With the impending deployment of a new calendar (why, hello Miss January), a young gamer's fancy turns lightly to thoughts of higher resolutions, better anti-aliasing levels, and new DX10.1 effects. But something is knocking the luster off the lust faster than dropping Aunt Edna's fruitcake in your lap. Jacking up a single setting is dropping your framerate to a crawl, even with the latest drivers hot off ATI or Nvidia's server.
You've got multiple CPU cores and a fistful of dollarsRAM, and things still aren't remaining as smooth and speedy as you'd like? In short, is stuffing another video card in your box the way to achieve Nirvana? Chances are, if you're already sporting a rig with the aforementioned goodies, a multi-GPU setup is about the only way to get a performance bump. The question becomes, is throwing another couple hundred dollars at the problem worth it?
Short Answer: Depending on whether the game you're looking to boost has been written (or patched) to play well in a multi-GPU environment, hell yeah. If it hasn't, these obviously aren't the droids you're looking for, and going with a more potent single-card solution is the upgrade path for you to consider.
Long Answer: If you've got a more modest video card (say, anything from a 192-core GTX260 or 4850 on down, and especially folks currently running from the 9xxx/8xxx series) and a tighter budget, this might be the right upgrade path to pursue. You can get your hands on last-gen video hardware without incurring a tremendous price premium. If you're already sporting a Radeon 4870 or GTX 280 (or are one of the fortunate folks with an X2 variant from either manufacturer... or are already queueing up to get your hands on a GTX295, which is rumored to be due out for CES2009 in January), snagging a second one isn't exactly a cheap proposition, and you're liable to run up against limitations of the CPU variety a lot quicker.
Certain titles are approaching 100% scaling across the second GPU, though efficiency on the third GPU drops off somewhat. This isn't necessarily the fault of the video subsystem; it's going to take a hell of a lot of CPU horsepower to keep up with that much graphics processing oomph, so even an overclocked C2D at 3.5GHz+ might have its hands full.
As with everything that costs money to gain performance, balance your needs, desires, and budget to come up with the answer that's right for your system. And, of course, Don't Be That Guy -- the one who shells out for a second video card, pops the case open to install it, and only then realizes that there's just one PCI-E slot on his motherboard.
Pop Quiz Answers from last week:
Rafe Brox spends his days wielding a phone in one hand and a screwdriver in the other. When not causing friends and enemies alike to /facepalm electronically, he can be found extolling the virtues of the weird peripherals in his life, from kettlebells to the Trackman Marble. If you also share an unhealthy passion for PC hardware or know a good place he can get help for this addiction, the target coordinates are rafe.brox AT weblogsinc DOT com.
Long Answer: If you've got a more modest video card (say, anything from a 192-core GTX260 or 4850 on down, and especially folks currently running from the 9xxx/8xxx series) and a tighter budget, this might be the right upgrade path to pursue. You can get your hands on last-gen video hardware without incurring a tremendous price premium. If you're already sporting a Radeon 4870 or GTX 280 (or are one of the fortunate folks with an X2 variant from either manufacturer... or are already queueing up to get your hands on a GTX295, which is rumored to be due out for CES2009 in January), snagging a second one isn't exactly a cheap proposition, and you're liable to run up against limitations of the CPU variety a lot quicker.
Certain titles are approaching 100% scaling across the second GPU, though efficiency on the third GPU drops off somewhat. This isn't necessarily the fault of the video subsystem; it's going to take a hell of a lot of CPU horsepower to keep up with that much graphics processing oomph, so even an overclocked C2D at 3.5GHz+ might have its hands full.
As with everything that costs money to gain performance, balance your needs, desires, and budget to come up with the answer that's right for your system. And, of course, Don't Be That Guy -- the one who shells out for a second video card, pops the case open to install it, and only then realizes that there's just one PCI-E slot on his motherboard.
Pop Quiz Answers from last week:
- The Matrix (bastardized paraphrased)
- Flash Gordon
- The Jetsons
- Invader Zim
- Spaceballs
Rafe Brox spends his days wielding a phone in one hand and a screwdriver in the other. When not causing friends and enemies alike to /facepalm electronically, he can be found extolling the virtues of the weird peripherals in his life, from kettlebells to the Trackman Marble. If you also share an unhealthy passion for PC hardware or know a good place he can get help for this addiction, the target coordinates are rafe.brox AT weblogsinc DOT com.
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Yeah I'm going to come right out and comment- I hardly know what you're talking about. I want to... but I just don't. I'm learning about computers still.
Still- I'm going to assume if you want to get a nice SLi/Crossfire system going- you're going to have to start off with a nice mobo (which I'm in the search for)... any recommendations for that?Posted at 9:13AM on Dec 12th 2008 by ZaxCG2