HAHA. The performance difference between Ivy Bridge and Sandy Bridge is extremely small and it makes no sense to upgrade to the next generation if you already have a Sandy Bridge. He said he doesn’t want to overclock so a 2500K is already useless for him. SLI is really worth nothing and has no gain to the user other than to say “HEY LOOK Guys I have 2 grafisk carsdds”.
you obviously have NO idea what you’re talking about at ALL. SLI has shown that in some games they come very close to almost double the performance (90 percent) and most games are around 60-70 percent performance increase. I can easily tell the difference in Skyrim and Diablo 3 when my SLI gets disabled. When they discontinued the GTX470 I picked up the last EVGA with lifetime warranty newegg had. No problem playing games of today. When the prices come down I’ll purchase a GTX670 or 680. But SLI works. FACT! It’s a cheap way to limp your way to the next generations of cards since they do a new processor every other generation. So buy a 670 now. Buy a 2nd one when the 700 series hit the market since it will be a minor update to the Kepler and that will hold you over till the 800 series come out which will be a whole new chip.
I will agree that Ivy Bridge is not that big of a performance increase right now. The only reason is because windows and games are not programed to take advantage of that many cores. Windows 8 will take advantage of more than 4 cores but windows 7 will not. And I don’t expect games to use more than 4 cores for a while. AMD has had 6 core processors for a few years now and they are about worthless.
SLI:
microstuttering, higher temperatures, high power consumption, lower lifetime, extremely expensive, more noise, graphics card idle over 90% of the time.
It’s only useful if you have multiple monitors and a resolution way higher than normal FullHD.
700 series? Are you stupid? The time when 700 series comes out buying a second 670 is the dumbest thing you can do. There will be graphis card way more efficient than two 670. SLI is the worst way to spend your money and it’s not worth it. 60-70 percent is a fucking joke.
The mobo is not as important as the cpu and gpu. The features may be important to you in certain situations. I just forked out a little extra for Ivy Bridge support, USB 3 and PCIe 3. But a more expensive motherboard won’t suddenly make the pc much faster. It generally doesn’t matter if you aren’t bothered about features.
But a micro ATX board is a pain in the arse to fiddle about with.
That’s only true if you are at the high end. If you bought a mid range or low end card sticking another one in can really help and be a cheap as chips upgrade.
Why do people who have no idea what the fuck they are talking about, insist on giving advice? Sorry bro, your far from correct. Heres a breakdown of everything he listed for those interested in actually learning something about SLI:
“microstuttering” - Never had this issue at all with my setup, but due to the nature of why this happens, it’s not completely avoidable. However this depends vastly on which cards you have as well as which manufacturer you go with. This is negligible, and happens so infrequently, that it’s almost laughable that you included this as an argument.
“higher temperatures” - Higher temperatures do occur because the two cards are physically next to each other, but overall is very minimal in my SLI rig. With one card you’d see about a 5-10 Celsius decrease in temperature compared to two. Of course this depends on the card combination, airflow, etc… But that is mainly just at idle, once your in game and benefiting from the load balancing that SLI or Crossfire has, you should see lower temps than you did with just one card. At least, this is true in my setup.
“high power consumption” - Yup, you got this one.
“lower lifetime” - At this one i had to say something. Depending on which manufacturer you decide to go with, will depend on how the SLI or Crossfire will perform. However, the cards work by effectively transferring 50% of the load at any given time to the other card in the setup, which increases performance, and decreases wear as one card isn’t getting maxed out. So no, your wrong, this actually improves the life span of your cards, if you run them in an SLI or Crossfire setup, AS WELL as lowers temperatures because the load is equally distributed between the cards.
“extremely expensive” - Nope. In fact, because it’s cheaper than buying a single high end card, and i can get better performance, as well as longer life is why i did it in the first place.
“more noise” - Yes you will hear a whole one more fan as apposed to just one (depending on the card). Not that big of a deal, and not in any way more noticeable or annoying, except for your post.
