SLIed 7900GS

[Edge1]

Any idea how much improvement one might get going with another 7900GS in SLI? I have access to a pretty well-priced used one that is identical to my own (XFX 7900GS Extreme). It struggles with DiRT and I'd also like to play SupCom, Bioshock, World In Conflict, etc. eventually. Crysis too, but I think that will just have to wait for the 8 series upgrade.

Plan is to get an 8800GT down the road when prices drop and more $$ are saved.

 

[nitromullet]

7-series SLI scaling is pretty decent and stable with WinXP (no experience with Vista). I would imagine that you'd get a boost in performance along the lines 40-75% for most games. Keep in mind that in some newer games, even a 100% increase over a single 7900GS still might not be all that much though.

In my experience, SLI has generally been the best when I take a game that can just be played with a single card and I want it to be smoother. If you have a game that is a total slide show, usually SLI is not going to magically make it playable.

 

[Edge1]

Thanks nitro. I took a look at a Legion Hardware 7900GS SLI review (Asus) between posts here. Looks like some games benefit more than others (FEAR, Prey). Interestingly Company of Heroes (another one I want to play) actually decreased performance by going SLI.

I think its worth doing for fun if the price is right, but not otherwise.

I do have an XP-only system for now.

 

[SlowSpyder]

I had a 7900GS as well, and was trying to decide between upgrading to a new card all together or SLI'ing another 7900GS. I couldn't find too much info, in the end I upgraded to a Radeon 2900 Pro. I game at 1680x1050, I don't know if that is high enough res to really get a lot out of SLI or not.

 

[rocketbubba]

So did you SLi your 7900GS?

I just installed a second 7900GS yesterday for the same reason you listed - waiting on 8800.. prices to fall. Besides, I wanted to try Sli at some point anyway just to have the experience. I am running WinXP and using the 169.21 driver. I had one 7900GS installed and bought a second used one just before Christmas (@~1/3 the cost of a used 8800GT) to install in the second slot on my ASUS A8N-SLi Premium board. Didn't really know what to expect installation-wise but it was smooth.

As for performance, the best I can tell you is my 3DMark '03 score went from ~17000 to ~28000. I'm expecting significantly better scores in '05 and '06 too. In the "real world" I am seeing better frame-rates in few games. I don't play the latest games but I can tell you that complex sequences in Battle For Middle Earth II seem smoother.

 

[WT]

Hey Edge ... I actually just put a second 7900GS card into one of my rigs last week, and I run CoH on that PC as well. I haven't finished the work yet as I had purchased a Zalman vf900 to pair up with the other card only to find out when eyeballing the upgrade that the 4 backing bolts on the lower card prevent the upper card's fan from spinning !!! I'm going to grind half of each bolt down to get it to fit. The 7900GS card that I had initially was voltmodded from 1.2 to 1.4 and benchmarks within about 20% of my 7900GT. Adding the second card brought my 3dMark06 scores out to around 7500, with my bottleneck being the Opteron 165 @ 2.6.

 

[rocketbubba]

Just wanted to add onto my earlier post and what WT wrote.

The processor I'm using is a X2 4400 running at default speed. With a single 7900GS my 3DMark '05 score was 8102 - running two 7900GS' in SLi the score moved up to 11472. My 3DMark '06 score went from 4511 to 7240, which is a similar score to what WT wrote.

Let us know how you did.