Deathmatch: SLI mobos VS. Intel mobos

toco123

Okay, I want to hear everyones views on which chipset (nvidia or intel) they prefer.



Personally, unless you SLI your system when you buy it, they're is no reason to buy an nvidia motherboard. This is because by the time you buy the second graphics card, it won't have been worth your while because at this stage there is a new range of better graphics cards that outperform your set up and are available at the same price.

SLI performance is still quite limited. Only some graphics cards perform well in SLI, recently 2x9600GT beating a 8800GT. However it still is better value to just buy a 8800GT.



The motherboards are quite expensive compared with intel chipset motherboards.

A Gigabyte GA-P31-DS3L is a great overclocking and performing motherboard and costs €54.69
In my knowledge the best competitor in this price range that may at most match the same performance and overclocking is the Abit FP-IN9 SLI at €73.55.

Now both mother boards have had fantastic reception in reviews but is it really worth the 35% extra?



Nvidia chipset motherboards are known to be extremely buggy!



Now they're is many more things I could argue and bring to the debate but since a people are reccomending nvidia mobos against intel ( *cough* Squall20:rolleyes:) but personally I don't see the charm in it other than if I were to buy an SLI rig from day one. Not buy one graphics card and pick the other one 6 months later!!



Love to hear peoples views on this and this thread is for recommendations for people in need at the moment.. I also know that there is threads on this tpic but to be honest, SLI has come on a long way.

DirkVoodoo

The 9600 GT SLi not only beat the 8800GT, but the 8800GTX , Ultra and 3870 X2 as well (see firingsquad review and anandtech).

toco123

Link me please!!!

DirkVoodoo

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/geforce_9600_gt_sli_performance/

EDIT: Just checked OCUK there, you can get a single 9600GT for €130. Not bad if you already have an SLi motherboard.

toco123

firingsquad wrote:

Since we don’t have two identical 9600 GT reference boards to test SLI, we’re combining the ASUS EN9600 GT with EVGA’s e-GeForce 9600 GT SSC. To keep things equal, we of course ensured that the final SLI combo was running at the stock 9600 GT speeds.

Can you SLI a Asus and an Evga 9600GT??!!

sebastianlieken

IIRC you can do so as long as the clocks are the same.

Im intrigued by the 9600 sli performance... is it worth it in the sence that all games will take advantage of sli tho?.... i mean for older games, one 9600 workin by itself should be okay right?..and of course for the newer games, they SHOULD all encorporate sli functionality...right??

a bit more on topic, my 680i mobo has never let me down (apart from a blown capacitor sumwhere that makes my USB ports disconect n reconnect every so often....) but im very happy with my nvidia mobo

DirkVoodoo

I'd say that sounds about right. But at that price you aren't taking too much of a hit if you have to say d'oh and move on. You could sell each one on in a few months and not take as big a hit as the Ultra, X2, etc. owners.

Dunno wot the power draw is though, anyone know?

EDIT: Also, excuse me for diverting the thread direction. I have never used SLi, but I prefer my DS3 965 over my Asus M2N-E, which was a poor board really.

toco123

Perfectly ontopic. its approximately give or take roughly 460w.. i'd go for a 550w power supply

I hear two 3870s in CF performs better than two 8800GTs under the same price. Plus one to Intel. poor AA/AF performance tho

TerrorFirmer

You have a point to a certain extent, as Sli was never really economically a great option, but 9600GT Sli really shows its worth by destroying all competition in a lot of cases for the price of a mid range card.

I have owned a few crossfire boards but never a Sli one...but I've never gone crossfire either...well, apart from an abortive hd3870 attempt that just refused to function. I'm now back to Nvidia (8800GTS), and looks highly unlikely I'll be going either Ati, Crossfire, or even Crossfire board in future. Sli is the only one worth considering at the moment.

In fact I would say Nvidia is the only way to look at the moment, not just Sli. 8800GT beats 3870, 9600GT beats not only 3850 but also 3870, and not just in performance - but also price in most cases. The X2 is beaten by 9600GT Sli, and the cost of said card is still about as high as 2x9600GT+a Sli mobo....

The only real area I would consider a new Ati card is in a HTPC.

toco123

Every dog has its day (x1950xtx) Crossfire is supposed to utter boli* to setup and its driver support sucks!!

However I still prefer single card setups

TerrorFirmer

So do I, but right now I am most definitely wishing I had a Sli mobo and not a Crossfire one (ds3p)...

I could not get Crossfire working on my board, I have a 700w psu with about 50/55a on the rails, I tried various bridges, different drivers, uninstalling programs like rivatuner, atitool, etc....spent days tryiing to get it working, but 3870 crossfire would simply not work at all. CCC would see it and say it was enabled, but no increase in games, 3dmark, and various programs like gpu-z and everest said crossfire 'available, but disabled'.

ah well.

toco123

did you unistall all nvidia drivers before installing? Did you try shouting at it? lol

papu

intel mobo all the way.
crossfire scales better than sli , supports different cards in crossfire X , and multimonitor support!
Flash!!!!!!!

L31mr0d

yeah... SLI is the only reason I buy nvidia boards, they NB and SB run hot, they have poor overclocking ability, vdroop and have a terribly flaky NIC, not to mention crap RAID performance. Overall the nforce boards are sh!te. If Intel ever get the rights to support SLI on their boards it will be the end of nforce.

