which would give you a 25% or so boost and cost almost nothing or spend $250 and get a 50% improvement. I guess it depends on how much you want that extra power.

The 4850 is on sale at newegg right now for $160 after rebate (here (http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102747)).

[uli2000]

SLI doenst support multiple monitors (yet). So if you run multi monitors, dont even bother. Crossfire, otoh, I think does.

[jonac13]

Short answer: No.

Long answer: Yes. Okay, just kidding, no. SLI is most advantageous at high resolutions. Contrary to popular belief, adding a second card does not provide 'more memory'. Additionally, given what motherboard you have, assuming it has SLI capability, the second (and maybe third, depending on your mobo) PCI-E slots may run at a slower than x16 transfer rate that a single card would run at normally. In other words, one card might run at x16, but if you put in two they might both run at x8. Additionally++, many older games do not support multiple GPUs, so there would be no advantages to having two cards in such situations.

My resolution: If you don't want to spend much money on a new video card, it's not worth jumping the gun on this decision. Two 8800GTs in SLI will not be futureproof, as easy as it is to believe so. If you really want to upgrade and you have an SLI board, so you want to stick with nVidia, you might just want to sell off your 8800GT and get a 9800 GTX. This wouldn't break the bank, take far less power to run, and run better than the 8800GT. A second option would be to sell your 8800GT and get a Radeon 4850. For a cool $170, you could get a card that outperforms nVidia equivalents that would run you around $300. Again, this would be conducive to you selling your current card and simply upgrading.

If you want more information on SLI, the following is quite informative:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/245454-15-crossfire-faqs

[jonac13]

Also, one more thing... since you were non-specific with what mobo you got, I can't really be sure if this is relevant advice, but I'll give it anyways. If your motherboard support triple SLI, you can run two cards in SLI and a third card out of SLI to run your second monitor. This is in response to the poster who said that dual monitors aren't supported in SLI... they are, but not to the capacity that one would like. SLI is very well expected to run multi-monitor setups in the future, so I wouldn't be pessimistic about it.

[cdietschrun]

I think I am going to sell my 8800gt. Anyone interested or know anyone who wants to buy it?

[Clarke]

I think I am going to sell my 8800gt. Anyone interested or know anyone who wants to buy it?
I think you should keep it. What are you trying to run anyway that NEEDS (and I mean needs) any more than that.