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    What are the benefits of Crossfire/SLi apart from higher gaming FPS and bragging rights?

    Discussion in 'Alienware 17 and M17x' started by vads24, Mar 27, 2011.

  1. vads24

    vads24 Notebook Evangelist

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    I would like your views on the other benefits of dual gpu setup as in Crossfire or SLI in terms of

    Video Editing,

    Photo Editing,

    High Definition Video Playback,

    WebPage Rendering which uses WebM etc for video playback

    and anything else that might give a good insight on this setup.

    IS CROSSFIRE EXCLUSIVELY FOR GAMING BENEFITS?
     
    vads24, Mar 27, 2011
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  2. Necrotopsy

    Necrotopsy Notebook Consultant

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    pretty sure the tech you want to use has to be multi gpu capable, which as far as i know only games have that.
     
    Necrotopsy, Mar 27, 2011
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  3. nzgeek

    nzgeek Notebook Evangelist

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    Crossfire/SLI is pretty much a gaming thing. There may be a few pieces of high-end software (e.g. CAD programs or hardware-accelerated video encoders) that might make use of more than 1 graphics card to do their job, but that list will be tiny.

    The only reason to use more than 1 graphics card is if you're doing something that pushes a single card to its limits. Most of the tasks the OP has listed are CPU-intensive, not GPU-intensive. Even decoding a 1080p HD is a breeze for modern video cards.

    Aside from the aforementioned CAD programs and video encoders, the only thing that regularly pushes video cards to their limits is gaming. (I won't list the reasons - they're fairly obvious.)
     
    nzgeek, Mar 27, 2011
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