Is laptop SLi really worth it?

I beg to differ, and having reviewed the SLI 9262 you should know how much SLI can do in NEW games. It`s all in the drivers,and since that review in December,many things have changed.

 

weird how u just keep SAYING this, post some benchmarks, etc, there is no proof to back up what your saying at this point.

 

well from what i've experienced is that drivers can make a difference. some drivers are optimized for games. i started testing out crysis on my machine a while back just to see the performance i can get. so i mixed and matched settings in game, then i mixed and matched drivers and settings. drivers do make a difference, sometimes it was +15 or so fps with the same settings. the stock drivers that were provided perform poorly compared to the drivers i have now. the XG drivers that i have now work better in mass effect than my previous drivers. no i am not going to install the previous ones, then bench it, then install the current ones and bench them, but i will tell you that the gameplay was much smoother and overall my fps went up throughout the game (about 5-15 in some areas). drivers can make a difference, after all, thats what SLI is about. it isn't as if one card is doing all the work. SLI is about trying to achieve the most efficient way of rendering graphics on more than one card. so drivers DO make a difference for these cards.

 

I don't have to, brainer , Magnus72, and pretty much all 9262 users have.
And I will, as soon as I get my SLI 8800M GTX rig.

 

8800GTX Sli is somewhat viable as it's the cream of mobile hardware. 8600GT Sli is pointless, as for example, a better single card solution would be the same price. Same for desktops - you'd be stupid to purchase 2x8600GT brand new - it doesn't matter a damn that the performance would be OK, it's all about price/performance ratio and value for money.

The new GTX280 for example, isn't a failure from a technical point of view. But when you bring its cost into the equation, suddenly it's a bit of a failure in a lot of peoples eyes.

It's not just about performance. Everyone knows Sli works, and works well in some cases, but is also uneconomical unless you're at the top of the pile - or boosting an existing card - which doesn't apply to laptops.

Though anyone saying that Sli is useless in general, is misguided - Sli works, and in games it supports, it works perfectly - in the past few months certain games have started to scale the full 100% with dual cards, unheard of a year or two ago.

On my desktop, Call of Duty 4 and Jericho literally doubled FPS wise.

But I don't think Chaz was saying Sli in itself was useless, just pointless when applied to mobile hardware in most cases. And that would be correct. Unless you literally don't care about money and prefer to be able to say you have 'dual cards' such as 8600gt rather then a single more powerful card....which sadly isn't the case for most of us.

I've even seen 8500GT Sli on more then one occassion on Guru3D!

 

Right,but the topic is :
IS laptop SLI really worth it?

Price-wise?depends on the deal.
Performance-wise? definitely.

 

Well I suppose anything is worth it performance wise only...

I mean if the GTX280 was 10,000 dollars it would still be the best of the best....but who'd buy it? You know?

Laptop Sli, in my opinion, is only worth it with the 8800 and high end cards. Cards like the 8700Gt Still scale OK, but are damaged by only having 256mb when the laptops they would occupy would be 1920x1200 size screens. Cards like the 8600GT are just plain poor value for money when in Sli. The 8800, on the other hand, is pushing the best even further.

In desktops, the overwhelming purpose for Sli is to be able to add a second card at a later date at a cheap price to boost your performance to match the higher end cards - and this works wonderfully. Buying 2xGPU brand new together very, very rarely works out at a good deal - and this translates the same to laptops....but people still do it.

I was using 7900GS OC Sli in my desktop recently....very disappointed with it, gaming felt like a chore trying to run anything new at decent levels at a good resolution. I can't begin to imagine what 8600MGT Sli would be like - and come on, nobody buys 8600GT SLi for anything other then gaming. Do you get what I'm saying? You're paying so much, but not getting that much in return - unless you're going high end dual card, it's just a cop out really when a single card solution is often better value and sometimes even better performing in the same price range.

 

Wouldn't there be possible issues with heat, battery life and weight? I'm asking because I really don't know what the impact of SLI is with regard to that.

 

I bought my x205 in November and at the time, there were no 8800m cards available. I like the SLi setup in this laptop because that 30-50% performance jump most games get is the difference between a very nice looking, playable game, and an ok looking playable game. Part of the reason I play PC games is for the eye candy, and the SLi setup just gives me more power to apply however I'd like: higher resolution, AA/AF, etc.

Would I advocate it over a single 8800m GTX? No. But in some cases, performance will be closer than some think. If SLi is implemented well in the 8800m GTX SLi rigs, I would spring for it if you can justify the cost, because a year from now your 2nd 8800 might give you a much needed boost to allow you to keep playing the higher end games at higher settings, much like the 7950GTX SLi rigs.

 

Heat is actually not that big issue. Both the 9262 and XPS M1730 has cooling enough to handle SLI. I max out at around 80 degrees now and that is in heavy games such as Crysis and with some undervolting to my CPU.

Example of newer games that scale really well with SLI.

Race Driver GRID, runs great without a sweat at 1920x1200 all maxed out.

STALKER scales extremely good with SLI

Lost Planet (Native SLI support in options menu)

Colin Mcrae Dirt

Mass Effect running 50-60+ fps 1920x1200 maxed out.

Crysis as heavy as it is, 1920x1200 DX10 High, definitely an FPS boost with SLI, almost double the framerate actually. Avg 33 fps here in the benchmark GPU test.

Vegas 2 (Saw en extreme boost with TweakForce´s XG 175.63 drivers, compared to my former 174.74 drivers)

Some games from my personal experince that works really well.

Oblivion maxed out 1920x1200 SLI 8xAA, 16xAF outside 50 fps in some heavy wooden areas

 

Price-wise?depends on the deal.
agree

Performance-wise? definitely.
disagree, it depends on what cards you sli.

 

Definatly!