I recently built two identical systems - one for my brother and one for myself. With these systems I purchased 6600GT graphics cards. I'm not sure about everybody else here, but I have little knowledge about SLI and how "good" it really is. I decided to pinch my brother's graphics card while he was out to see how much SLI helps your performance. I was pleased to see that I could easily run BF2 with all graphics settings on HIGH, resolution of 1280x1024 @ 75Hz, 4xAA and 16xAF. Before inserting a second 6600GT I managed all settings on HIGH at 1024x768 and 4xAA and AF-off. I then insterted a second gigabyte of DDR2 RAM @ 667MHz - this removed all menu lag inside BF2 as well as any lag when entering a server - which i experienced before. I'm not sure how affective SLI is in all games, it has worked very well for me in BF2 - I've now ordered a second 6600GT for myself.
It sure has worked like a charm for you! I've got 1 7800GT 512MB with Corsair XMS 3200 C2 (2x512MB), and I do experience the menu lag & loading a server (like 50 secs). Maybe I should purchase another 2 sticks of 512MB, when my motherboard gets back Anyway nice to see SLi has worked with a massive advantage for you. :chk:
Now that drivers have matured for the nVidia SLI system, the performance increase is quite good, good to hear that adding RAM improved performance.
Yeah, faster video is great, but does nothing if your RAM is being maxed out by the program. I noticed a nice boost jumping from 512MB to 1GB myself in gaming. Things were much smoother with just a single 6600GT. It's probably one of the best upgrades I've made in ages.
SLI can make a huge difference in some games, but not every game will see a bit jump. In fact early on many games got lower fps when a second card was added. The good news is, if for some reason a game runs worse with SLI you can always disable 1 card for a time. But today SLI is pretty much going to be the better route in most cases, or at least games that take advantage of it naturally. (Titan's Quest and HL2 for example don't give you any benifits). Tom's Hardware Guide Processors: VGA Charts
***This is very important*** YES you do get much increased performance with SLI GFX and YES you do even Half Life 2... I have just launched HL2 in full res., detail, AA and AF (The Full Monty) with single GFX card. Standing there in the train after the opening sequence of starting a new game of HL2, simply facing forward down the train carriage I was getting a mere 30FPS… I saved the game and closed it. Then I carried out something the kids at home shouldn’t try. Which is the only thing the crazy folk do when they’re going to play any game worthy of residing on a file filled HDD... I closed my eyes and ticked the box that reads “enable SLI multi-GPU”… Low and behold my FPS had doubled (standing and looking in the same spot loaded from saved game), which I would like to add is not bad for a mediocre computer and the extreme demands I put on my little baby… Drivers must have gotten better? (using Forceware 91.47)
