Ocean is right.
The only reason I upgraded from my sli 8800 GTS(90 nm) wasnt the extra power I got with gtx 260, which is acutally less powerful than sli 8800, but the fac that it uses under 10 watts idle compared to the near 100 watts the sli 8800 used.
Is there a Game (emulated) which takes more advantage from a newer GPU as it would take from a faster CPU ? I guess you're fine with everything over 8800GTS/Radeon4870. The Raw Power of the newer gen. becomes only usefull with high AA levels+high res.
... my 2 cents...
Quote:The Raw Power of the newer gen. becomes only usefull with high AA levels+high res.
Yup. The same with any older game. Dolphin wouldn't need so much gpu power for high res + high AA if they reimplemented msaa in directx.
Quote:since sli scaling for nvidia is pretty darn close to doubled performance two would be more then a noticeable difference in thing over then dolphin, gaming and folding at home (pitch line you guys should join team 40051 tomshardware =] ) also talking about drivers, personally find it very impressive that they can still squeeze out more performance, out of the older gt 200 line, so i'm looking forward to a long line, of increased performance
Not to sound offensive but have you ever used sli? I once made that mistake, one of the worst mistakes I ever made when purchasing hardware was not realizing the inconsistant and unreliable performance increases achieved from sli/crossfire. If you ever find yourself choosing between two weaker cards in sli/crossfire or a single more powerful card even if the two weaker cards have the potential to be significantly faster ALWAYS CHOOSE THE STRONGER SINGLE CARD. The only time when sli/crossfire is a smart solution is when you already have a top of the line video card and you want to make your setup even faster.
The reason the gtx460 has such great sli scaling is because it has enormous shader throughput but comparitivilty low video memory bandwidth and pixel throughput, making it the perfect card for multi-gpu scaling (like the 4770). However you must consider other factors as well. Most sli/crossfire benchmarks done on benchmarking sites are done with a top of the line i7 965 or higher and an x58 board, you won't get the same level of scaling on a more "typical" setup.