I have very few motherboards with 2 or more PCI-E 16x slots (if any) and very few PCI-E graphics cards. Also the asking prices are still kinda high for many of these cards and boards. Thirdly I'm missing most of the other essential parts like CPU's and PSU's that will work with these heavy power usage systems.
The lowest part of the wave hasn't hit there yet, so I'm not buying yet 😜
That and I already have 3 multicore systems with PCI-E graphics cards and one potential more. Last but not least, I prefer a setup with more recent mid-range cards which require less power and thus a less expensive PSU, less cooling and are easier to work with imo.

I expect the older PCI-E graphics cards to still loose value in the (near) future btw, so I'm playing the waiting game 😜
I realize SLI/Crossfire has a magic ring to it, but the magic hasn't hit me yet I guess.

I'm still kinda stuck in the age of AGP 🤣!

I was looking into it about a year ago, but decided to not go into it. The hardware from the PCIe era isn't very interesting and the builds would be very uninspiring. Maybe a crazy ESA build with certified components.

It is more expensive then older systems, most of the dual PCIE boards I have are old Opteron workstation boards and they need E-ATX cases. The cool thing about E-ATX cases is nobody wants them anymore (huge) and I picked up a few locally cheap, plus they have room for those older large cards (and plenty of 80MM fans for cooling).

The thing with collecting for over a decade is you either have to go older or newer or you get bored. I have all the 8bit systems I wanted to mess with and after hitting the AGP era wall I decided to try PCIE era and SLI just looked interesting. While gaming PCIE cards are still getting cheaper, it seems like the system to run them in are going straight to the scrapper along with the problems with bad solder joints from the switch away from lead solder. People just are not saving the older systems like they used to with 286 to early Pentiums.

Unknown_K wrote:

It is more expensive then older systems, most of the dual PCIE boards I have are old Opteron workstation boards and they need E-ATX cases. The cool thing about E-ATX cases is nobody wants them anymore (huge) and I picked up a few locally cheap, plus they have room for those older large cards (and plenty of 80MM fans for cooling).

The thing with collecting for over a decade is you either have to go older or newer or you get bored. I have all the 8bit systems I wanted to mess with and after hitting the AGP era wall I decided to try PCIE era and SLI just looked interesting. While gaming PCIE cards are still getting cheaper, it seems like the system to run them in are going straight to the scrapper along with the problems with bad solder joints from the switch away from lead solder. People just are not saving the older systems like they used to with 286 to early Pentiums.

People used to put old and "useless" computers on the sidewalk back when Athlon (XP) was new. These days there are underground waste bin thingies and recycle centers which don't really allow you to "peek" around in. But also many people try to sell their old systems instead of tossing them out in the hopes someone will pay some money for them and you can find good deals there...but you'll find just as many bad deals for them (like people asking something like 40 euro for a GF FX5200 AGP).
One strange thing is that 3DFX cards are getting way more expensive here, it's as if people are starting to realize there are actually people (people like us 😁 ) interested in this old junk. The bad thing is that it actually jacks up prices but at the least it's not going to the scrappers anymore.

Btw, when was the switch to leadless solder anyway?? I only know about the GF7 and GF8 graphics cards having issues with needing to be baked in an oven 🤣

I used to have such a collection and the results in modern games can be impressive but very costly after the second or third system. I had a matched pair of 7900GTX Duo for quad sli along with a lot of other Nvidia cards but there is a lot more problems dealing with them than 3DFX. Old crossfire systems are almost rare and the master cards (pre x1950) are pricey. For 775 sli system the board is the source of a lot of fuss when dealing with the north bridge and its horrendous cooling issues. Intel chipsets from the time were much easier to work with plus they didn't pull 50-70w when maxed out.

Still want to do a 939 sli rig one day with a pair of 6800 ultras in there. 😎

I just missed an auction with a boxed Geforce 7900. That card would have been nice since I already have one and I have lots of SLI socket 939 boards.
It was sold in a lot with another less intresting boxed PCI-E card and a Radeon 9800 PRO AGP.
All working.

They sold for $8 !!! ($10 shipping, it was on Swedish "Ebay") I had set the alarm 2 min early and when the auction ended I had already lost focus.
You snooze you lose.

Yes I do like SLI / Crossfire setups and I have collected a few 😀.

I have two X1950 Pro 256MB, two HD4870 1024MB, two HD5770, two GF7800 GTX 256MB two GF9600GT, three GF8800GTS 512MB and four more or less working GF7950 GX2 😀.
I also have lots of cards in need of partners.

Edit I forgot the two GF 7800 GTX 256 MB. /Edit

I have had (or built) a few CrossFire/SLI setups over the years, and I come away consistently unimpressed due to the various quirks and bugs that generally come along with them. I currently have a few cards that *could* be SLI or CrossFire, but I either lack a partner card, or a board that would support them.

I've always wanted to assemble a working MultiChrome system though - just to see what it can do. But I've never found the cards for it. The advantage to going with S3 is they will work in any board with multiple PCIe slots.

obobskivich wrote:

I have had (or built) a few CrossFire/SLI setups over the years, and I come away consistently unimpressed due to the various quirks and bugs that generally come along with them. I currently have a few cards that *could* be SLI or CrossFire, but I either lack a partner card, or a board that would support them.

I've always wanted to assemble a working MultiChrome system though - just to see what it can do. But I've never found the cards for it. The advantage to going with S3 is they will work in any board with multiple PCIe slots.

