3 8800 GT's or 2 GTX 260's

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UtteRuiN

Junior Member
Oct 12, 2008
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Hi, guys I'm a long time reader but this is my first post. Looking for some advice. I just got a new Dell 2408WFP monitor as a gift from my wife. I have an eVga 780i FTW mobo with 2 eVga 8800 GT SSC video cards and am not sure if they are really enough to drive this monitor @ 1920x1200 during gaming at the highest setting possable. I use Vista Ultimate x32 as an OS. I can buy another 8800 GT SSC for $103.00 us and run 3 way SLi. Or should I get 2 GTX 260? (my budget is $600.00 us max) I'm not sure which is the better bang for the buck. Any and all advice/suggestions are welcome and needed (except comments on the monitor as it was a gift and not my choice ;) ) Thanks one and all!
 
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MarcVenice

Moderator Emeritus <br>
Apr 2, 2007
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The monitor is nice, so don't sweat it. Welcome to Anandtech btw.

What do you mean with you're not sure if they are enough to run your monitor at 1920*1280? Have you allready noticed games got unplayable at the highest settings? Two overclocked 8800gt's are still very fast, and as far as I know they have sufficient memory and memory bandwith to run most if not all games at 1920*1280 just fine, unless you're looking for 8x AA, but that's just silly. I don't think you have to get a third 8800gt at all, let alone two gtx260's.
 
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lavaheadache

Diamond Member
Jan 28, 2005
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fyi, 3 way sli is impossible with 8800 GT's. Only 1 sli finger per card. You need 512 GTS's or 8800 gtx's or 9800 GTX's
 
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UtteRuiN

Junior Member
Oct 12, 2008
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I didn't know that about the 8800's not being 3way, thanks. Yes I notice slow downs on some games like Crysis, Supreme Commander and a couple other when I push the settings.
 
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MarcVenice

Moderator Emeritus <br>
Apr 2, 2007
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Crysis is to be expected, but two 8800gt in SLI should run it at 1920*1280 pretty well, just don't use any AA. Supreme Commander will run just fine on a single 8800gt, but once you start pushing the amount of units into the upper hundres, like 500+, you're going to want a quadcore at 3.0ghz. So, knowing Crysis is just a shitty game, imo, and Supreme Commander is CPU limited instead of GPU limited, still think you need to ugprade?
 
Keysplayr

Keysplayr

Elite Member
Jan 16, 2003
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Originally posted by: lavaheadache
fyi, 3 way sli is impossible with 8800 GT's. Only 1 sli finger per card. You need 512 GTS's or 8800 gtx's or 9800 GTX's
Click to expand...

GT/GTS of any model, be it 320/640 or 512 are not Tri-SLI capable either. Only 8800GTX, 9800GTX(+), GTX260/280 are Tri-SLI capable.
 
Murloc

Murloc

Diamond Member
Jun 24, 2008
5,382
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I would take 2 gtx 260, because tri-sli is less scalable I think. Anyway you can't do a trisli with 8800gt
 
solofly

solofly

Banned
May 25, 2003
1,421
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Greedy nvidia demands you only purchase high-end cards if you want tri configuration, unlike Ati where pretty much anything goes...
 
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UtteRuiN

Junior Member
Oct 12, 2008
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So you?re saying my QX9650 (I have 4 gigs of mem in this mobo) is choking in Sup Com? Hmmm. That would sux considering the amount of $ spent when it hit the market. Thanks on the video card perspective. Your probability right that I don?t "need" to upgrade. (But oh it's so much fun, lol...) Would it be better to go to x64 OS for the increased memory benefits in gaming? would that help? (I've held off due to compatibility of some apps I really like.)
 
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MarcVenice

Moderator Emeritus <br>
Apr 2, 2007
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Hmm, no, considering your qx9650 something else is probably awry in SupCom. 3.2gb of ram vs 4gb isn't going to matter either. Are you getting bad fps in SupCom when playing on a skirmish map, or when playing online? Because online the game will only run as fast as the slowest player.
 
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UtteRuiN

Junior Member
Oct 12, 2008
7
0
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Thanks everyone for the help! MarcVenice skirmish maps my fps are all over the map 60/14/5/32 ect, ect... (it's the fourteens and fives that bother me) and seem to have gotten worse with this larger monitor (24 16:10 vs. 19 4:3) I also just assumed that going from a 19" @ a res of 1280x1024 to a 24" with a greater native res was the culprit because I took a hit in CoD4, A Creed, LotR II, Frontlines. My online stuff is still ok cuz I really dumb down the settings/res during play.