“graphics card idle over 90% of the time” - What? I don’t even know what to say here.
“It’s only useful if you have multiple monitors and a resolution way higher than normal FullHD” - It’s useful to everyone thats not a motherfucking idiot, and could use the performance increase the setup offers, as well as the obvious monetary benefit for anyone that would rather get two mid-end cards that can get better performance than a single high-end card for much less money.
“700 series? Are you stupid? The time when 700 series comes out buying a second 670 is the dumbest thing you can do. There will be graphis card way more efficient than two 670. SLI is the worst way to spend your money and it’s not worth it. 60-70 percent is a fucking joke” - I think we all want to ask here: Are you fucking stupid? When the 700 series comes out, sure you will git a tiny bit more performance compared to the 670, you might even get better power management. But you have to be kidding me. You are saying that the 700 series is a more viable alterative than SLI or Crossfire when it comes out because it’s newer, and therefore should be better right? That’s usually not the case, and most of NVidia’s cards from series to series are the exact same board, with the exact same chipset only revised and slightly improved upon to market as a new card. However this is only true usually for the first couple releases of a new series (600 or 700…). Point is, how the fuck is it a better idea to wait for the 700 series and potentially spend upwards of a thousand dollars for a single card, when i can get that same performance from an SLI setup and for 2/3 the cost. If we in the computer industry lived life by your theory of: “everything will always be inefficient to the newer version that has a higher number and will be potentially better than the previous one” then we would all be in debt. You have no argument.
I just took a metaphorical dump on your chest.
You have no argument in point 1 and can’t deny that it doesn’t happen. You base your facts on your own empirically gathered experience which has no weight at all.
You contradict yourself in point 2 and 4. You are generalizing your own experience again. Graphics card do not work at 50% when they work together. Using basic math two cards would run at the same perfomance of one card if they would only use 50%. You are confusing this with the cpu performance stat of the task manager which always shows.
Point 5, goddamnit do some basic math.
Point 6, you accept my point again and get angry about it and post irrational shit.
Point 7, you don’t even understand what I wrote. 2 gpus in idle use up more power than one in idle, just an addition to point 3
Point 8, Performance here Performance there. This is just another way to ensure your ego that you are the best among the graphics penis size race. If you already have lots of performance and can run lots of games with over 60fps then SLI only makes sense if you want to use heavy graphical improvements as SSAA or Downsampling or graphic mods. We are not talking of mid end cards here. Both 570 and 670 are high end cards that offer lots of performance that is enough for everything in normal conditions. Buying two midrange cards like the GTS450 would be extremely stupid. You would get what? The performance of a single Gtx580 with all the disadvantages of SLI.
Point 9, I am not saying you should wait. I am just saying that upgrading to SLI when the newer generation gets released is not very efficient and even worse than buying a new gpu. You just spend a lot of money to get what exactly?
You are the one who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I follow the shitrace between every graphicscard out there on technically based tests and know my stuff.
I also gained the experience that SLI users are actively encouraging themselfs and therefor blocking the facts out that SLI/CF is such a big improvement although they won’t feel any difference while playing games. I know the disappointment when you buy a new gpu and test it out but it feels just the same. lame.
You just put some shit on my chest.
Regarding the Sli debate here, I have to agree with King_Kaddo - soz
Not saying Sli is rubbish or anything, it certainly does have its advantages and considering how is ‘used’ to be, its come along way.
A single graphics card will always be the better option (in most cases).
However, at the end of the day a personal computer is just that, you can do what ever you like. If users enjoy having sli and think its a better option for them, thats cool. At least we have more options open to us then Apple.
(Sorry had to have a little dig at Apple then as I work on them all day and lately they have really been doing my head in smacks head against desk)
Hope the OP is pleased with their setup once completed. It certainly sounds like he is on the right track!
I think there is some really good advice here 