Does SLI really work well?

[Milkshake86]

It's definitely not worth upgrading from 560ti to a 570. That's only about a 20% increase (assuming neither card is overclocked).
Upgrading from 560ti to 2x 560ti is almost a 100% increase.
Does your psu support sli? If it does then definitely go for it.

Incorrect....SLI would give you at most a 50% increase as 2 graphics cards do not work as 1+1=2 they work at best as 1+1=1.5 . In some games SLI wont do much for you albeit older games at this point. However in battlefield 3 taking the work load off of 1 card for another will substantially alter performance likely for MW3 as well. This is why i have another 560 on the way and sadly ill be pulling my 550 from parts bin for Physx only. Stupid battlefield 3 >.>

@tetrisGOAT I am fairly certain WoW has adapted SLI/CFX utilization have to dig through patch notes but pretty sure WoW does use multicore and muligpu setups currently.

[TheSylvester]

I'm running Battlefield 3 on ultra with a GTX 280 graphics card. I'm certain you'd be fine with what you have.

[Milkshake86]

Above 1920x1080?

[BicycleMafioso]

@tetrisGOAT I am fairly certain WoW has adapted SLI/CFX utilization have to dig through patch notes but pretty sure WoW does use multicore and muligpu setups currently.

This is true. Notice how I say "Wow does now support", not "Wow does not support". Wow hasn't always. As for 25-man raids, you are quite evidently CPU-capped there, so anything above a, say, HD5770 or GTX460 would be quite wasted there.

As for the rest of your post, you are correct in that SLI is not near enough 100% as the quoted person is suggesting, but, with advancing technology, it's closer to the 100%-mark than the 50% mark that you yourself suggest.

[Milkshake86]

Id say that the usage and utility is closer to 100% but performance increase is no where near 100% increase. The benchmark of 2 580's winning out against a single 580 by a small margain in BF3 sums that up quickly. To be near 100% frames would rise near 100% i.e 50 fps would be 100 when in reality if you get 75 thats one hell of a setup more likely you will hover 60-70 in a really good situation.

[Savedwow]

I'm sitting with an i7 920 and a 440 gt. May grab another 440 gt if I can raid at more than 60 fps on ultra with all settings maxed. I can do it now but sometimes it dips below 30. heh that sucks when i fraps.

[BicycleMafioso]

Id say that the usage and utility is closer to 100% but performance increase is no where near 100% increase. The benchmark of 2 580's winning out against a single 580 by a small margain in BF3 sums that up quickly. To be near 100% frames would rise near 100% i.e 50 fps would be 100 when in reality if you get 75 thats one hell of a setup more likely you will hover 60-70 in a really good situation.

Green = Average, Red = bottommost value hit.

If you consider that the HD6970 has a near 100% scaling, one can assume that the extremely rushed and haphazarded nVIDIA-drivers just didn't have time to optimise everything, and neglected to do SLI as one of them.
I'd expect the GTX580 in SLI to only rise from that point.

[Kouki]

So heres my situation, built a new rig around 3 months ago (see sig) and have been looking at BF3 and Skyrim and they look pretty graphics intensive.

This is my current graphics card, and I was wondering which would work better, installing another one for SLI or just grabbing a GTX 570 in about 3 months time?

Things to consider, my mobo has a 16x and a 8x PCIE slot, so in SLI both cards would run at 8x. Would the two cards in SLI be more powerful than a 570 or a waste of money?

I would get a dual gpu card, something like a 590 or 6990, and run it in your x16 slot, it will have the power of sli but take up one slot.

[sizzlinsauce]

go for the second 560TI. tons more performance for the price, over a single 570, just a sum up of what people have said in this thread already. 8x won't hinder you seeing as it still gets near full use of the cards. sure its not 200% performance. but its better than a slight upgrade to a 570. you could even run 2 gtx 460 2win cards (dual gpu 460 cards) and get the same performance as 2 gtx 580's for 80% of the price of a single 580. its all what you choose buddy.

[Milkshake86]

ID have to say that at this point in time however it shouldnt even be a question of 2x560ti's v 1 570 or 580 clearly it will outperform in a 2 card setup simply put the work load of both cards is lower than the single card. Now Run 2x560 ti's and 1 550 for physx and you wont notice say lowest or highest FPS increase but in games running heavy physx your average FPS will increase possibly lowest in some cases but your highest will not go up. Now that being said for BF3 the physx engine is smoking so even 1 560 and 1 physx card will be noticable improvement on average.

Over at my buddies house who runs 2x580's and 1 550ti for Physx the game is running beautifully well as beautiful as the buggy beta allows.

[Wries]

Wow now does support multi-GPU. However, you would gain litterally zero benefit from the upgrade in Wow (in 25man raiding) and SC2.

Though outdoors in open world WoW GPU usage on ultra is enough to saturate an entire 460 for me, limiting me to as low numbers as 45! (omgz!) FPS in uldum on 1920x1080. In SLI I get 85 (though I normally run maxfps 60 ofc) iirc.

[BicycleMafioso]

Though outdoors in open world WoW GPU usage on ultra is enough to saturate an entire 460 for me, limiting me to as low numbers as 45! (omgz!) FPS in uldum on 1920x1080. In SLI I get 85 (though I normally run maxfps 60 ofc) iirc.

I believe when I ran a GTX460, that Twilight Highlands (only near purple smoke constantly got me down to the thirties. Uldum could've dropped me down to <50 as you suggest; I'm not sure. I wouldn't say either is unplayable, or reason for SLI.
However, a valid point and I concede. But I still don't consider it an argument in favour of SLI in Wow.

[t3custompcs]

I suggest you do an SLI, you'll get higher fps and it would be cheaper.
Just make sure your PSU is good enough