Any Significant SLI Improvements in Vista yet?

[DRen72]

I've looked at literally all the driver threads here and there are a few comments about SLI in Vista with some games, but overall what are everyones thoughts or findings regarding SLI in Vista these days? Some of my personal questions lately are:


I have an AMD 4800X2. Would a 2nd GTX improve things much with the latest drivers?
Suppose I'm running a new E6850 next month with one GTX. Will adding a second GTX see a big improvement?

[jcrox]

I have an AMD 4800X2. Would a 2nd GTX improve things much with the latest drivers?
Suppose I'm running a new E6850 next month with one GTX. Will adding a second GTX see a big improvement?



Your 4800 (even over-clocked) likely can't come close to keeping up with a single GTX... the 6000+ was about a perfect match for my 640MB GTS I would think a 4800 would be a bit of a bottle neck for a single GTX and just overall a major handicap for 2 of them. 2 would likely be overkill unless your plan is to upgrade to a quad core in the near future.

A 2nd GTX with the E6850 would show an improvement over a single but, you'll still need to over-clock the heck out of the E6850 and even then I'm not sure the processor would be keeping up with 2 of those monsters... would be one heck of a system though.

[ragingWS6]

I started my system out with a single 8800GTX with my E6600 at 2.4GHZ. I overclocked the E6600 to 3.6GHZ and the system ran quite nicely. I purchased the 2nd because I couldn't pass up paying only $450 shipped for a 2nd GTX. But, I have seen improvements by adding the 2nd card. But NV still doesn't have scalability that ATi has with CF in Vista. I hope it gets to that point soon.

[Redeemed]

Your 4800 (even over-clocked) likely can't come close to keeping up with a single GTX... the 6000+ was about a perfect match for my 640MB GTS I would think a 4800 would be a bit of a bottle neck for a single GTX and just overall a major handicap for 2 of them. 2 would likely be overkill unless your plan is to upgrade to a quad core in the near future.

A 2nd GTX with the E6850 would show an improvement over a single but, you'll still need to over-clock the heck out of the E6850 and even then I'm not sure the processor would be keeping up with 2 of those monsters... would be one heck of a system though.

Even my Opty bottlenecking this single GTS I'm currently running. The plan was to water cool this puppy and OC it to about 3.2GHz. Even then, this Opty would probably be just perfect for a single GTS- forget SLi. :p

[DRen72]

So if I understand correctly, you guys feel that a single GTX with a CPU such as, say an E6850 on a P35 board overclocked to about 3.5GHz would probably just about match a single GTX but probably not SLI?

I'm just like most of you guys. I've got cash ready to build a new rig and want to make darn sure it can run next gen games (Crysis, GOW-PC, Bioshock, etc) on max settings at 1920x1200 at at least no less than 50fps. You guys think such a rig would do that? I'd hate to spend the cash and find it dragging in Crysis in September. Decisions...decisions.

[Buckeye]

If you can swing it get a Quad, you won't be sorry.

Like my system below I have plenty of head room for growth. I look at it like if my system can't handle the new games then the game requirements are way to stiff.

They make these game so people can play them on a wide range of systems, not just the top ends. Other wise they would lose tons of cash.

[Bokishi]

What's the status of Vista 64, SLI and 4GB RAM? I heard there was problems

[slaWter]

SLI for Vista is still nowhere near XP SLI performance. For Games in Vista I had to disable SLI all the time. I hope this will change in the future but unless we'll see official SLI support on Intel boards, SLI is no option for me.

[Redeemed]

I had nothing but problems when I was running both my GTSs in Vista. I would not go for SLi + Vista, atleast not yet.

Me, I'm keeping this rig until the Foxconn board using Intel's X38 chipset comes out. Rumor is that the board will support CrossFire and SLi, DDR2 and DDR3, and will have 6 RAM slots. I aim to purchase that board (it'll be my first Foxconn board) + a quad core and 4GB of RAM. The mobo should be out before Crysis- so this new rig will be done just in time for Crysis. I'd just use a single GTS (one in my current rig, one in my new one) untill the next batch of cards is released. Then I'd dropped two in that new rig of mine, and run both GTSs in this current rig (the one in my sig). Would make for two awesome gaming machines. :D

If you're shooting for Vista, then just get a quad core, 4GB of good RAM, and use just a single GTX. Right now SLi performance just doesn't seem to be there (compared to XP). Atleast, in my experience. ;)

[Arioch]

While performance in Vista is slower than XP for me in SLI I do notice it has gotten a lot better with the last couple drivers. The Lost Planet demo ran better for me under DX10 than it did for DX9. With the latest version the DX10 version runs even better than it did before. I do not have the full game installed on my XP partition however. Also, Call of Juarez runs about 50% faster in SLI in DX10 mode than without out. I can max out all the in game settings, including the shadow ones, and run at 1920x1200 with 16xAF/4xAA whereas I have to drop down a lot of things with a single card. This isn't the best coded engine out there but at least SLI made it playable. I think SLI performance in Vista will only get better and I can practically guarantee all the major titles, especially the ones that are coded better, will get some serious SLI love in the near future. I expect Bioshock to have a noticeable increase in performance in SLI with DX10 as opposed to a single card when it comes out in about a month.

There is a lot of speculation on how Crysis will actually run when it comes out but I expect only people with 8800GTX or Ultras in SLI with quadcores will get to run the game with it almost maxed out graphic-wise at 1920x1200 resolution with playable framerates.

[Ra_]

Actually I have 2 7900GTOs in SLi overclocked above GTX's speed (it's not as good as these SLis of yours with 8-series cards but hey... this' the best I can have right now).
With 158.45 (modified .inf) drivers and Vista Enterprise 64 I noticed a huge improvement in performances in R6Vegas and GRAW2 both at full graphics @ 1440x900 over previous sets.
I'm really happy now with SLi positive trend expecially if I think to those crappy perfs I had with 101.xx drivers and the whole number of BSODs that there were poppin' out, everytime everywhere...
To me this' the right direction.