650 Ti Boost SLI

[Nort]

I've been thinking of buying one 650 Ti Boost and then adding another down the road. I've been looking at benchmarks and the SLI beats/ties the 590, 680 and 7970. It falls behind the 690 and Titan as you'd expect. It also seems like a pretty good deal because I can buy one at a time and it costs $350 for 2 cards whereas the ones it beats are running $425+. Am I really going to be seeing any 'microstutter' with SLI, or is that mainly with AMD's CrossFire? Just looking for some imput from other people, thanks in advance.

[Glenwing]

If you're making a new build from scratch, keep in mind you will have to spend an extra $30-$50 or so if you plan on SLI because you'll need a higher wattage power supply than if you went for a GTX 680. SLI can give better performance but can also give worse performance. It depends on how the game you're playing takes advantage of SLI and how well it's written. A single card, while usually an extra $50-100, give you less heat, less noise, less power consumption, and more consistent performance. That's what you're paying for so it's up to you to decide what that's worth to you.

[GTX590]

2xGTX 650 TI Boosts in SLI only need a 650W PSU MAX, the max TDP of each is 150, so 300 from them assuming you overclock. Add in 77-95 for the CPU, 50 for the extras and you're at 425ish total system power @ 95% load.

[TechFan@ic]

I only recommend multi GPU setups when a person buys a very high end graphics card and is dissatisfied with the performance.

I really don't recommend medium range or low end multi GPU setups because you will end up frustrated.

You need to think of it this way when you buy two cards to use in a multi GPU setup : Will the performance of one 650 ti boost be enough ? if not, then don't go with the 2, because you will definitely end up having to disable one card of the two at some point in a number of games, and if you have 2 high end cards this won't be a problem because you will still have enough horsepower to play that game, but if you have two mid range or low end cards and you end up having to disable one card, the resulting performance becomes unacceptable .

[Glenwing]

2xGTX 650 TI Boosts in SLI only need a 650W PSU MAX, the max TDP of each is 150, so 300 from them assuming you overclock. Add in 77-95 for the CPU, 50 for the extras and you're at 425ish total system power @ 95% load.

A 650W power supply is usually around $30 or so more than a 550W variant of the same series, assuming you aren't going for the uber cheap stuff.

[Juan Sebastian]

Can Two 650s beat one 670 ?

[Nort]

Thanks for the responses, I thinking I'm going to go with a 660 or a 660 Ti now. I'll have to wait a bit longer to get one, but it should be worth it.

[unidentical]

My vote is always to avoid SLi unless you like buggering around with drivers more than you like playing games smoothly and easily.