Windows 7 - New Card Advice - One or two?

**UKMedia** · 09-21-2009

Hi

I think my old graphics card has died and so I'm looking to replace it with another NVidia card.

My question is; should i get 1x 295 or 2x 275's and SLi them together? I have only ever had one card before and so don't really know the benefits of having 2

(I play games on this PC mainly)

UKMedia

**jfar** · 09-21-2009

Hi, A lot of people seem to be having problems, with having two cards on their machines, with nVidia. I have two cards on my machine that are ATI cards, and I have no problems with them in Crossfire.

**chrisf8657** · 09-21-2009

Don't know why JFar is having problems, but I have 2 Nvidia 280 GTX cards in my machine, both work Flawlessly and had them on Vista, and now Windows 7.

2 cards can increase performance anywhere from 0 - 200% - it depends on the game. Almost all modern games support SLI, and NVidia adds new profiles to the driver all the time to increase performance for 2 cards with games. General performance increase is 40-90% over 1 card from what i've seen. NVidia will give you similar numbers.

My advice:
If you play extremely graphic intensive games (Crysis, etc.), 2 cards will benefit you immensly - if you play general things like Chess built into Windows 7, etc., it will not.

I suggest you post your system specs and the games you play.

**smarteyeball** · 09-21-2009

Benfits:

On games that support them, the performance difference is awesome. Two 275 SLI will be faster than one 295. However on games that have little to no multi card support, the performance gain is largely, if not, neglible. In rare cases two cards can actually hurt performance.

Negatives:

Graphial glitches. Games and drivers aren't perfect. Neither is the support. The majoritty of the time they are just little nusiances, at worse extremely annoying.

Motherborad bandwidth:

Is your board a 35/45/ or 38/48 ? A single 295 will run at x16 while two 275's may run at x8/x8. However it's debatable if there is any noticeable difference.

Your PSU:

Check your PSU can handle either a singe 295 or two 275's to begin with.

**UKMedia** · 09-21-2009

Quote: Originally Posted by chrisf8657

Don't know why JFar is having problems, but I have 2 Nvidia 280 GTX cards in my machine, both work Flawlessly and had them on Vista, and now Windows 7.

2 cards can increase performance anywhere from 0 - 200% - it depends on the game. Almost all modern games support SLI, and NVidia adds new profiles to the driver all the time to increase performance for 2 cards with games. General performance increase is 40-90% over 1 card from what i've seen. NVidia will give you similar numbers.

My advice:
If you play extremely graphic intensive games (Crysis, etc.), 2 cards will benefit you immensly - if you play general things like Chess built into Windows 7, etc., it will not.

I suggest you post your system specs and the games you play.

I mainly play BattleField 2142 and have populated my system specs.

**UKMedia** · 09-21-2009

Quote: Originally Posted by smarteyeball

Benfits:

On games that support them, the performance difference is awesome. Two 275 SLI will be faster than one 295. However on games that have little to no multi card support, the performance gain is largely, if not, neglible. In rare cases two cards can actually hurt performance.

Negatives:

Graphial glitches. Games and drivers aren't perfect. Neither is the support. The majoritty of the time they are just little nusiances, at worse extremely annoying.

Motherborad bandwidth:

Is your board a 35/45/ or 38/48 ? A single 295 will run at x16 while two 275's may run at x8/x8. However it's debatable if there is any noticeable difference.

Your PSU:

Check your PSU can handle either a singe 295 or two 275's to begin with.

I have an 1100 watt PSU, so either option should be okay??

How can I tell the motherboard bandwidth for a ASUS Striker II Extreme? Are there variations?

**jfar** · 09-21-2009

Quote: Originally Posted by chrisf8657

Don't know why JFar is having problems, but I have 2 Nvidia 280 GTX cards in my machine, both work Flawlessly and had them on Vista, and now Windows 7.

2 cards can increase performance anywhere from 0 - 200% - it depends on the game. Almost all modern games support SLI, and NVidia adds new profiles to the driver all the time to increase performance for 2 cards with games. General performance increase is 40-90% over 1 card from what i've seen. NVidia will give you similar numbers.

My advice:
If you play extremely graphic intensive games (Crysis, etc.), 2 cards will benefit you immensly - if you play general things like Chess built into Windows 7, etc., it will not.

I suggest you post your system specs and the games you play.

Who is having problems?

**MaDDN3ss** · 09-21-2009

Quote: Originally Posted by jfar

Who is having problems?

There seems to be a lot of people having SLI issues with Windows 7. I know thefabe is having issues as he seems to post in every SLI post there is.

Perhaps chrisf8657 can help him with his SLI issues.

I as well would be interested as I am about to go SLI with two 9800GT's

**UKMedia** · 09-22-2009

Okay, thanks for all the comments. I've just ordered 2x BFG GTX 285's with 2048Mb - just haven't got around to telling my wife yet

I'll let you know how things go with the SLi

Regards
UKMedia

**MaDDN3ss** · 09-22-2009

Quote: Originally Posted by UKMedia

Okay, thanks for all the comments. I've just ordered 2x BFG GTX 285's with 2048Mb - just haven't got around to telling my wife yet

I'll let you know how things go with the SLi

Regards
UKMedia

If your wife is like mine, you should tell us how things go with the wife, that would be pure entertainment.