Crossfire or brand new video card?

[Lain1911]

I'm wondering how many people, when your video card gets older, do you buy a duplicate and crossfire or buy a brand new card?
What are your opinions on which is better when dealing with video cards that are 3-5 years old?

I've always bought a brand new card but I'm having the thought of trying crossfire this time in order to keep up with graphic demands in about a year or two.

[missalaire]

I'm wondering how many people, when your video card gets older, do you buy a duplicate and crossfire or buy a brand new card?
What are your opinions on which is better when dealing with video cards that are 3-5 years old?

I've always bought a brand new card but I'm having the thought of trying crossfire this time in order to keep up with graphic demands in about a year or two.

I'd just buy a brand new card if w/e video card you have is that old.

[Puddsy]

I'm wondering how many people, when your video card gets older, do you buy a duplicate and crossfire or buy a brand new card?
What are your opinions on which is better when dealing with video cards that are 3-5 years old?

I've always bought a brand new card but I'm having the thought of trying crossfire this time in order to keep up with graphic demands in about a year or two.

I'd just buy a brand new card if w/e video card you have is that old.

Yep. This.

[domoaligato]

I have 2 gtx 580's in sli and I can tell the difference. before I help answer this. what are the complete pc specs?

[Krizie]

They've still not resolved frame skipping/stutter thats introduced when using multiple cards.
Some people don't notice it, some do. Unfortunately I do so I tend to get the flagship card every 2 years depending on their comparative performance.

[domoaligato]

They've still not resolved frame skipping/stutter thats introduced when using multiple cards.
Some people don't notice it, some do. Unfortunately I do so I tend to get the flagship card every 2 years depending on their comparative performance.

Is this a crossfire only issue? I have not seen this with SLI and I have had nvidia sli setups for over 10 years.
If your talking about screen tearing you will see this if you have one card. With vsync off there is no way around it.

[slip84]

For what it's worth, I had stutter issues on a CrossFireX setup and I've not seen them on my SLI setup so far. I don't play a lot of games, but for the same one that had stuttering issues with CFX, I don't see it with SLI.

I would vote if your card is a lot older, you might consider a new card. I'm currently running two two-year-old cards in SLI and get performance on par with a much newer card (on paper at least) well under the cost of the newer card. I've not had any real compatibility issues so far.

[domoaligato]

What is this video card anyways also what games do you play? This really is the thing that will make the decision easier.
I have 2 gtx 580's in SLI and I see no reason to buy a new card yet as I mostly play cs:go and Arma 3. both play perfect on my setup.

[slip84]

What is this video card anyways also what games do you play? This really is the thing that will make the decision easier.
I have 2 gtx 580's in SLI and I see no reason to buy a new card yet as I mostly play cs:go and Arma 3. both play perfect on my setup.

In addition to this, resolution will be a big driver, too. I had no issues in my system with a single HD 7850 and then I stumbled into a too-good-a-deal-to-pass-up 27" monitor at 2560x1440 that a single HD 7850 wasn't doing and CFX HD 7850s didn't do too much better at. I switched up to a SLI 660 GTX setup (superclocked!) and, for the most part, the games I play run much, much better. Now I'm saddled with a couple HD 7850s I have had a hard time selling. Womp womp.

[domoaligato]

I play cs:go @ 1024x768 stretched. for me it is about performance > looks.


edit: I can play 1920x1080 fine. I am old school and have just always played low res on cs. It makes all the player models bigger and fat so you can see them easier.

[Krizie]

They've still not resolved frame skipping/stutter thats introduced when using multiple cards.
Some people don't notice it, some do. Unfortunately I do so I tend to get the flagship card every 2 years depending on their comparative performance.

Is this a crossfire only issue? I have not seen this with SLI and I have had nvidia sli setups for over 10 years.
If your talking about screen tearing you will see this if you have one card. With vsync off there is no way around it.

Both vendors have this issue due to the way multi gpu setups render each frame.
Micro stuttering happens when one card has rendered its frame and the other is playing catchup or the frame is now obsolete and it needs to render the frame again. As said though a lot of people just don't notice it or it doesn't bother them.

Apparently both nvidia and amd have improved on the technology a great deal and its come along way since I last had 2 GTX480s in SLi. Having said that I still notice it on my mates 2 new AMD r290's so take what they say with a pinch of salt... unless they find an alternative to alternate frame rendering I don't see how it can be fixed.

[Puddsy]

They've still not resolved frame skipping/stutter thats introduced when using multiple cards.
Some people don't notice it, some do. Unfortunately I do so I tend to get the flagship card every 2 years depending on their comparative performance.

Is this a crossfire only issue? I have not seen this with SLI and I have had nvidia sli setups for over 10 years.
If your talking about screen tearing you will see this if you have one card. With vsync off there is no way around it.

it depends on the game really

BF4 still has massive SLI issues, and older games actually do better on  single cards lol

[domoaligato]

for others that have sli...

set these values in 3d settings of the nvidia control panel.
It makes a huge difference in performance.
If you do not like it then just reset it back to defaults.

