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One Card is Not Better Than Two

Man of Honour
Joined
13 Oct 2006
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90,824
Theres no hard and fast rule either way, a single fastest card is the most ideal situation tho.

When the 280GTX/285GTX came out 8800GT SLI gave better performance for less than half the price - unless you tried to play at very high resolution - it did me well at 1440x and 1680x res - but when I moved to 2048x a single 260GTX with the extra VRAM was better - until games started pushing the power of it and then the only solution that made sense was 260GTX SLI - nothing else gave the right combination of price and performance... until the 5870 came out - but theres no point me doing a side grade to that... but now again the single card is better for this situation.
 
Soldato
OP
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7 Sep 2009
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4,229
Location
Cheshire
^

Well you're right obviously in order for this to work you'd have to be using mid-range cards otherwise it's going to cost you far more.

But as you said, you don't need to crossfire/SLI top end cards because nothing needs it.
 
Man of Honour
Joined
13 Oct 2006
Posts
90,824
Dunno about that... theres some games that I'd like to play online with max quality settings and get a constant 100+fps - there isn't a single card that can do that.
 
Man of Honour
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90,824
There are a number of reasons to be running 100+fps when playing online even with a 60hz panel...

Certain fps numbers (above 60) reduce the amount of perceived onscreen tearing with vsync disabled.

A lot of games are more responsive at 100+fps to control input, etc. or it works best with other combinations of settings such as packet rate.

A few games i.e. those based on the idtech3 engine have optimal physics calculations when using certain framerates such as 125fps.
 
Soldato
Joined
4 Aug 2008
Posts
4,936
Location
Manchester.
There are a number of reasons to be running 100+fps when playing online even with a 60hz panel...

Certain fps numbers (above 60) reduce the amount of perceived onscreen tearing with vsync disabled.

A lot of games are more responsive at 100+fps to control input, etc. or it works best with other combinations of settings such as packet rate.

A few games i.e. those based on the idtech3 engine have optimal physics calculations when using certain framerates such as 125fps.

You are correct but isn't that the Quake 3 engine? lol

Can't see many modern engines having that problem or modern cards having a problem with running that engine at over 60fps.
 
Soldato
Joined
16 Dec 2008
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4,045
Location
Lincolnshire
ive run crossfire for a bit but to be honest im looking at going for a single 5870( if nv dont get something out soon) got sick of some problems that come up with crossfire, it dont allways work perfect you know
 
Associate
Joined
30 Sep 2005
Posts
144
I think crossfire makes more sense this generation, because the 5850, and the 5870 especially - don't represent great value for money, compared to the 4xxx series at least. Last time around, if you had a 3870 you could pick up another one for £100, or buy a 4850 for £150 and get similar performance, so you were only paying a £50 premium for not having to deal with the hassles of crossfire. Or you could pay an extra £50 and get more performance, with the 4870.

Now though, you're talking about paying £200 for less performance, or £300 for the same performance, compared to a crossfired 4870 setup. If the 5870 was selling for £150, would you have made this thread? ;) Though, this time around ATI's GPU is much larger, so they can't make that happen, unfortunately.

Nevertheless, the one thing that worries me about crossfire setups is noise. I could theoretically buy another 5850 sometime down the road but I don't want my system any louder than it is currently, so probably single GPU will be the way to go again.
 
Man of Honour
Joined
13 Oct 2006
Posts
90,824
Quake 3 engine is just one that has sensitivity to framerates - there are others where things like packet flow or control input works better with certain framerate combinations - quite a few have much higher input resolution with 100fps rather than 60.

You'd be suprised how many games still use idtech3 - even some of the latest graphically rich titles - as well - some of them have fixed physics and some don't but even the ones with fixed physics tend to work better with 100+ fps. Infact I know of atleast 2 major up and coming titles that use it.
 
Associate
Joined
30 Sep 2005
Posts
144
You'd be suprised how many games still use idtech3 - even some of the latest graphically rich titles - as well - some of them have fixed physics and some don't but even the ones with fixed physics tend to work better with 100+ fps. Infact I know of atleast 2 major up and coming titles that use it.
Which graphically rich titles would those be?
 
Associate
Joined
30 Sep 2005
Posts
144
COD4: Modern Warfare 2 for one.
They ditched the Quake 3 engine with CoD2, and have been using their own proprietary engine since.

"According to Infinity Ward, Call of Duty 2 is using all-new tech for the sequel, including a proprietary graphics engine to replace the Quake 3-powered system from before. "[We're] not using anything from Call of Duty 1," claims Collier, but even though the game clearly looks sharper than the original, there's a familiarity to the characters and weapons, as if seeing the original game suddenly converted to HDTV."

http://uk.pc.gamespy.com/pc/call-of-duty-2/613643p3.html

"Although the original game in the series ran off the id Tech 3 engine, for the highly regarded Call of Duty 2 the developer built its own in-house middleware which, until recently, had no official name. When questioned at E3 this year, however, we were told by an Infinity Ward rep that the upcoming Modern Warfare 2 would be running on the IW 4.0 engine, a generation beyond what we saw in the so-spectacular-it-hasn't-aged-a-bit Call of Duty 4, released in 2007".

http://uk.xbox360.ign.com/articles/100/1003728p2.html
 
Man of Honour
Joined
13 Oct 2006
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90,824
Trust me... COD4 and MW2 very much use idtech3 - the renderer has been ported to directx and theres other major improvements - but underneath the skin its very much still idtech3.
 
Caporegime
Joined
18 Sep 2009
Posts
30,097
Location
Dormanstown.
This is flawed...

Sell the old 4870 for 60 quid, 240 more for a 5870.

spend another 100 on a 4870, you've saved, 140 quid.. Um no wait you haven't..

Power draw, the 5870 will pay for itself.

OP = Owned.

Medal pl0x
 
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