Both ATI and Nvidia offer a 2-cards solutions or even more. (Up to 4 cards on some gigantic motherboards.)Lasarina wrote:Btw guys! What is the point of having 2 gfx cards?
Nvidia calls that "SLI" Scalable Link Interface http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalable_Link_Interface
ATI (AMD) calls that "Crossfire" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATI_CrossFire
In both cases, the cards AND the motherboard itself must be compatible with either SLI and/or Crossfire. (Usually with only one of the two.) It's specified somewhere. Being compatible with one of the two does NOT prevent the motherboard from working normally with ONE card of the other brand of course; it's just when you want to use two or more.
The interest is to make two cards or more calculate together for higher performance:
- two smaller cards can possibly outperform a single big one
- two big ones can create an overkill system
Theoretically the two cards don't have to be of the same model as long as they are SLI or Crossfire compatible...
Nevertheless, using two cards doesn't double performances. Let's say you can get like 25%-30% better compared to a card of the same model used alone. I varies depending on many things.
The other possible use is to improve performance on multi-screens configurations, and now with 3D screens (for which there is still almost no content at all.)
The counterpart is you need a motherboard AND a case with a LOT of space, a BIG power supply of high quality, and excellent cooling of the case. You also need to have no bottleneck in your system, like a weak CPU or not enough RAM.
And of course, it's pretty expensive.
This is not at all necessary for great performance. (Especially as frames per second are limited by monitors.) It's an extreme thing.
My 570 performs great with all games at very high / full options (unless those are made for "future" hardware of course).
Side note: I've been an ATI user for more than ten years (lucky enough to never have an issue with AO). But I had to be pragmatic and, in the range of equipment I wanted and for the games I played, Nvidia was a better choice and still is. This can of course change as it already did in the past.