I do not like them for their flawless performance. I like them for their brutal performance 😀.

Only the HD4870 and HD5770 Crossfire setups were configurations I used back in the day.
An overclocked HD4870 was so fast though that one was enough in games that diddnt play nicely with Crossfire.
Overclocked and overvolted it was not silent at all 😁.

I don't collect them, but I still use my old S939 SLI system as a sort of backup rig.

It's an Opteron 185 @ 3GHz sitting on an A8N32-SLI, 4GB of CL2 memory, and two 8800GTS 640MB video cards. One card is an XFX and the other is an Asus, but I copied my overclocked ASUS BIOS over to the XFX card. Both cards appear to the driver as Asus boards running at 630/1500/2000. At that speed, they're nearly as fast as a pair of GTXs in purely synthetic benchmarks. Unfortunately the CPU is a significant bottleneck.

Maybe one day I would like to get a 3-way Sli 8800 Ultra setup just for kicks. I'm using a Maximus V Extreme so finding a motherboard that can provide the needed bandwidth isn't an issue

subhuman@xgtx wrote:

Maybe one day I would like to get a 3-way Sli 8800 Ultra setup just for kicks.

I've thought of this too, either that or a pair of 9800GX2, but the power/heat and lack of a board that supports it (at least currently) is what keeps me away. 😵

Reportedly the higher-end Tri/Quad SLI setups will enable some pretty ridiculous AA levels (I've variably read between 32x and 128x; I know that 3- and 4-way CrossFire enables 32x, which looks pretty slick for older games).

I've got an old 1st gen 2900XT (Well actually two, but the second one I bought as non-working and couldn't fix it myself. I originally intended to run them in crossfire). There were two generations of the 2900XT, the first one had 512MB GDDR3 and then they released the 1GB GDDR4 version when performance results did not meet pre-release speculation and hype.

It's a nice card. They cost a heck of a lot to make, they didn't skimp back then with non-reference designs and lightweight heatsinks. I'm under the impression that they cost more to make than what they sold them for... Puts a heck of a lot of heat out, could easily be outperformed with current-gen budget cards that use a fraction of the energy... Maybe I'll put it in my next rig to help heat up the place a little during the winter.

No, not collecting, but having run a few SLI/Crossfire rigs I've acquired at least some gear: 2x 7800GT/256mb + Asusu A8N-SLI [a rocket in early 2005!], and until I upgraded my system a year ago a pair of inexpensive HD 5770's + and a couple of AM2/3 CF boards was the mainstay for a few years. But now I think I'm happier with one-card solutions and smaller footprint setups.

Oh, and a pair of Voodoo 2 SLi of course!

just a little FYI, you can put two nvidia GeForce 7300 GS PCI-E cards in a SLI system and they'll SLI together without a cable if you enable it in software. I haven't actually done it myself, but I've seen 7300 GS SLI results on hwbot.org so it is possible, some how.

kithylin wrote:

just a little FYI, you can put two nvidia GeForce 7300 GS PCI-E cards in a SLI system and they'll SLI together without a cable if you enable it in software. I haven't actually done it myself, but I've seen 7300 GS SLI results on hwbot.org so it is possible, some how.

Most of the lower-end nVidia SLI cards run bridgeless; 6600LE can also do this. ATi cards are the same way with both the lower end CrossFire X generation cards, and the newest high-end cards (like R9 290X). Drivers will support it out of the box. S3's multi-GPU setup is also bridgeless. Bridgeless usually means less performance though - but the cards that support it usually aren't rockstars to begin with (like 7300GS or 6600LE).

I have a pair of HD4890 cards that I don't think I will ever get rid of for a long time, they're just nice and powerful cards. I now have a single GT 560 ti 448-cores card in my I7 computer, EVGA's FTW edition (factory overclocked) with exotic cooler. I'm planning (hoping) of getting another one of those soon and doing SLI with em.

I too have a pair of 7800 GT's around the house. I also have a GTX 7950 GX2 here somewhere. Back in the day I had two of em, sold one kept the other. I used to have a pair of 8800-GTX's, sold those at one point though.

I wouldn't bother with the 9800gx2 due to the low overall quality and thermals but the gtx295 is better built. The 2900xt to me is one of those cards that I still desire. I liked how that after a lot of work SLI would prove its worth but was never easy like it is now and scaling along with the driver bugs back in the day didn't help. A very good rig got closer to 90% gain (avg was as low as 60%) after the second card was added but less than half of that on the third.

nforce4max wrote:

I wouldn't bother with the 9800gx2 due to the low overall quality and thermals but the gtx295 is better built. The 2900xt to me is one of those cards that I still desire. I liked how that after a lot of work SLI would prove its worth but was never easy like it is now and scaling along with the driver bugs back in the day didn't help. A very good rig got closer to 90% gain (avg was as low as 60%) after the second card was added but less than half of that on the third.

I found out myself later on that the scaling problem was because the systems of the time (mostly dual core systems), I've used for example a pair of 7800 GT's in my 4.5 ghz i7 and tried it with benchmarks with SLI off and SLI on, and found on a fast system the gains were nearly +95% from the second card, even using very old driver versions from around when the cards were common. So the drivers were fine, and the hardware was fine. We just didn't have fast enough computers at the time to realize it.

@Kithylin: That's Interesting...