2 1gb or 4 512mb video cards?

Is it better to have 2 big video cards or 4 smaller ones all running in crossfire? For example: 2 1gb video cards or 4 512mb video cards. By better I mean better performance wise. My theory is that by having 4 cards I would be distributing the load over a larger surface area, so to speak. But would the addition of 2 more video cards end up slowing down overall performance and increase the stress on the north bridge?|||It really depends. The big problem with 4 video cards is that most motherboards have the cut the PCI-E bandwidth for more cards. With two cards there is still plenty of bandwidth, but add twice as many and the cards may have half the bandwidth they did previously. It also depends significantly on if the cards can even use the memory they have. If you are going for lower end cards, they often have far more memory than is needed. Most video gaming doesn't need more than 512MB of ram, unless you're running at 1080P resolution with 2-4X AA. Lower end cards with 1GB of ram can't even run at that resolution because their GPUs are far too weak to handle it and not suffer horrible framerates. I would gladly take my modified ATI 4850 with 512MB of ram over an ATI 5450 with 1GB of ram, or even two 5450's with 1GB of ram each. I cannot emphasis this more, for most games at consumer resolutions, the GPU matters far far more than the amount of memory. Further things also take into account, like the memory types, memory frequencies as well as the memory bandwidth.



But to answer your question, the 4 cards would be faster, simply because they have 4GPUs. Though because of bandwidth limitations they might not be that much faster.|||If your gaming under 1650x1050 than a 512mb 5770 vs 1gb 5770 will be no biggie. 1920x1080 however, there will be a difference. at 2560x1600 the 512mb card will not work.



A 2gb GT 220 vs a 512mb 9800gtx is no contest. The 9800gtx will spank the other card.



A video card is a lot more than just the amount of Video RAM. There are the amount of shaders to consider, and the type of ram.



You would obviously need a motherboard that supports 4 video cards like an EVGA X58 classified, or a MSI 890FX.



Technically you could grab a single slot XFX 5770. have 4 of those for $600

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as…



But it would be worth your while just to grab a single 5970 for $600 and have the remaining slots open for a second one.|||it is generally faster to run in 4way since u get the same memoory and more cores BUT.



alot of games cannot use that kind resources.



i would go for a 2 way crossfire bec games are more efficient with it.



4 WAY crossfire is not efficient and alot of games will only use 2 of the 4. ONLY USE 4 CARDS if you are doing benchmarking and not play games on it