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disolitude on 05 January 2014
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JEMC said:
disolitude said:
JEMC said:
gigantor21 said:

Plus for me personally, I'd rather have a more stable, less power hungry single GPU set up.

This!

Going with a single card will always bring less troubles that going SLI/Xfire.

To be honest I don't think this is true anymore. Well from the Nvidia side at least... All the major releases get driver updates and SLI profiles and the games that don't get them don't really need them to begin with as they tend to be lower specd games.

As a user of GTX 260 SLI --> GTX 470 SLI--> GTX 580 SLI --> GTX 670 SLI --> GTX 770 SLI it's been a really interesting perspective to see the improvements made first hand over these GPU generations. Only issues I had was a brief stint with 7950 Crossfire with frame stuttering but apparently AMD fixed that too with 13.8 drivers. 

While I wouldn't go more thatn 2X SLI, these dual GPU cards are a god send for mITX builds which are a must for someone like me who lives in a downtown condo and needs PC gaming to blend in to a modern lifestyle, and not take over half a room.

I know things have improved and that the number of games with problems at launch are fewer than before, but there are still other factors like power consumption and heat that make going single card a lot easier.

Last Nvidia card that had these issues was GTX 590. 40 nm dual GPUs do consume more power and generate a lot fo heat.

But look at the GTX 690 or the GTX 760 Mars. For perspective, with its Nvidia reference cooler, during heavy load GTX 690 draws about the same amount of power as gtx 580 and is quieter with lower temperatures to boot. With 20nm GPUs around the corner, the next (possibly next next if this thing comes out) set of dual GPU cards should be equal to todays flaghsips in terms of power consumption.

On the AMD side...no comment. lol

Side note - Those who want to be ubber badass and utilize watercooling, GPU watercooling is the last fronteer where water actually makes a difference. Unless you count the AMD FX 9590 that is, but why would you...lol

Ivy bridge and Haswell overclock exactly the same no matter if you keep it at 40 degrees or 60 degrees where GTX 780 Ti can reach 80% higher frequency if you know what youre doing and you cool it prooperly with water.