Haswell vs Kaveri

It hasn't worked well in any incarnation, going back to 780G and GF8300. For that matter, CF and SLI have been problematic since 2005 and people still buy into that too. And actually even Voodoo2 SLI had some problems with scanline artifacts and vsync. It is a bit of a mystery as to why people buy into it over and over. It's not entirely stupidity or ignorance. Andrew's "wanting to believe" sounds like a good explanation. Faith fueled by PR speak.
 
CF/SLI were, until recently, the only way to game with multiple monitors and both work well for most games unless you're obsessed with microstutter.
 
CF/SLI were, until recently, the only way to game with multiple monitors and both work well for most games unless you're obsessed with microstutter.
It's just that PC games / drivers have a hard enough time maintaining a stutter-free experience on one card. I suppose the flip side is games are stuttering anyway so why not add a little more in exchange for about 50% more speed.

But anyway - the appeal some people see in pairing weakling IGPs with middle of the road discrete cards, backed by a pokey CPU is a curious thing. It has been pretty common in the budget-range AMD gaming notebooks though, and I've read plenty of forum threads about disappointing results.
 
It hasn't worked well in any incarnation, going back to 780G and GF8300. For that matter, CF and SLI have been problematic since 2005 and people still buy into that too. And actually even Voodoo2 SLI had some problems with scanline artifacts and vsync. It is a bit of a mystery as to why people buy into it over and over. It's not entirely stupidity or ignorance. Andrew's "wanting to believe" sounds like a good explanation. Faith fueled by PR speak.

yup I bought an x2 twice and learned my lesson. The 38x0 series and then 5x00 series. No more cross fire for me.

Star citizen will just get the fastest single gpu card I can get at the time and that's all. I rather just upgrade more often
 
SLI can make sense if you're going with 2 top end cards. Twin 780s for example. Many of the AFR problems have been minimized by the NVIDIA software guys. Still it's not something I would do if you expect a problem-free experience for new releases or lesser known games.
 
It's a pretty weird review. If the goal is to assess Dual Graphics as a potential performance/price trade-off, then the APU of choice should be the A10-7700K (or 7600) and it should be compared to to a Core i3-4330 + R7 250 setup.
 
I can agree with that, to a certain extent. But if the R7-260X is equipped on both the i3 and the A10, and the A10 still loses, and also ends up costing more, then the summary point of that article still stands. Budget gaming is likely better off with the i3 than the A10, almost no matter what video card you choose.
 
I can agree with that, to a certain extent. But if the R7-260X is equipped on both the i3 and the A10, and the A10 still loses, and also ends up costing more, then the summary point of that article still stands. Budget gaming is likely better off with the i3 than the A10, almost no matter what video card you choose.

Since the R7 260X is way past the point at which Dual Graphics can be useful, that was pretty much a foregone conclusion.

But with the R7 250 on both sides and CPUs of similar price, the result might have been different.
 
It's a pretty weird review. If the goal is to assess Dual Graphics as a potential performance/price trade-off, then the APU of choice should be the A10-7700K (or 7600) and it should be compared to to a Core i3-4330 + R7 250 setup.
If the 7600 is not available on the market (as stated in the article) then it makes sense to match their AMD setup with a similarly or cheaper priced Intel setup. That turns out to be the 260.

Since the R7 260X is way past the point at which Dual Graphics can be useful, that was pretty much a foregone conclusion. But with the R7 250 on both sides and CPUs of similar price, the result might have been different.
Yes, but the Intel price would be even lower too. It's all a matter of whether you want price apples to apples or discrete GPU.

I think one has to be out of his mind to chose an asymmetric dual GPU solution either way.
 
AMD is in a trap competing with itself. Any interested budget gamer will get a Richland or even 5800K, not a Kaveri. Even the 7700K is priced similar to an i5.

I told a buddy to get an A6-6400K though (with 2x4GB ddr 2400), the price just came down a little, just a couple euros over a 5400K. He wanted a desktop PC, and not completely being unable to play if doing some LAN gaming with old games on occasion. That's only a dual core but it will do. For every other use (browsing, video, documents etc.) the CPU is perfect.
 
And actually even Voodoo2 SLI had some problems with scanline artifacts and vsync.

I never had a problem with V2 SLI, nor with the V5 (but always played vsync off, double bufffering and 75 to 85Hz)
Well the Voodoo2 SLI problem was most often, framerate no higher than with a single one because I was CPU limited as f*ck. It gave free 1024x768. Occasionally useful at 800x600.

Now the modern SLI/CF.. you can read about unsupported games, poor scaling, stuttering, framerate graphs shaped like saw waves, and it never really changed. Yea, do not want :). I suppose the support is Windows-only as well.
The *asymetrical* one : it's not new and it was the worst thing ever on day one. Doesn't change. It's a checkbox feature and the redeeming feature must be than people that buy into the platform with the idea of doing it never get to do it eventually (if they do get a card they end up buying a 2x/3x faster one)
 
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