Does SLI Matter?

Tom’s Hardware Guide Graphics Cards: VGA Charts V: PCI Express Graphics Cards – Farcry. First benchmarks I’ve seen that compare SLI and regular PCI Express/AGP (btw, a single graphics card is not faster under PCI Express, so the only reason to get it is for future card upgrades).
Here are the results pushing the cards hard at 1600×1200, 4xAA, 4xAF, very high quality, 32bit:
| Card | Farcry (fps) |
| GeForce 6800GT SLI | 53.9 |
| Radeon X800 XT | 36.0 |
| GeForce 6800GT | 30.4 |
| GeForce 6600GT SLI | 29.5 |
| Radeon X800 XL | 29.0 |
| Radeon X700 XT | 18.5 |
| GeForce 6600 GT | 17.1 |
| GeForce 6200 | 6.3 |
| Radeo X600 Pro | 5.2 |
| GeForce 5900 | 0.1 |
So you can see that SLI really does work in that it close to double performance. It makes a pair of 6600GTs ($180 each) about equal to a 6800GT ($380), so that’s fine it you get another card later that is say $50.
Or, if you are power geek, get $880 worth of 6800GTs now and beat out the $600 6800 Ultra.

One response to “Does SLI Matter?”

  1. Ohmster Avatar

    Just got a Velocity Micro SLI rig, but haven’t gotten a monitor yet…none of the LCDs out there, of any size, seem to do it justice, especially on games, and not sure if I want to go back to “Old” technology, CRTs for this card. Curious what type of screen you went in for and found got most out of the SLI setup.
    thanks.

I’m Rich & Co.

Welcome to Tongfamily, our cozy corner of the internet dedicated to all things technology and interesting. Here, we invite you to join us on a journey of tips, tricks, and traps. Let’s get geeky!

Let’s connect