IMO though, i'd like to see nforce get better rather than intel get SLI support. If intel does get it intel would have a monopoly and could start slow releasing boards and charging above the odds for them.

I bought my SLI board about a year ago, and even though its been a year without SLI, i'll be moving over to 2x8800GTX's this weekend. As a gamer, unless you like crossfire, you always need to have the option to go SLI should you need it.

toco123

As a gamer i prefer intel

Anti

L31mr0d wrote: »

yeah... SLI is the only reason I buy nvidia boards, they NB and SB run hot, they have poor overclocking ability, vdroop and have a terribly flaky NIC, not to mention crap RAID performance. Overall the nforce boards are sh!te. If Intel ever get the rights to support SLI on their boards it will be the end of nforce.

IMO though, i'd like to see nforce get better rather than intel get SLI support. If intel does get it intel would have a monopoly and could start slow releasing boards and charging above the odds for them.

I bought my SLI board about a year ago, and even though its been a year without SLI, i'll be moving over to 2x8800GTX's this weekend. As a gamer, unless you like crossfire, you always need to have the option to go SLI should you need it.

I agree with the hot running nb/sb and flaky nic. but that was with the old nforce boards. the 780i is a fantastic overclocker, havent tried raid on it yet as i dont run anything that needs stupidly fast hdd read/write speads.....

Although my 780i died after 2 weeks

papu

i agree forcing people onto a worse mobo for the prospect of a couple Fps at twice the graphics and higher power expense is just silly.

TerrorFirmer

Anti wrote: »

the 780i is a fantastic overclocker.....died after 2 weeks

:D

papu

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

:D

dying generally isnt a good thing?
il stick with intel PLOX , i hate rebuilding.

toco123

Lmao

TerrorFirmer

papu wrote: »

dying generally isnt a good thing?
il stick with intel PLOX , i hate rebuilding.

I just though it was funny that the one positive thing said about an nforce is then followed by a 'But it died after 2 weeks'....just ironic.

How about Sli VS Crossfire VS Multi-Chrome? Any takers?

100% scaling and that was two years ago, pity the cards were so ****e...

papu

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

I just though it was funny that the one positive thing said about an nforce is then followed by a 'But it died after 2 weeks'....just ironic.

How about Sli VS Crossfire VS Multi-Chrome? Any takers?

100% scaling and that was two years ago, pity the cards were so ****e...

no thanks , ima try crossfire X next ooOoOooo

( il post results )

Nforce

Guess which one I prefer:p .....I've been running Evga 680i and XFX 680i since their launch.....skipped 780i and i'm awaiting my shiny new 790i Ultra

toco123

Nforce wrote: »

Guess which one I prefer:p .....I've been running Evga 680i and XFX 680i since their launch.....skipped 780i and i'm awaiting my shiny new 790i Ultra

eh... AMD? :D

Snake Plisken

yeah I was wondering about my next upgrade, I've an OCZ 8800GTX on an Intel BadAxe2board with a QX6700 and was almost going to buy a 680i when I did a bit of research and found out that it's crap for overclocking on Quad Cores, which is a pity as I was going to go and buy an additional GTX for SLI, so I then start reading up on Intel Crossfire solutions, so look at P35 boards and they are useless as the second PCIe slot is only 4X thinking about X38 but haven't settled on a board (I hate the ASUS ones for dropping the mouse connector, which was handy for running two rigs off one monitor, keyboard and mouse) then I'm reading about the 790i boards last night on Anandtech and how great a board it is and start getting interested ok I'd have to lash out on the DDR3 but it might be the way forward. So not sure what way to go now

P.S. Some good prices from US sellers on Ebay, who will mark it down on value, but not sure how safe it is with something as volitile as an Nforce motherboard??

papu

Snake Plisken wrote: »

yeah I was wondering about my next upgrade, I've an OCZ 8800GTX on an Intel BadAxe2board with a QX6700 and was almost going to buy a 680i when I did a bit of research and found out that it's crap for overclocking on Quad Cores, which is a pity as I was going to go and buy an additional GTX for SLI, so I then start reading up on Intel Crossfire solutions, so look at P35 boards and they are useless as the second PCIe slot is only 4X thinking about X38 but haven't settled on a board (I hate the ASUS ones for dropping the mouse connector, which was handy for running two rigs off one monitor, keyboard and mouse) then I'm reading about the 790i boards last night on Anandtech and how great a board it is and start getting interested ok I'd have to lash out on the DDR3 but it might be the way forward. So not sure what way to go now

P.S. Some good prices from US sellers on Ebay, who will mark it down on value, but not sure how safe it is with something as volitile as an Nforce motherboard??

their really isn't much difference froma 4x pcie slot , unless your using 3870X2's

conzy

Intel and Nvidia haven't been getting along well at all recently, Nvidia wanted to buy Havok, and Intel bought them right from under their noses, so then nvidia had to buy the next best thing (Ageia Physx) .......

Its kinda funny that Intel motherboards support AMD's Crossfire and not SLI.... I wouldn't be surprised if no Nvidia Chipset Intel boards exist soon

There's a good article about the "fight" in the April Custom PC, they think AMD/ATI will be out of the picture atleast in the high end and Nvidia / Intel will be left to battle it out...

Hopefully Intel will no longer allow Nvidia to produce Chipsets for their CPU's and Nvidia will have to allow SLI on Intel boards to insure SLI's survival...

That would be the best outcome for us enthusiasts... Because if ATI die, we will still have the 9800GX2 in 10 years time