Adding a profile doesn't guarantee any kind of scaling or that scaling and/or the game will work properly. Many games have individual quirks that have to be worked around.
Also ATi allows forcing of AFR in applications but again that isn't a guarantee that things will work.
The fact is both SLI and Crossfire require constant driver "coddling", well in excess of what a single card requires. For that reason it isn't a robust or long-term solution but customers pay more for it. This to me is a counter-intuitive solution.
That?s certainly true but the fact is you?ve paid money for three of them, plus you have to endure the thermals for all three of them even if you?re only getting the performance out of one.
Now before you mention good cases I have a Thermaltake Armor with two intake fans (including a 25 cm side fan) and four exhaust fans but my single 8800 Ultra still gets pretty toasty in many situations, enough to rev its fan to 100%. Three of them would be like a jet engine with its after-burner activated.
That's one way to look at it. I look at it from the point of view that two cards are more of a liability since getting rid of two of them is harder to get rid of than one., especially when the next generation comes along and a single card is faster and has better thermals than both combined.
The 3870 X2 would probably be harder to get rid of than a regular single card too.
Sure we do, try reading the forum threads that you moderate, including the 19 page Unreal 2 engine stuttering issue that been going on since the November 2006 launch, many games of which are listed as TWIMTBP titles.
Yes but you don't really play games. In the last six months for example list the games you've finished and then I'll list mine.
Running a UT3 session once in a while (which you yourself admit have issues with tri-SLI in) doesn?t really prove much.
When I pay a lot of money for hardware I expect it to work. In my experience the more cards you have the more problems you have but the more money you also pay, so it's a very self-defeating path.
This why I'll never go down the SLI/Crossfire route unless something dramatically changes with the whole paradigm.
Reviews mean diddly squat given most reviewers don't play plays games except for the purposes of generating manual Fraps runs.
The G80 series looked great in reviews but it wasn't until after I sat down to try to play games did the numerous issues crop up. At launch approximately half of my 70+ games issues had issues and if I went tri-SLI now it?d be the same nightmare all over again, if not worse.
No thanks, once was more than enough. :thumbsdown: