Is SLI worth it?

I was going to get a new computer and it offers SLI, ans I was wondering if it's really worth it?

 

Computer? Or notebook?

Anyway, it strongly depends on what you want to do with it and what the rest of your setup is..

 

laptop, it's like 2 gigs of ram with a T7500 processor the SLI is 7950 GTX

 

You planning to play Oblivion maxxed out?

 

I don't play oblivion . But for games up coming like assassins creed, world in conflict, two worlds, stuff like that.

Basically what I'm asking is sohuld I get one 7950 or two

 

In that case, if you're going to play assassins creed, you're definitely going to need SLI to help you out.

 

It's that tough of a game on requirements eh?

 

If you have the money, I'd say it's worth it. It depends on the game, but SLI typically provides a 50-75% performance improvement over a single card. A setup with SLI Go 7950 GTX's is roughly equivalent to a desktop 8800 GTS - so you'll probably be able to play games like Crysis (or Assassin's Creed) at max settings, and be able to play future games quite well.

 

How well would a 8600 GT play assassins creed (on dx9)

 

Worse than the 7950GTX, imo Super high end cards in SLi and Crossfire aren't really worth it, it just costs too much but 2 medium range cards in SLi is well worth the money, I've got a friend woth 6600's in SLi and He does fine on Coh, FEAR, etc.

 

What kind of settings do you think I'd get in Crysis with a 7950GTX single?

 

medium/high settings @ 1280*1024 i think

 

you will be able to play crysis really well with one 7950gtx.

some people are saying that crysis is some unattainable game spec wise that only people with 8800's (or possibly dual 8800's) will be able to play.

do not listen to these people.

crysis is probably set up with like "low, medium, high, ultra high" where ultra high is the dx10 exclusive shader pathway. i would expect to be able to play the game with all high settings at 1280x1024, and possibly some settings lower if you go up to 1680x1050

but no one can know for sure. all im gonna say is that NOBODY is gonna make a game that the fastest graphics card (granted- notebook) isn't capable of handling very well. very few people have sli, and game dev's aren't targeting their games towards sli rigs. that just doesn't make good business sense. you will be fine with a single 7950gtx.

 

How and why did they make a game that can barely play on any graphics card?

 

they did NOT do that.

that's what i just tried to explain. my fault for not being clear.

 

Sorry, it's just, well, now that I think of it, low on Crysis is probably still very clear.

 

A. You have SLI in your siggy, so I believe you
B. What computers have 2 mid range graphics cards?

 

wait a second. you don't need to get midrange sli. that does not make sense.

if you want a gaming notebook with the latest and greatest, wait for the 8800m.

if you want a thinner and lighter notebook that can still game, get an 8600m gt

if you want a better experience than 1 x 8800m, than get two.

but one 8800 is probably going to equate the performance of two 8600m gt's in sli, for a cheaper price, with less total heat and power draw, plus you dont have to deal with sli issues - being that only games with sli profiles work with sli, and a lot of the time you will be working with only one gpu. the other big problem with sli is that you are paying 2x for hardware to get only 1.5x performance improvement. (not to mention that no one sells 8600 series cards in sli, probably for the reasons i mentioned above.)

 

Okey dokey, so SLI is pointless and I should wait until the 8800m comes out, now when is that going to happen?

Right now, it's between waiting for 8800 or buying now with a 8600 GT

 

You should recheck those numbers, SLi provides a 30% MAXIMUM increase, ranges from 10-30% increase, for x2 the price?

Worth it, IMO, no.

 

As the 7950 GTX is enough I guess I shouldn't have anything to worry about for the next 4 years (uni time) you'd say? I was thinking of getting a Rock Xtreme 770 before uni time and upgrading the MXM card a few years if need be (2-4).

 

Where are you getting those numbers? Most benchmarks for SLI do show a 50-75% increase in performance. If it was only 10-30%, I don't think anybody would buy it...

See here: The Go 7950 GTX is very similar to the 7950 GT. Some benchmarks with SLI 7950 GT:

In FEAR:
Single 7950 GT: 66 FPS
SLI 7950 GT: 119 FPS
80% performance increase

In Oblivion:
Single: 23.4 FPS
SLI: 42.6
82% performance increase

Half-Life 2: Episode 1
Single: 53.2
SLI: 95.3
79% performance increase

These numbers are very typical of an SLI setup, and this is why SLI is worth it (if you require extremely high-end performance and have the money). Sometimes there are flukes, and SLI doesn't provide much of an increase, but in the vast majority of cases SLI will give you a very substantial boost in your framerate (or at the very least, allow you to pump up the resolution/AA without much of a performance hit, or raise your minimum FPS for a smoother experience).

 

80% is around the sweet spot for SLi, some manufacturers advertise 90-100% but thats unrealistic...

 

It's most likely for games that are really old

 

With the 8800 and 7950GX2 cards in SLi you get the option for 32x Anti Aliasing...