Sli vs crossfire

[Brian114]

Hi all,

I'm planning to build a new Wndows based power PC, I just have some questions on Which graphic cards to use. I want to either use ATI HD Radeon 6870/5870 in crossfire or the Nvidia 460GTX in SLI( all 3 cards are very comparable in terms of price):
So
1) Is Crossfire architecture better than SLI on a windows based platform?
2) Is the ATI HD Radeon 5870 better/more powerful than the HD 6870?( I've read some reviews saying it actually is the case)
3) Which is one is better XFire or SLI?

Any suggestions and ideas are welcome,
Thnks

 

[Fumz]

In almost every respect the 5870 is a better card than the 6870, except for power consumption: Radeon HD 6870 Dirt 2 Performance | bit-tech.net

That said, the 5xxx is by no means power hungry.

 

[Brian114]

That's what I've read too. Now what about the GTX460? Although I think the GTX 470 is a better challenger.
Would an SLI architecture be better than a XFire one?

 

[Fumz]

Whether you run SLI or Crossfire is a matter of personal choice; they're both the same in terms of performance. That said, the problem with 2 video cards is that you never get twice the performance. To boot, not every game takes advantage of SLI/X-fire. If it were me I'd get a badass single card instead of two mediocre ones.

 

[smarteyeball]

Prior to 6xxx series, Crossfire scaling is poor and SLI is the clear winner.

Now the 6xxx series is apparently equal with SLI scaling.

 

[Brian114]

I've read somewher that the Nvidia cards were over heating when used at full power.....
Fumz got a point here, a more powerful single card would be better as I'm building from from scraps........and the price of XFire 1gig HD5870 goes well over the price of a single single 2gigs HD6970.
So now I'm thinking ATI HD6970 or Nvidia GTX 570?
Also note that in some 2/3 months I'll be a 2nd card......I do animations that's why I need to get something really powerful but still not too expensive.....
Thnks

 

[Fumz]

I've read somewher that the Nvidia cards were over heating when used at full power.....
Fumz got a point here, a more powerful single card would be better as I'm building from from scraps........and the price of XFire 1gig HD5870 goes well over the price of a single single 2gigs HD6970.
So now I'm thinking ATI HD6970 or Nvidia GTX 570?
Also note that in some 2/3 months I'll be a 2nd card......I do animations that's why I need to get something really powerful but still not too expensive.....
Thnks

The GTX 400's were reported to run hot, and relatively speaking they did; however, much of the hype was generated by guys who didn't actually own the products. The 500 series runs cooler.

I have no clue whether or not you'd see any benefit of dual cards when doing animations... but I can say that the current generation of video cards, AMD and nVidia, won't let you down no matter what you pick. I would imagine that animations, just like video editing, would benefit most from cpu strength? ... but that's just an assumption (baseless).

 

[Brian114]

Yeah, most of the reviews I read were different and some were quiet fishy.........It's nice to acctually tlak/write to people who are not actually fanboys( Those guys tend to exaggerate issues, and when I say exagerate I mean EXAGGERATE),
Anyway, beleive me, Video cards are really important while dealing with HD Videos and 3d animations......On the other hand CPU strength also is. The Pc I'll be mounting will be an i7 one, thinking of 17 950 which of course will be overclocked....
But I don't want to mess around with Graphic cards, so that's why I need a really powerful and reliable GPUs running @ normal clock speeds to omit over heating and crashes.

 

[Fumz]

lol, yeah... talking to a fanboy is a lot like talking to a stop sign.

I have a 5850 and a GTX 570... they're both very nice cards. The Radeon runs cooler, quieter and use less energy; the GTX provides greater minimum fps with anti aliasing.

I have fewer driver issues with the nVidia card than I do the AMD (that is to say I have none with the nVidia card), but really, the AMD's issues aren't anything to complain about. Every once and a while I'll have to reboot because whatever I'm looking at won't be displayed correctly, but I knew before hand that ATI is notorious for their less than stellar drivers... so, no big deal.

 

[Brian114]

Think this is point to Nvidia, cause I will not be playing games on this PC and I wont be reaching very high frame rates anyway......
Also I have a question for you Fumz, Do your ATI drivers screw up when, say, you are in the middle of some kind of work/Game or something? If that's the case am definetly going nvidia,Cause I can't afford losing 2 to 3 hours of 3D rendering because of a driver issue.

 

[Fumz]

No, like I said, I've been pretty fortunate with my ATIs. Ever conscious of ATI driver issues, I will say that I'm meticulous when installing a new set of drivers. I always run Driver Sweeper to erase all traces of the previous version before installing a new set... which is something I've never had to do with any nVidia card I've ever owned.

If I have several folders open, inevitably, one will go black. It's not a big enough problem to moan about, but it can be annoying at times. Games and apps run just fine. I have another ATI running my htpc (5450), and I've never had an issue with that rig; granted, I've only had 2 different sets of drivers installed on that machine.