Does Two Graphics card really make a difference?

T

Tappys

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I have an Sapphire Radeon HD 6870 1gb and im looking to get another one and put them into crossfire. I was asking around and some people were saying its not necessary to do that b/c "it will only make like a 10 fps difference". Is this true? I would think it would almost double the fps but im not good at computer stuff so i couldnt really know that much.

Thanks for the help
-Tappy
 
Tappy said:
I have an Sapphire Radeon HD 6870 1gb and im looking to get another one and put them into crossfire. I was asking around and some people were saying its not necessary to do that b/c "it will only make like a 10 fps difference". Is this true? I would think it would almost double the fps but im not good at computer stuff so i couldnt really know that much.

Thanks for the help
-Tappy
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If you are gaming at a high resolution (1920x1080 or higher), and have the cpu to back those cards up, you can get almost 100% scaling (double the framerate) depending on the game title. This generation of GPUs scale incredibly well in both SLI/CF. I see double the framerate in plenty of games when comparing 2x 6950's to 1x. Due note that both crossfire and sli increase your cpu overhead and only function in fullscreen mode. If you happen to be sitting on a socket 755 core2quad or core2duo chip at < 4GHz I would recommend changing platforms before considering a crossfire/sli setup.
 
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whoever told you you only get 10FPS more probably played at 6 FPS before.....

Scaling is pretty good now a days.
 
If you have a good CPU, usually scaling is roughly 70-95% going from 1 to 2 cards. Certain games won't yield any difference, but most of the time, framerates will icnrease dramatically going from 1 to 2 cards, especially when you're talking about the 6870's.
 
If you have the money go for it, but PC gaming is so bottlenecked by consoles that nothing really needs two cards right now unless you're just going for bragging rights.

I'm only running a 260 and I can run anything on max fine. I have the capability to do triple SLI, but why bother.
 
Yeah, 2 Cards are awesome, I have 2x 5850's and they run incredibly well, many of the newer games work well with crossfire, but there are a few that doesn't support it, or it doesn't improve (some may have negative effect) but you can turn one of your cards off without even having to shut down your computer.
 
Vorsai said:
If you have the money go for it, but PC gaming is so bottlenecked by consoles that nothing really needs two cards right now unless you're just going for bragging rights.
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Uhhh.. what? I think what you're trying to say that there's not a lot of games out there that would require two top-of-the-line GPUs to run, but that's always a rarity, and depends on a person's setup. If you're running two older cards with a modern, fast CPU, on a new game, yeah, that's an instance where a single GPU may not cut it and the 2nd one is then needed.

If you require two top-of-the-line GPUs to run a game at all, that's always a case of bragging rights. Situation requiring SLI/CF GPUs to run a modern game (BF3 for ex), running 3x30 in LCD monitors. That much screen real estate will require a lot of GPU power. I think it was maybe Reflex or Phobus that was talking about their system with that many monitors.
 
Snipeye said:
Uhhh.. what? I think what you're trying to say that there's not a lot of games out there that would require two top-of-the-line GPUs to run, but that's always a rarity, and depends on a person's setup. If you're running two older cards with a modern, fast CPU, on a new game, yeah, that's an instance where a single GPU may not cut it and the 2nd one is then needed.

If you require two top-of-the-line GPUs to run a game at all, that's always a case of bragging rights. Situation requiring SLI/CF GPUs to run a modern game (BF3 for ex), running 3x30 in LCD monitors. That much screen real estate will require a lot of GPU power. I think it was maybe Reflex or Phobus that was talking about their system with that many monitors.
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maybe me ;)
 
Snipeye said:
Uhhh.. what? I think what you're trying to say that there's not a lot of games out there that would require two top-of-the-line GPUs to run, but that's always a rarity, and depends on a person's setup. If you're running two older cards with a modern, fast CPU, on a new game, yeah, that's an instance where a single GPU may not cut it and the 2nd one is then needed.

If you require two top-of-the-line GPUs to run a game at all, that's always a case of bragging rights. Situation requiring SLI/CF GPUs to run a modern game (BF3 for ex), running 3x30 in LCD monitors. That much screen real estate will require a lot of GPU power. I think it was maybe Reflex or Phobus that was talking about their system with that many monitors.
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Yeah, I didn't have much sleep when I typed that out. I was speaking more of single screen with a somewhat newer GPU.

The OP didn't really state his setup, just that he already has a good card, so that's what I was basing my comment off of.

Apologies for being presumptuous I suppose.
 
Yea i have a amd phenom II x6 1090T which is one step down from top of the line. So you think getting a second card would be worth it? i do have the money and i always like the idea of having braging right :)
 
I have 3 monitors......

requires a ton of GPU power to push that resolution
 
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