Ambient Occulsion = off
Anisotropic Filtering = off
Antialiasing - FXAA = off
Antialiasing - Gamma correction = off
Antialiasing - Mode = off
Cuda - GPUS = All
Maximum pre-rendered frames = 1
Multidisplay/mixed GPU Acceleration = single display
Power management mode = prefer maximum performance
Prefered refresh rate = highest available
SLI rendering mode = NVIDIA recommended
Texture filtering - antisotropic sample optimization = On
Texture filtering - Negative LOD bias = Clamp
Texture filtering - Quality = High performance
Texture filtering - Trilinear optimization = On
Triple buffering = off
vertical sync = off


edit:

for those that do not want to turn off the pretty stuff


Maximum pre-rendered frames = 1
Multidisplay/mixed GPU Acceleration = single display
Power management mode = prefer maximum performance
Prefered refresh rate = highest available
Texture filtering - Negative LOD bias = Clamp
Triple buffering = off
vertical sync = off

[domoaligato]

They've still not resolved frame skipping/stutter thats introduced when using multiple cards.
Some people don't notice it, some do. Unfortunately I do so I tend to get the flagship card every 2 years depending on their comparative performance.

Is this a crossfire only issue? I have not seen this with SLI and I have had nvidia sli setups for over 10 years.
If your talking about screen tearing you will see this if you have one card. With vsync off there is no way around it.

it depends on the game really

BF4 still has massive SLI issues, and older games actually do better on  single cards lol

what i just posted is reported by a lot of bf4 users as fixing that issue.

[IvanIvanovich]

I've tried SLI and Xfire set ups several times over the years. When there are good game profiles it can work really well. But often there is not, or no profile at all for titles which makes having a second card useless. On top of that you have the additional cons of more heat, more fan noise (or a substantial cost on multiple blocks if you want to go water) and a much larger power draw. I would much rather go with a newer more powerful single card that uses less power. Going forward having more vram is also going to be important now that more and more games are going x64 having 3GB or more is really going to be a must.

[Lain1911]

This is a lot of good feedback and I want to keep it going but it all just stemmed from I have a HIS 7870 and will probably upgrade in two years or so. My question is related to should I pick up another 7870 in two years and crossfire or just get the xxxx and pay the extra cash?

[Lain1911]

I think Ivan may have answered it

[microsoft windows]

Don't by one brand new card--buy two!

[domoaligato]

This is a lot of good feedback and I want to keep it going but it all just stemmed from I have a HIS 7870 and will probably upgrade in two years or so. My question is related to should I pick up another 7870 in two years and crossfire or just get the xxxx and pay the extra cash?

what game do you play?
and what is your cpu?

these 2 questions will drastically change the advise people may give you.

[Lain1911]

I have AMD 8320 cpu and I don't play FPS, so I don't have any problems running anything I play. I like the feedback of the pros and cons vs the two options. Is there normally a difference with design work or video editing?

[Grim Fandango]

It depends.

-whether my PSU can deal with another GPU (crossfire/SLI is typically more demanding than a more modern single card)
-whether or not I can get a decent price for my current GPU.
-whether I happen to spot any good prices for either the single card, or the one that I would use in combination with the old card

One thing to take into account is that typically, you can find your old card secondhand for almost nothing (*if it has been out for a couple of years or more). This can make SLI/crossfire really tempting.

For me, on the one hand I love the simplicity of using a modern card. This tends to be quieter, not run as hot, does not draw as much power and so on. On the other hand I love using old and "discarded" components and use them.

A little bit of topic, but I recently did something that really showed me how much you can do with the hardware that people sell for almost nothing when it is one or two generations old.
My nephew wanted a good gaming PC but was worried he could not afford it. He literally had almost no budget. I took an old case, bought 2x secondhand GTX 560Ti for almost nothing, bought a i5 760 with mobo for almost nothing, bought some new RAM, a new PSU and used the HDD from an old work PC. We spent less than 250 euros total, and he can play anything, like Skyrim, The Witcher 2, BF4. You should have seen the little dude and how happy he was. He thought he needed to save for at least another 2 years. I bought him a new monitor to go with his rig. 

[IvanIvanovich]

Generally multi gpu set ups will have zero advantage to video editing... unless you need to run multi instances on several displays and need the extra ports. Also no advantage for design work, unless what you are using can render on gpu in parallel.
I too like to take advantage of perfectly good older dirt cheap hardware in the used market... but it's very situation and need dependent.

[domoaligato]

for design work and video editing you will see a bigger performance increase with a newer cpu intel shines at this. and a single gpu like ivan stated. sorry I thought you were a gamer.

[Lain1911]

Thanks, well I'm kinda a gamer too, but I'm not so hardcore with having to have max setting everything everywhere with 120hz monitor 100% of the time. So I'm guessing that crossfire etc is really for enthusiasts and people who can get a cheap identical card for a little boost?

[domoaligato]

Thanks, well I'm kinda a gamer too, but I'm not so hardcore with having to have max setting everything everywhere with 120hz monitor 100% of the time. So I'm guessing that crossfire etc is really for enthusiasts and people who can get a cheap identical card for a little boost?

Correct.

If you want to increase performance for video editing getting a new intel cpu and a new video card with a ssd would be the performance boost that you are going to notice. (basically a new pc).

adding crossfire to your rig is not going to really do much if your mainly doing video editing and light gaming.