Graphics 8800GTX - VS - 2x 8800GT SLI

Hey guys quick question for you,

I'm putting a new rig together to replace my aging machine, going to be a Q6600 watercooled, with 4gb RAM, on a Abit IN9 32X-MAX board that I've had sitting here waiting for the rest of the goodies for a couple months.

I was originally planning on putting an EVGA 8800GTX in there, as it was getting great reviews, but with all the excitement I've been seeing lately about the 8800GT it has made me wonder if it isn't worth getting two of them and running them in SLI instead of the GTX, especially since the price is near enough the same.

I've never done anything with SLi before, as my last machine was built right when AGP was kind of being phased out 3-4 years ago. (Old machine is P4 Prescott 3.0ghz, 1gb Kingston HyperX PC3200, Radeon 9700 Pro on an Abit IC7-MAX3). So I'm not really sure how to judge the performance of two lesser GPUs vs one greater GPU. When doing SLI is the performance greater than the sum of the parts?

Also one other thing I'm wondering is since the 8800GT is designed for PCIe 2.0 will I lose performance by using it on my IN9 32X-MAX, which while having two full speed x16 PCIe slots, still is only PCIe 1.1?

Anyway, thanks for any advice you can offer

 

The only real difference between the PCI-e 2.0 and 1.1 standards is that the 2.0 specifies that each GFX slot must run at x16 bandwidth and also doubles the amount of power that can be supplied through the slot.

At the very least the current generation od PCI-e 2.0 cards will be backwards compatible because most cards don't saturate the x16 bandwidth (no noticeable performance difference when running at x8) and will still have the additional power connector to make up for the additional power that would come across a PCI-e 2.0 slot.

 

I'd wait the month or so until we see some 780i boards and reviews ect. before going for something.

 

Well, while I suppose I could get a newer motherboard, I already have the IN9 32x-MAX here, and there is no sense in letting a $300 board go to waste. So if we assume that I'll be using this board, would I be better off with the GTX or the two GT cards?

 

Well if you take a look at bit-tech's review of the 8800GT, you will see that 2 GT are faster than 1 single GTX. But if you would like more suggestions wait for the real gurus to give you their advices since I am more or less a newb into this still

 

If you check this page of Legion Hardware review you get a break down of GTSLI with GTX, SLI doesn't work in all cases though. Its worth reading the whole review. This review also have XP vs Vista 64 which is the move I have just done and it would appear to loose you loads of performance.

For me I personally thought it was better to go for two GTs but I managed to get them before retailers bumped the price up, at the prices they are now its harder to justify as its an extra £80-100 for 2GTs at which point the 8800GTX is better value overall.

 

Hmm.. Thanks for the link.

It definitely would appear that there is much to be gained by using a 8800GT SLI configuration over the GTX. From the article, the only downsides were additional power consumption and additional heat output. The power consumption shouldn't be too big a problem, and I was planning on water cooling the GPU anyway.

As far as price goes, two 8800GT would only cost me about US $40 more, and for the performance gained, I'd say it's worth it.

Thanks for all the info guys.

 

I'm going to a quad sli 8800gt watercooled and sure under a 20% light overclock, what you think?

 

SLi isn't really worth it tbh. Ultra.

 

I know its not really the question, but why not look into the new 512mb GTS's? Just one card was getting better fps's over a GTX.

Sam

Ninja Edit: Check this out: 8800gts 512

 

i agree, get one single GTX and wait for the next most powerful card

the new GTS is a bit unbalanced TBH, a little more processing power, but not enough memory bandwidth. just look at it struggle at memory bandwidth intensive games such as Prey. it only shines when memory bandwidth is not used as much as shader processing power.

 

Which works out nicely tbh - you can have mindmelting performance for people who have lower res', but then sell a GTX/Ultra to people who need high-res (and high bandwidth) performance.