Is Crossfire/SLI really that bad?

[Clarkey]

It works in most but doesnt work so well/at all in some

for example Modded skyrim does not work well with Sli/Xfire

Dayz doesnt have added support for sli/xfire. 

Although for the majority of games if Sli/Xfire doesnt work you will most likely be able to run it well with only one card anyway as its probably an older game.

 

Some games scale perfectly with Sli so make sure you dont go off one benchmark. For example Aliens:Colonial Marines scales perfectly even with x4 Sli/Xfire however that is one of the VERY VERY few that do.

 

For the most part most games wont see any improvement at all once going to x4 sli

x3 is slightly better but again wont work for all games. 

 

 

In short. If you are spending a $400+ on a gpu you should always grab the best single card you can get for that money. 

However If you need a card now and can only afford $200 but might be able to scrape together another $200 in a few months then grabbing the $200 card then adding another months later is fine.

[Dontbeoffened]

It depends on what u mean by sli/crossfire because there are large is a difference between 4 way crossfire/sli and quad crossfire/sli because if u are using quad u can use everything but if u are in 4 way sli/crossfire u won't get much more in less the game is 4k. But that said it depends on the game because most won't utilize the other 2 gpus like quad sli/crossfire would. And to clarify quad is 2 cards with 2 gpus and 4 way is 4 graphics cards.

[Tam3n]

Really depends on the game... Newer popular games tend to have better crossfire support.

 

Comparison I posted on the Star Citizen forums:

 

Hangar module crossfire disabled:

 

 

Hangar module crossfire enabled (default profile):

 

 

I run games that don't require that much gpu power with single card...

[Gref]

I had crossfire 7850s for about a year, and it was a love-hate relationship. It was either a great experience or an absolute nightmare, all depending on the game.

 

With well supported games like Bioshock Infinite and Tomb raider it was fantastic, the scaling of adding a second card was >90%, the game ran very smooth, and no crashes. 

However, when it was games with no crossfire support.....

My favorite game Chivalry Medieval Warfare was a nightmare with Xfire, it has zero support from both AMD and the Dev. With Xfire the game has frame rate issues, horrendous micro stutter, and each GPU was never utilized above 50% AND the frame rate was low (20s-40s).

 

The final straw was Titanfall, right after I saw the artifacting with Xfire I ordered a GTX 780 and have not looked back. It's been fixed since, but I don't want to encounter issues like this ever again.

Sure you can disable one card for games that are not supported, but that's bullshit. Having one card sit there being useless because the developer is too incompetent to support Xfire is infuriating. 

 

[totjup5]

I've never had a problem with my setup. But that is probably mostly because 660ti sli is one of the best scaling solutions out there.

[Jodomcfrodo]

1. "Chrysler Crossfire" what

2. they are both equally as fast...

Whoosh*

 

It wasn't too bad of a joke.