| Captain_Tom said: P.S. disolitude I pretty much agree with everything you said except for the 4GB 680 and 3GB 660Ti. Those cards don't have the bandwidth to support that much RAM. In fact benchmarks have shown their performance (Even in SLI) falls off a cliff after 2 GB. Hell the 7970 GHz has the same problem after 4GB so it is just a fact that cards are built to handle the amount of RAM Nvidia/AMD mean for them to have. |
Toms Hardware ran a pretty cool article showcasing tri GTX 660 Ti vs 2way 4GB 680 sli.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-680-geforce-gtx-660-ti-sli,3429.html
You're right about the memory bandwith being limited, especially for the 192 bit GTX 660 ti, but its still workable. Games like F1 on Ultra with everything max absolutely hammer the 660 Ti setup in 5760x1080, but that's probably because the 2 GB memory limit. Look at the single 2GB 680 take a similar performance dive compared to the 4 Gb versions.
I'm not saying that bandwith doesn't play a part in this but the performance loss is probably 20% bandwith limitation and 80% memory limit.
Most of the high end games use between 2-3GB VRAM maxed and if you absolutely need to max everything out, you will need 3GB of memory.
So to conclude, as long as you don't mind lowering to 2X or 4X MSAA and 4XAF, the tri gtx 660 Ti sli setup works for now and the near forseeable future. But you absolutely need 3GB of VRAM if you don't want to see sudden performance dives...