PS... My mem always shows up at 2557mb total in the little usage app I run. Although it does show correctly in Control Panel\System as 4 gigs (yes I know all m$ x32 have a problem addressing greater than 3.5 gigs) but I've never gotten greater than that 2557. I reformat all the time, with all driver updates and after I've loaded/unloaded a lot of games/apps.
 
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UtteRuiN

Junior Member
Oct 12, 2008
7
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Hi MarcVenice, I found it and thank you forall the info. I'm using my monitors built-in scaling, not the cards. Should I switch to nVidias scaling? The setting with the non-fixed aspect ratio? I have never messed with those setting assuming the the monitors native scaler was alway better.
 
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MarcVenice

Moderator Emeritus <br>
Apr 2, 2007
5,664
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No I didn't mean that kind of scaling. I ment to ask if SLI was working correctly. AFAIK CoD4 should run like a champ on sli-ed 8800gt's at 1920*1280, but if it doesn't, maybe 1 of your 8800gt's isn't working, or SLI isn't scaling properly. You should try and crossreference your 3dmark06 score with those of other people with similar PC's, or crossreference them with reviews from websites who used sli-ed 8800gt's.
 
Keysplayr

Keysplayr

Elite Member
Jan 16, 2003
21,219
54
91
Originally posted by: happy medium
You can use 3 9800gt's in sli too. Asus has em...


http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814121268
Click to expand...

Are you certain of this? I know the pic shows 2 SLI bridge connections, but nowhere have I seen indicated that these cards will tri-SLI. Not even on ASUS's technical description on their site or even in reviews of this card that I have searched for. The biggest "tout" for this card is the Hybrid SLI power, and HDMI over DVI via DVI-HDMI dongle. And of course the unconventional cooling.

So, unless you have seen otherwise, and have a link to someone running these in Tri-SLI, I don't think these support it. ASUS just might be using that particular PCB for this card.

So, you need to post a link before the OP goes and decides to buy 3 of these and finds that they don't Tri-SLI.

Always room for doubt though. Please give a link to a review/data that shows they can Tri.

Erring on the side of caution here. ;)
 
Zebo

Zebo

Elite Member
Jul 29, 2001
39,398
19
81
Originally posted by: UtteRuiN
So you?re saying my QX9650 (I have 4 gigs of mem in this mobo) is choking in Sup Com? Hmmm. That would sux considering the amount of $ spent when it hit the market. Thanks on the video card perspective. Your probability right that I don?t "need" to upgrade. (But oh it's so much fun, lol...) Would it be better to go to x64 OS for the increased memory benefits in gaming? would that help? (I've held off due to compatibility of some apps I really like.)
Click to expand...
x64 won't help unless mobo supports "memory hole remapping"


All you ever wanted to know about 4gb ram barriers.

 
happy medium

happy medium

Lifer
Jun 8, 2003
14,387
480
126
Originally posted by: keysplayr2003
Originally posted by: happy medium
You can use 3 9800gt's in sli too. Asus has em...


http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814121268
Click to expand...

Are you certain of this? I know the pic shows 2 SLI bridge connections, but nowhere have I seen indicated that these cards will tri-SLI. Not even on ASUS's technical description on their site or even in reviews of this card that I have searched for. The biggest "tout" for this card is the Hybrid SLI power, and HDMI over DVI via DVI-HDMI dongle. And of course the unconventional cooling.

So, unless you have seen otherwise, and have a link to someone running these in Tri-SLI, I don't think these support it. ASUS just might be using that particular PCB for this card.

So, you need to post a link before the OP goes and decides to buy 3 of these and finds that they don't Tri-SLI.

Always room for doubt though. Please give a link to a review/data that shows they can Tri.

Erring on the side of caution here. ;)
Click to expand...

I got the info here Keys,

http://www.tcmagazine.info/com...shownews=21216&catid=2

 
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UtteRuiN

Junior Member
Oct 12, 2008
7
0
0
Thank you everyone, MarcVenice thank you again for the help/insights. My scores are in line with everyone else's (not OC'd that is). Lavaheadache and everyone, thanks for saving me a big headache on tri SLi cards. Zebo, Thanks for the x64 and memory hole mapping, I do not believe my Mobo supports it as I couldn?t find it in the bios. (Although I did read up on it) Yesterday I ordered 2 MSI N280GTX-T2D1G OC GeForce GTX 280. We'll see how they do ;)
 
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