beast

pair of Geforce GTX 660 TI ? or single 680 ?

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Nvidea.... lol

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Single 680. That's offhand advice with little theoretical background. I'm not sure SLI is even properly supported for PS2 atm. You could consider a 670, which is what I use and I'm almost always CPU capped. Drop in a second 670 in a year's time. That'll be my course, or alternatively I sell this one and buy a "770".

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this is one of the many questions ill probably be asking in the next month or two as i prepare to order the PC thats got to last a good few years.

what about all-out performance between 2 x 660 and one 680 ? i think the SLI route is the way to go at the moment, as i'll be able to buy 2nd hand cheaper cards in the future, for cheapo upgrades.

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I don't think that that, as an argument, really goes a long way. You'd be swapping out the dual 660's for two new cards. You could equally easily swap out the 680 for two new cards. (I am assuming here that the price of 2x660 or 1x680 is the same or almost the same.)

As for perfomance....well, that's the problem, isn't it? It depends on the game you're using the setup for. If it is seriously highly optimized for SLI, yeah, SLI may be a bit more powerful. That's what nVidia says, too. Please see here. "The amount of performance improvement will depend on the application and its ability to scale." An absolutely optimal scenario is, as such, one where you get +100% improvement - both cards being optimally used. Then we can swap over to, for example, Wikipedia and see a comparison of the different GeForce 600 cards. The GTX680 will crank out 3000 GFLOPS, a GTX660 2000 (averaging here). You can do the math from there on.

Or rather, you can't, because of the first point. It depends on the game, and it depends on how your cards perform (brand, batch, overclocking (potential), etc). If your game is well-optimized, it is likely you'll reach that "3000 GFLOPS" of graphics processing power. If not....well, bummer. Also, there is a small but noteworthy "risk" of getting a microstutter in-game, specific to SLI.

If it's a feasible plan, for you, to get 2 660's and in the future buy 2 new cards, then it should also be possible to, in that future, buy one more 680 (which should be cheaper then) for 2x 680 SLI. That may, or may not, be better than (for example) 2x 770 SLI. You cannot tell for sure but it is quite possible.

Those pro's and contras I hope paint the picture I've been wanting to paint: SLI is an enthusiast's technology. Of course, we're all enthusiasts in some way, but you're just mucking about with SLI more than with an easy, slap-in-a-card solution.
Please note: I do not consider myself a specialist, though I do consider myself thorough. I have personally never built an SLI setup.

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ok thanks for the tips, all noted

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Get a Geforce titan. Only 800 quid

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get two, and not get a new PC at all

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Tom's Hardware did a feature on SLI a few years back, most games got a very small performance increase, a handful got a significant increase and a few actually performed worse.

It's also about video ram if I recall, the game has to be specifically programmed to use it all, that's why a 2GB card often performs the same as a 1GB card.

These days game designers are much more aware of SLI but it's probably a bit like SSD drives*, still a case of spend a lot of cash for a minor improvement most of the time.

*can of worms opened again

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It's 106 miles to Naum, we've got a Skyguard, a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark and the gunner's wearing sunglasses

SSD is much better than HDD if you need speed... storage space however... much cheaper to just an HDD, even with dropping prices.
as for SSD vs HDD.. my Steam only works on the SSD pretty much... constantly froze on the other

As for gfx card... I'd say getting 1 good one beats 2 cheaper ones in SLI

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Can i ask.... why the Nvidea love? I see more problems regarding 600 cards on the PS2 forums than any other. This maybe due to sales volume i guess. I switched from Nvidea to AMD about 12 months ago and my 6900 hasnt missed a beat.

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Depends on the rest of your system, Pig. I have a motherboard with an intel chipset, an intel CPU and the RAM I have is made to perform better on an intel chipset and CPU. Nvidia cards have always worked a lot better with intel stuff for me. That way, ev en with just an i3 and a GTX460, I can still run newer games on higher graphics. All about optimising the gear you have. If you use all AMD stuff, then ATI would be the way to go (I assume)

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	Pig wrote:
	Can i ask.... why the Nvidea love? I see more problems regarding 600 cards on the PS2 forums than any other. This maybe due to sales volume i guess. I switched from Nvidea to AMD about 12 months ago and my 6900 hasnt missed a beat.

of course you can, its just a make i like and have had good experience with over the years. im not buying this to play PS2 on, im buying it because it'll have to last me a few years.

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ahhh the good old ati/nvidia question!

I started gaming with an 4mb ati pro but swiftly moved onto a voodoo fx 16mb! Next stop was a nvidia XT5900XT (bought for ps1) and then onto a 8800 GTS 640mb OC, which finally blew to be DRM'd for a mighty 8800 Ultra (got that bad boy in a draw by my computer still!)

Next step i jumped ship with a ati 4850 followed by a lovely 5770 Vapor-X. Then ps2 arrived, the old 5770 was nearly 3 years old and as PS2 and a few other games I love spanking were built on nvidia I jumped back aboard the green ship with my 660ti!

Having tasted from both cups I would say that ati are pretty much right up there and on a budget they offer the best alternatives (I just wanted to embrace nvidia once again and have no issues with my 660ti

)

The top end cards are pretty much like for like, just make sure you have the CPU/memory/mb to back up your choice.

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I am expecting the fidelity of PC games to increase dramatically in the next few years. What with the PS4 basically been a PC and new MS installment will be of similar ilk. Cross platform development is going to be easier.

Lately lot of new releases haven't demand as much from PC. Take Skyrim they released additional texture packs to make PC version better.

Long story short, before it wasn't economical to add additional visual content you might as well aim for lowest common denominator.

This new round of consoles is going to raise the common denominator.

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