If you want the absolute best PC gaming experience possible and have the money to pay for it, which dual graphics technology setup do you go with: Nvidia's SLI or ATI's Crossfire?
Many PC gamers?we would venture to say most of them?balk at the idea of spending more than $300 on a graphics card. There are a select few, though, that are willing to shell out whatever it takes to have the baddest machine on the block. This means more than $400 or even $500 for a graphics card, and then doubling that for a second one to run in dual-graphics mode. Of course, all that graphics horsepower isn't meant to sit idly by while you run games at 1280x1024 on a 19" LCD monitor. You want a big, expensive, hi-res display, to go along with it.
Nvidia's two-card tech is called SLI, ATI's is Crossfire, and neither one are cross-compatible. Each requires a motherboard with specific support for SLI/Crossfire, and nobody makes a motherboard that works with both. However, Intel 975X chipsets do support CrossFire, so you're not limited to an ATI chipset for dual-Radeon cards. Nvidia's SLI does require an Nvidia chipset, whether it's for Intel or AMD.
In other words, if you plan on putting together or buying a PC with $900+ dollars wrapped up in video cards alone and just as much money in a great monitor, you want to make the best choice. So be prepared for an increased expenditure beyond just the price of two cards. A 24-inch display, such as the Dell UltraSharp 2407WFP will set you back about $800, while the 3007WFP is close to $2K.
In our recent review of ATI's Radeon X1950 XTX card, we guessed that the greatly increased memory bandwidth provided by GDDR4 memory would perhaps make the most difference in extreme high resolution, dual-card setups, but we lacked the time to do that testing. Today, we delve into the issue. We're going to pit ATI's best dual-card configuration, the X1950 Crossfire, up against Nvidia's QuadSLI using two GeForce 7950 GX2 cards. We'll test at 1600x1200 and, using Dell's impressive UltraSharp 3007WFP, the whopping resolution of 2560x1600. Which high-end, dual card graphics configuration reigns supreme?
ExtremeTech
Nvidia's two-card tech is called SLI, ATI's is Crossfire, and neither one are cross-compatible. Each requires a motherboard with specific support for SLI/Crossfire, and nobody makes a motherboard that works with both. However, Intel 975X chipsets do support CrossFire, so you're not limited to an ATI chipset for dual-Radeon cards. Nvidia's SLI does require an Nvidia chipset, whether it's for Intel or AMD.
In other words, if you plan on putting together or buying a PC with $900+ dollars wrapped up in video cards alone and just as much money in a great monitor, you want to make the best choice. So be prepared for an increased expenditure beyond just the price of two cards. A 24-inch display, such as the Dell UltraSharp 2407WFP will set you back about $800, while the 3007WFP is close to $2K.
In our recent review of ATI's Radeon X1950 XTX card, we guessed that the greatly increased memory bandwidth provided by GDDR4 memory would perhaps make the most difference in extreme high resolution, dual-card setups, but we lacked the time to do that testing. Today, we delve into the issue. We're going to pit ATI's best dual-card configuration, the X1950 Crossfire, up against Nvidia's QuadSLI using two GeForce 7950 GX2 cards. We'll test at 1600x1200 and, using Dell's impressive UltraSharp 3007WFP, the whopping resolution of 2560x1600. Which high-end, dual card graphics configuration reigns supreme?
ExtremeTech
