SLI, Crossfire & STUTTER.

I'm currently using a 4 year old XPS laptop suffering from the dreaded vertical line issue. As of right now, there are are literally 21 various colored lines across my screen. With this aging laptop, I can only run Oblivion (my favorite game to date) at 852 x 480. Why? Because the 6800 Ultra overheats at 90+C when I opt for higher resolutions.

I want a notebook that can handle Oblivion, Fallout 3, Crysis, Bioshock and Far Cry series of games as well as GTA IV. The notebook I'm seriously considering right now is the Sager NP9850. However, what I want to avoid most of all is STUTTER. Even at the low resolution, and with such mods such as Streamline installed, Oblivion for me stutters like crazy. I've recently read that SLI/Crossfire notebooks sometimes induce stutter.

I'm wondering if I'm better served opting for a single card solution instead. My budget is around $2800 (US). I've also looked at the Sager NP5797 as a possible option.

I seriously do not want to spend $2800+ on the 9850 and have games stuttering on me. Can you recommend ways to avoid stutter on SLI/Crossfire systems? Or would a single GPU configuration be a better choice?

I'm obviously new to this forum so if this issue has been discussed before, please point me to the relevant threads so I could figure this out once and for all.

Thanks beforehand.

 

Hey there friend, SLI and Crossfire have come a long ways since the days of minimal performance gain and massive stuttering. I'm currently rolling 9800m gtx's in SLI, and the micro stuttering is very very minimal. For me it only happens for a couple seconds out of every hour of gameplay.

In all honesty you will experience more slow down from lack of fps due to only 1 gpu than using 2x of the new high end gpus and the very very occasional microstutter.

 

Well, that's a sigh of relief. Google search yielded threads from 1-3 years ago. Technology has advanced since then hasn't it?

Thanks for the prompt reply GamingACU.

 

Definitely. Most newer games support SLI, except some that were ported incredibly inefficiently such as GTA IV, and make very good use out of it with performance boosts from 40-100%.

 

Can't say the same for Hybird SLi.

 

I can speak for Xfire

My M17 from alienware would run Oblivion in the 100's FPS Maxed

I never experienced any kind of stuttering

I played
Fallout 3
Oblivion
L4D
Crysis
COD 4
orange Box
WoW

etc

DO NOT WORRY, your games will run amazing