660Ti SLI

[bambam]

Looked for a suitable gpu upgrade for my 660Ti (currently 35fps on BF4 @ 3600x1600) and, with the idea from ear-1-on-wig the most bang-for-the-buck seems to be..... a second 660Ti in SLI mode, for my 3 monitors...

So we'll see, either (a) I'll get the 70-80% fps uptick as in benchmarks or (b) I'll enter a world of driver hell with lower framerate than just one card.

Bambam

[Para]

i have been running two ancient ATI 5770's in crossfire for years now and they run BF3 on high/ultra perfectly, never had a single driver issue, will be interesting to see how they cope with BF4 though
If you cant run BF4 with a 660Ti frankly your needing a slap or one less monitor...........

[LuckyCombatPotato]

Does it worth it ?
I have a AMD 7970 with 3 GB and can get a second one from work. Not sure i wanna lose any time doing it.

Bamz let u know the outcome ? Would you really notice the difference on your screen ? Well on your multiple screens Bamz

Para, how do you setup the crossfire ? is it just "plug and play" ?

[MudShark]

Not simple - you need a motherboard that can support 2 graphics cards for starters. You need a power supply that can power them both and you usually need a small cable to join them together.

[Para]

its very simple Tayto, but you need two identical cards, just uninstall ALL gpu drivers first, fit the second card, connect the power cable and the little sli cable that links the two cards together (this comes with all modern cards now) then just power on and download the latest drivers and application profiles and away you go !

the difference for me was huge when BF3 came out i was running only one ATI 5770HD (a cheap low powered card) and bf was a stuttering mess, and i had no money for an upgrade so i bought off ebay an identical 5770 for £40 banged it in, they now run bf3 at mostly High some on ultra settings at 30-35fps i have had no driver or stability issued at all, but i cant comment on Nvidia drivers as i am an ATI whore !

[bambam]

BF3 (and I guess BF4) scale very well with 2x crossfire or SLI.

2x7970 BF3 bechmark (hi-res)

By the way, for crossfire the ribbon cable comes with the cards, for SLI it comes with the motherboard.

Starting with a 7970, I think crossfire/SLI is only really worth the effort if you're running a higher resolution display... A single card will run Ultra 1920x1080 settings at ~80fps (single-card bechmark)

7970's have a 6-pin and a 8-pin pci-e power connection, so your PSU would need to provide two more power cables for an additional card.

[LuckyCombatPotato]

Starting with a 7970, I think crossfire/SLI is only really worth the effort if you're running a higher resolution display... A single card will run Ultra 1920x1080 settings at ~80fps (single-card bechmark)

7970's have a 6-pin and a 8-pin pci-e power connection, so your PSU would need to provide two more power cables for an additional card.

Hmmm yeah i have the ribbon and the MB can fit a second card, but i would need to change the PSU as it is a 850W..
Anyway it looks quite good to me ! Might try that when i'll have a spare time
Cheers for the good review Bamz!

they now run bf3 at mostly High some on ultra settings at 30-35fps i have had no driver or stability issued at all, but i cant comment on Nvidia drivers as i am an ATI whore !

Now that's a good improvment. I had myself a 5770 (or 5790 ?) and changed it for BF3. On the 7970 it looks it doubles the fps !

[bambam]

Installed the new (850W) PSU and second Nvidia 660 Ti for SLI...

Installation was smooth, but still took 2 hours with all the unpicking of the cables. Actual Nvidia setup for sli/surround really was easy and worked immediately without issues.

My original PNY 660 Ti is quite a long card with 1 fan at end, new Zotac is shorter with 2 fans, so actually both cards still get decent airflow (this was a coincidence, but at least I put the cards the right way round so it works).

2 x 660 Ti PNY + Zotac one long, one short so fans work ok

And my (hi-res) frame rates are not +70-80%, they're DOUBLE (tested with BF3 anyway) - my three screens are clearly GPU bound and the 3600x1600 pixel requirement means 2 cards can divide the work easily and still be the bottleneck.

~70 fps with everything on Ultra except AA/AF/motion blur turned OFF (high res screens don't benefit from AA much).

[LuckyCombatPotato]

nice one Bamz

[LK3da]

damn, now you make me think of getting a second 560ti for me too

[bambam]

The cool thing is for £178 I was able to add a second 660 Ti, and get a better BF3 performance than a £800 GTX Titan (although just about anything is better value that a Titan)...

[Slartibartfast]

The cool thing is for £178 I was able to add a second 660 Ti, and get a better BF3 performance than a £800 GTX Titan (although just about anything is better value that a Titan)

Its shit card..you need buy 670 ..best card!

[LuckyCombatPotato]

Impressive also for the HD7950 ! adding one card will more than double increase the fps !

[bambam]

Impressive also for the HD7950 ! adding one card will more than double increase the fps !

yeah I wondered about that but actually all the SLI/xfire numbers are close to double so really it's saying the 2560x1600 high AA FPS number just easily scales up with any pair of cards in BF3, within a margin of error.

There's a similar thing here if you look at the 780 / sli comparison (but not the 770):