Any Feedback on a PNY GTX280 ?

[sgrinavi]

I'm sitting here without a video card for my E8600 rig and stumbled on one of these

PNY VCGGTX280XPB GeForce GTX 280 1GB brand new, sealed box, for about $304 shipped.

Sounds like a decent deal

 

[n7]

:Q

Decent deal?

That's insane.

It doesn't show that price for me though...

 

[apoppin]

Holy crap !


where do you see $304?

Original Price: $449.99
You Save: $30.00
$419.99
($379.99 after $40.00 Mail-In Rebate pdf )

i would have bought a 2nd one for that price!
. . . and a SLi MB



i paid the same thing for my BFGtech 280GTX ..

 

[sgrinavi]

I just posted that link for reference. It's on flea-bay from, what appears to be, a solid seller. I pulled the trigger..

Subtotal: US $319.00

Shipping & handling: US $9.99

Total: US $328.99

Less Cashback $25.52


Worse case scenario is I sell it for $300 next month after the ATI's come down. I have had PNY cards recently and had good luck with them, I just wanted a quick reality check before I did something stooooopid.....

THANKS!

 

[apoppin]

You got me all excited

anyway, i DO plan to pick up the 55nm 280 to SLi with my current one
- i don't mind waiting a few months

 

[n7]

Very nice.

 

[CP5670]

Nice buy. Ebay is a good place to look for these things. I've gotten brand new cards off there several times in the past, for considerably less than the going retail prices at the time. My current GTX 280 also came from there for $670 on the launch day, but I got in on various cashback rebates (which all came in) and my final price has been $310.

You need to be a little careful about the warranty though since only some card companies will honor them on ebay purchases, even unopened ones. XFX does, but I believe EVGA does not. Not sure about BFG or PNY.

 

[sourthings]

Originally posted by: apoppin
You got me all excited

anyway, i DO plan to pick up the 55nm 280 to SLi with my current one
- i don't mind waiting a few months

I don't think you'll be able to SLI a 55nm 280 with a 65nm 280, going on past SLI compatibility standards. There will be differences between the two and currently you need identical cards to SLI with nvidia.

 

[apoppin]

yes i will
- don't go by the past in this case

Nvidia is making changes to allow for more flexible SLi

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: sourthings

Originally posted by: apoppin
You got me all excited

anyway, i DO plan to pick up the 55nm 280 to SLi with my current one
- i don't mind waiting a few months

I don't think you'll be able to SLI a 55nm 280 with a 65nm 280, going on past SLI compatibility standards. There will be differences between the two and currently you need identical cards to SLI with nvidia.

Did you know that a user can SLI a 9800GTX (65nm) and a 9800GTX+ (55nm)?
Just FYI.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: keysplayr2003

Originally posted by: sourthings

Originally posted by: apoppin
You got me all excited

anyway, i DO plan to pick up the 55nm 280 to SLi with my current one
- i don't mind waiting a few months

I don't think you'll be able to SLI a 55nm 280 with a 65nm 280, going on past SLI compatibility standards. There will be differences between the two and currently you need identical cards to SLI with nvidia.

Did you know that a user can SLI a 9800GTX (65nm) and a 9800GTX+ (55nm)?
Just FYI.

actually i knew

what driver set made this possible? When did they first allow for [slightly] mixed SLi? Before June?
- and have you tested it out? How well does it scale? Will it also throttle down to the slower of the two cards as AMD cards do?
- actually i *want* to try it out with a 55nm and my current 280 - there shouldn't be a big performance delta between them.

 

[sgrinavi]

Originally posted by: apoppin
[- and have you tested it out? How well does it scale? Will it also throttle down to the slower of the two cards as AMD cards do?
.

I was under the impression that the ATI cards defaulted to the smaller amount of memory, but did not 'throttle down' i.e a 4870 1gb crossfired with a 4850 512mb would perform better than the single 4870, but would be limited to 512mb of gddrX. no?

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: sgrinavi

Originally posted by: apoppin
[- and have you tested it out? How well does it scale? Will it also throttle down to the slower of the two cards as AMD cards do?
.

I was under the impression that the ATI cards defaulted to the smaller amount of memory, but did not 'throttle down' i.e a 4870 1gb crossfired with a 4850 512mb would perform better than the single 4870, but would be limited to 512mb of gddrX. no?

technically it is not a throttle down

it is a lack of performance compared to running two identical cards - whether it be limited by a smaller shared framebuffer, a slower core speed, a small memory interface or perhaps slower vRAM. All of these things may impact performance and will have the same "effect" as throttling back performance - compared to the ideal

my bad with my choice of words

i am done with part one of my 5 GPU comparison .. of the 3, the GTX280 is a very fine choice. i am about to explore CrossfireX-3 on a p35 MB to see if performance is *choked* by the PCIe 1.0 and 4x PCIe for the 2nd GPU - the 4870 which will be running in tandem with my 4870-x2.

hen i rebuild my PC with x48 and get to do it all over again; this time i will try for my max e8600 OC .. so far, just for a test, i booted into Vista and ran programs with it at 450x100 = 4.5Ghz
- there is hope my e8600 will not be a bottleneck