why do people still use SLI or crossfire when so few games and programs support it

[Letgomyleghoe]

title says it all

[Semper]

Largely, it generally tends to boil down to "because I can" from what I've seen.

Every case will be different, every person's reasoning as well, but I think what Jay does with Skunkworks really is the most common reason, "Ultimate overkill because I can"

[Letgomyleghoe]

2 minutes ago, Semper said:

Largely, it generally tends to boil down to "because I can" from what I've seen.

Every case will be different, every person's reasoning as well, but I think what Jay does with Skunkworks really is the most common reason, "Ultimate overkill because I can"

yeah everyone with a pc with sli that ive met was like "well... i have money and it looked so i decided i wanted it"

like no proper reasoning on dropping money on a second graphics card 

[Semper]

4 minutes ago, scuff gang said:

yeah everyone with a pc with sli that ive met was like "well... i have money and it looked so i decided i wanted it"

like no proper reasoning on dropping money on a second graphics card 

We all spend money on things that we don't need. To what degree it's done will (again) vary from person to person. I don't see value in an SLI system, much like yourself, but I'm certain there's things that I spend unreasonable amounts of disposable income on that you don't agree with, and vise-versa. It's part of being a person with free will, it doesn't make it wrong, it doesn't make it right.

[Drak3]

2 minutes ago, scuff gang said:

yeah everyone with a pc with sli that ive met was like "well... i have money and it looked so i decided i wanted it"

like no proper reasoning on dropping money on a second graphics card 

There really doesn’t need to be a reason beyond “I want it.”

[dgsddfgdfhgs]

becoz in tests sli/ crossfire gives the best perf /dollar.

eg 2x rx 570 , you cant beat the value (implied that when game supports it)

[Caennanu]

I've had both SLI and Crossfire in the past. Not because i could, but because i needed the extra power and couldn't afford an proper card upgrade, so it was a budget thing to me.

Running 2 R9's in crossfire was also very nice heating in winter

[PianoPlayer88Key]

I can't afford SLI / CF (unless you're talking like 10-15+-year-old GPUs that were <$150 new) and don't have a lot of time to play games, but ...

 

Sometimes I've wished I could play on a setup with like 32 monitors (I think I've seen workstation cards with 8 outputs, times 4-way multi-GPU), each being 8K 120Hz.

 

Pick the most graphically demanding game (as in, gets the lowest fps at the lowest settings & resolution on the most powerful GPU) made in the last year, and crank ALL the settings to the max.  The game should *NEVER* dip below 2x the monitor's refresh rate, even in the most demanding situations.

(Using an older game for example, in GTA V, at absolute max settings (pics in spoiler), it would use 9GB VRAM at 1080p.  Intel HD 4600 got 1.8 fps, GTX 970M 6GB got 6 fps, GTX 1060 3GB got 0.3 fps, at the start of the benchmark.)

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What game would be that demanding today (like, would have been the equivalent of Crysis in 2007 on a >$1000 GPU looking like it was running on a pre-PCI GPU that was <$50 new), and what SINGLE graphics card would it take to would run with those high settings, fps on multiple monitors?  (Even if you had a CPU that couldn't crack triple digits multi-threaded in Cinebench R20, or quad digits in Ice Storm physics?)

 

Btw i used to think that Crysis was so demanding in its day ("But can it run Crysis?") that - even with LowSpecGamer low settings, at 144p 4:3, with a sniper rifle scoped on a blank sky with nothing happening in-game, 3-way SLI GeForce 8800 Ultra or CrossFire Radeon HD 2900 XT would never get up TO 9 fps, and just ONE step down in GPU, it would refuse to even launch *at all*.  (I remember playing Half Life 1 / Team Fortress classic on the GoldSrc engine, with similar fps at 320x240 lowest settings.)

[Kalm_Traveler]

Half because I can, half because I play some games that scale well with it (Witcher 3 for example). 

[For Science!]

I need two graphics cards for scientific calculations, and so since I have two powerful GPUs in my system anyway I SLI them to get what performance uplift I can get.