I'm going to build a new rig. I've decided on an i7 4770k of which I will OC. But this is the first time I'll use dual GPU's so my question is, from your experience with sim racing, do I go SLI or Crossfire? More specifically though, which card setup? 1. 2x 3gb 780Ti 2. 2x 4gb 290x 3. 2x 6gb Titan All cards have their pros and cons. A tough decision. Thanks.
I would go SLI, even thou I run Crossfire. AMD's driver optimisation for Crossfire is still not at nVidias level. Game crashings in CF, flickering, stuttering, sometimes the game perform smoother with single card at 30fps, than crossfired at 60. Of course it can also run very good, depends of the game. But mostly it can be pain in the a** to find good settings for smooth gameplay. Just my opinion as a CF user. And it's said numerous times that nVidia is also the way to go with RF2.
Multi gpu is really about benchmarking (or mining), when it gives any extra it's rarely worth the money(except with mining maybe, jury is still out!), more often than not it causes problems with micro stutter and lag, and these are most noticeable in a simulator. It's fine if you like playing big money console ports, they eventually get sorted out for multi gpu, but lesser budget titles may never work better. Stutter in anything trying to simulate real just ruins it. Then you have got the extra expense of a 1000+ watt PSU and the running costs. If it's just about running the best driving simulator i.e. this one, I think you are better off sticking to one top of the range gpu and overclock it, then sell it when the next architecture comes out. That would currently be the EVGA Kingpin 780ti. I saw a benchmark yesterday where a guy got a new 780ti to replace his titan then when somebody suggested he use the titan as a physx card the scores were actually lower than with a single card and that was Batman Arkham which theoretically should have gained. Plenty of complaints on here about SLi performance and I don't recall anyone raving about crossfire performance (ever!) I had 3 6870s for about 2 frustrating and disappointing days. Basically there's no guarantees except that you will have problems somewhere with some software when you go multi gpu. I had hopes for the new radeons because they don't need a bridge to xfire and this should reduce stutter, but if you like this sim you would currently be a little bit disappointed with the performance of AMD cards on triple srceen especially. I used to think multi gpu had its place for sharpening up an older system for not much money, so you buy a top of the range card then in 2 years instead of buying a whole new system you just pick up the same card for very little money and you get a big performance boost. This is how they used to market xfire when it first came out. In practice it doesn't really work because of the problems I mention above, and usually it's nearly impossible to get the same card which I know is supposed to not be a problem, but if you want to have a better chance of things working nicely you want identical cards with identical bios.
I agree with Murtaya, I just built a new system about 4 months ago specifically with simracing/rF2 in mind and went with 2 GTX680 4gb GPU's. When benchmarked they only slightly out score a single Titan, and I am quite sure I would run into far less issues with ALL games especially sims if I had gone with a single GPU for the exact reasons Murtaya states. If drivers get released for a sim that optimize SLI performance you might get lucky but if they don't your screwed. EXAMPLE: Nvidea just released the 332.21 drivers that "aledgedly" optimized SLI for Assetto Corsa. When I installed them sure enough I now get the green SLI bar indicating that AC "sees" both my GPU's...but the rendering stats also shows that 1 GPU is functioning at 90% and the 2nd GPU at only 10%. That doesn't sound very optimized to me
Hmmm. Ok. Thanks for your views. I am tempted to wait until March for the Titan Black Edition now. It has the core performance of the 780Ti but with the Titan's 6gb of RAM.
