Go 8800gt SLI or new card

[Murdalicious]

Hi guys, first off I'm currently running
q6600
evga 750i
4gb ram
22inch monitor @ 1650 x 1050 Res
8800gt overclocked.


I need some opinions for the following options. I have a friend who has a 8800gt and I was thinking of buying it off him ($100 CAD) so I can SLI my rig BUT he also wouldn't mind buying mine for the same price so that he can SLI! Should I buy his 8800gt or sell my 8800gt ($100 CAD). If i do sell my 8800gt what card should I get, I'm willing to spend about $200 after selling my 8800gt.

Another thing is, my friend's younger brother has a 9800gt, so I was thinking, He can sell me his 8800gt for $100 (CAD) and with it buy a 9800gt and grab his brother's 9800gt so he can SLI, and buy his brother a $100 card? We'll both end up spending $100 each and able to SLI?

I read that 8800gt/9800gt SLI can trade blows with a 4890, Tho the 4890 has 1g ram, it wouldn't matter because of my Res being @ 1650x1050, right?


Opinions please!!

Thanks

 

[vj8usa]

If you can get a 4890/GTX275/GTX280 for about the same net cost after selling your 8800, I'd do so. You'd get more VRAM and have generally more consistent gameplay (higher framerates in games that don't scale well with SLI, and no microstutter/etc.).

As for VRAM, I've found myself maxing out my 512MB quite a few times at 1680x1050. My latest example is Dawn of Discovery a.k.a Anno 1404, where I get occasional stuttering even with AA off, and massive stuttering with 4xAA on.

 

[Wuzup101]

I'd go for the 4890 if that is an option that you are considering (I don't know how much they run in canada). It would give you more freedom and less worry (about games that don't scale well with SLI and such... as a poster above pointed out).

 

[Murdalicious]

Wouldn't a 4890 be overkill for my res @ 1650x1050?

 

[Denithor]

1) Sell your 8800GT to your friend for $100CAD.
2) Buy this XFX 4870 1GB for $165CAD or this XFX 4890 for $220CAD.
3) Be happy.

In many cases the 2x8800GT will outperform a 4870/4890 (sometimes by a pretty significant margin) but in any cases where you exceed the frame buffer (512MB is low by today's standards) your gaming experience will turn to shit. If you're sensative to microstutter (which you won't know until you try SLI) you will not enjoy gaming on 2x8800GT even if the average fps is higher than with a single faster card.

If your buddy is willing to buy your card, let him deal with the potential SLI issues instead.

EDIT: At this point, with the DX11 next-gen cards right around the corner, I'd recommend getting the 4870 1GB instead of the 4890. You'll save $55CAD (25% savings versus 4890) and lose (at most) 10% performance (and probably wouldn't notice a difference at 16x10 to tell the truth).

 

[Murdalicious]

Thanks for the input guys!

Denithor, with DX-11 cards around the corner, should I wait for them to hit the market and possibly a price drop for a 4870?

 

[Denithor]

If you're not in a rush and your buddy will still buy your card then, sure, why not.

What you should do in the meantime is try out SLI on one of the rigs available. Take your card to his house and set up SLI on his rig and try some gaming. If one or the other is sensative to the microstutter/etc that one should not get the SLI rig. If you both are - heh - maybe his little bro isn't?

Good luck either way.

 

[Murdalicious]

Thanks Denithor, trying out the 8800gt sli in one of our rigs is a good start!

thanks again!

 

[rgallant]

I found my sli 8800gts 512's running out of vram and had to turn setting's down even at 1680 x 1050 @ 60+ fps-errors in vista logs telling me hard drive thashing had occured-ran out of vram , slow downs ,they have the horse power in sli but fill the vram because of it, mostly in mass effect, stalker CS ,and crysis\wh , far cry2.

-get the 4890 1gig ,I saw one for 185.00 cnd last week but can not find it now-sold out
-keep looking at cnd shop bots I see them for 220+ now. but ,you said 200.00 net? or including the $ 100 if so for a few more bucks you get a top of the line card now.while you have a buyer.
-even better that card can be crossfire into the latter part of 2010 and be current =gtx285sli
-a $100 upgrade sounds cheap, if it will do the job- that's good , but if it does not , it's a waste of a hundred , so spend a 120+ and get the big guy.
my 00.02

 

[happy medium]

Originally posted by: Murdalicious
Thanks for the input guys!

Denithor, with DX-11 cards around the corner, should I wait for them to hit the market and possibly a price drop for a 4870?

Yes in this case you should wait and sli the cards for cheap.. I don't know why you would buy a ATI card with a sli motherboard. No offence but thats just plain stupid advice.
If you don't want to wait.......?
I'd sell the card and grab a gtx 260/275 whichever you can afford and mabe sli later on. sli'd gtx's will at least equal performance if not be faster then the next generation of cards.

 

[rgallant]

your right about the sli board ,I guess I was looking too far into the future ,new mb and a second 4890
-and no one asked him what his psu is for sli .

 

[Murdalicious]

I have the Zalman ZM750 Power Supply, will that handle GTX sli?

 

[happy medium]

Originally posted by: Murdalicious
I have the Zalman ZM750 Power Supply, will that handle GTX sli?

Easily! 4- 20 amp rails? nice!

 

[Murdalicious]

Hey i hear great things about GTS 250SLI, would this be a good option for me?

take a look at this
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/v [...] 0-sli.html

 

[nenforcer]

The Geforce GTS 250 is just a rebranded 9800GTX+ if I'm not mistaken.

You would need 4 open slots available to do SLI which is why I started with the single slot solutions for SLI.

I have the PC Power and Cooling 750W Silencer and it handles the 8800GT SLI just fine. You should be able to handle even the GTS 250 SLI just fine since it's 55nm I believe.

I recently had some trouble getting Cryostatis to run smoothly with PhysX on my E6600 so if you can wait until October when the new DX11 parts are suppose to come out you might be able to get a much better deal!

 

[Denithor]

If you get a GTS 250 make sure it's the 1GB model or it is simply a rebranded 9800GTX+ (and the 512MB model will suffer from exactly the same issues as your current 9800GT). The problem is a GTS 250 simply doesn't offer that much of a performance boost over your current 9800GT - you would need to buy two for SLI right now to see a real improvement. (GTS 250 is just a faster clocked 9800GTX which is just a faster clocked 8800GTS 512MB - and they all use the same G92 core that is in your 8800GT, just with the full 128 stream processors enabled instead of the 112 on your core.)

I wouldn't call putting an ATi video card on an SLI board stupid. I call it buying the best value in performance cards available today (4870 1GB @ 165CAD is just stupid cheap) and using it for quite a while - certainly into next year when the DX11 cards have been out for a few month, driver support has improved and any major bugs/flaws have been found and corrected. Then you can make the decision of either selling the 4870 to get into the DX11 hardware (if it's shown to be a major improvement and you have Vista or Win7) on your current system or selling the motherboard/cpu/ram/gpu and refreshing the whole system (by the time a 4870 1GB begins to hold you back at 16:10 your Q6600 may be a limiting factor as well).

There are reasons to do some things that don't make a lot of sense at first glance. If you note the first system in my sig - I have two GTX 260s on a P5Q Pro - which does not support SLI in any way, shape or form. Which might seem stupid to you also - until I tell you that I run F@H on both cards and they do not have to be in SLI mode to function perfectly well for this application. Can I game with them in SLI? No. But that's not the purpose. So don't judge a suggestion without considering all the angles, please.