Why 2 video cards

As a gamer, the viability of your entire PC setup would be subject to the whims of a title's developers. The other side of the issue with running two graphics cards is obvious, but rarely gets the attention it should. Space is a huge concern when installing a second card. You'll need a motherboard with an appropriate number of PCIe slots, sure, but you'll also need enough clearance inside the chassis to support these GPUs which continue to increase in size.

And, that's not just physical space, but also space for heat. Two GPUs can easily generate twice as much heat inside a chassis and can cause other components, like the CPU, to work harder, further increasing temperature concerns.

These include: Running two cards requires both significant power and storage from your PC. So, be sure your gaming PC has enough wattage before purchasing multiple cards.

Not all games perform well with multiple cards, and some games may run even slower. Two video cards running in close proximity will produce more heat and additional noise.

SLI and CrossFire can sometimes cause a glitch called micro stuttering that makes the video look choppy. This often depends on your video driver, not the game itself. So, you might have to tweak your driver settings to get the game working yourself. For the Average Gamer For the average gamer, we think two graphics cards is unnecessary. After that, when your GPU is two generations old, that's when you scrap them both and get a new card.

This still means you'll have to deal with the cons of SLI, but it allows you to wait a little bit longer before dropping wads of cash on a brand new card—you can buy an older card for cheap and eke more performance out. Of course, you could always just sell your old card on eBay and buy another single, high-end GPU too, which will save you the trouble of SLI and Crossfire. In the end, it's all about how much work you want to do. Some dual-GPU configurations may not require any work, but it's hard to know that out of the gate—you always run the risk of having more work when you get multiple cards.

But in some cases, it may be worth the trouble. Photo by Gregg Tavares. Have a question or suggestion for Ask Lifehacker? What do you guys do?

Do you buy two cards at once, buy one card and SLI it later, or always stick with single-card configs? Graphics cards are responsible for rendering the images displayed on your computer monitor. Videos, games and video-editing software benefit most from having a dedicated graphics card. Installing a second card increases performance and allows you to make use of graphical options that may not be feasible with a single card.

The primary reason for using multiple graphics cards is the noticeable increase in performance while gaming or doing video rendering. The load is shared between the two cards, which frees up CPU resources and results in higher frame rates. This also lets you enable higher quality graphics settings for a more visually pleasing experience.