Single ATI vs. SLI Nvidia

[josh6079]

Originally posted by: x80064
So would it be better with a SLI board and one ATI card with the option of running two NV cards in SLI ? Or a Crossfire board, running one NV card with the option of running two ATI cards in Crossfire ?

Due to recent changes in the industry, that question will be hard to ansnwer, especially when we're on the verge of new DX10 hardware.

One thing that is somewhat known and kind of wierd is that some cards perform better on their competitors chipsets than on their own. I've seen benchmarks that gave a 7900GTX better fps on an ATI 3200 chipset than on its own nF4.

Anything wrong with a Mushkin PSU? I've found one that is 550w, SLI support, modular cabling for $85. If I have to get a new PSU I really want one with modular cabling. My case's wiring is just ridiculous anymore.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817812002

That is a nice PSU for the money it looks like. The 12V rails combine and to give you 40Amps total. Mushkins Railfusion is pretty nice from what I hear and I think they were one of the first to implement a combined rail technology.

 

[Gstanfor]

Originally posted by: wicka
The major problem for me with SLI is that two cards with 256MB mem doesn't equal 512MB, and I

really would like to upgrade to 512MB mem. 7900GT's seem really reasonably priced, but none of

them have 512MB each. Only the GTX's do, and those are getting into $450+ apiece.

Not true my friend.
Gainward
Xpertvision
Palit
EVGA
Sparkle

As you can see above, there is quite a selection of 512mb 7900GT's to choose from, most of them offering very good bang for the buck to boot.

Some reviews of the Gainward/Xpertvision/Palit cards (all one manufacturer & one card, just different brand names).
PC Powerplay magazine August 2006
Tweaktown
3DCPU

 

[imported_wicka]

Originally posted by: Gstanfor

Originally posted by: wicka
The major problem for me with SLI is that two cards with 256MB mem doesn't equal 512MB, and I

really would like to upgrade to 512MB mem. 7900GT's seem really reasonably priced, but none of

them have 512MB each. Only the GTX's do, and those are getting into $450+ apiece.

Not true my friend.
Gainward
Xpertvision
Palit
EVGA
Sparkle

As you can see above, there is quite a selection of 512mb 7900GT's to choose from, most of them offering very good bang for the buck to boot.

Some reviews of the Gainward/Xpertvision/Palit cards (all one manufacturer & one card, just different brand names).
PC Powerplay magazine August 2006
Tweaktown
3DCPU

So far I've looked at Newegg and Pricewatch, and nowhere has carried those cards. eVGA.com allows you to preorder it for $390, but the 256MB version is $250! Also, the review I read (TweakTown) put it on par with the X1900GT, nearly $100 less. The X1900XT, which is similarly priced, stomps all over it.

 

[mwmorph]

Originally posted by: wicka
I'd really like the 7950GX2, as it's basically the best of both worlds, and even far down the road I could get another one for (hopefully) vastly cheaper and run quad SLI. The problem is: it's $550. I can get $200-$250 pretty soon for a 7900GT, but $550 is tough.

I guess I could sell my body.

[PRE-EMPTIVE EDIT] In reference to the above: I'm not a chick.

we had a guy become an escort/whore for video cards before(7800gtx 512mb) in the off topic forums a little while ago. He apperantly made quite a bit of cash, but then he found out that most clients looking for manwhores/escorts are male. I guess if you are okay taking and giving bjs to and from other men...

 

[Gstanfor]

It's a weird situation to be sure. Obviously North American retailers don't want to carry the cards, and if they they do, they price gouge for them. Ah well, just means more for the rest of the world, here in Australia they are good value for money.

 

[Elfear]

Originally posted by: wicka
I just bought a new board, and it supports SLI, so I was wondering if I should use it or not. I'm not quite sure how reliable Tom's Hardware is - I've always been wary of them - but their VGA chart shows an X1900XTX beating out an dual 7800GT's on at least a couple of tests. Regardless of the benchmarks, buying one ATI card of similiar performance is a heck of a lot cheaper than buying two Nvidia cards. What would you guys recommend to buy? I'd like to keep it down around $400, but if I end up using SLI I would buy one now and one later so the price could be more than $200 for just one card.

Like I mentioned in another thread, having gone from two 7800GTs@550/1300 to my current card I'd say performance is pretty similiar but I get the benefits of running one card. I don't have any more tearing issues with my LCD (issues that even DXTweaker couldn't fix) and software voltage adjustments are a ton easier to do. I don't have to worry about my cards being run at higher volts 24/7 like I did with the 7800GTs, I can just oc when a game I'd like to play requires it (currently FEAR and Oblivion of the games I have, everything else runs well at stock clocks).

The 7950GX2 is a faster card than the X1900XT/XTX, but IMO it's bang for the buck is no where close. You can get an X1900XT for $309.99 AR , while a 7950GX2 will cost you $519.99 AR. That's a 67% increase in price for a 20-25% increase in performance.

What games do you play most often and what resolution do use?

 

[Dr Asik]

"While two graphics cards linked together will offer a performance boost, the result is rarely anywhere near twofold, so from a budgetary standpoint, it is important to keep in mind that paying twice the money will not yield cost effective results. A 120% - 160% performance increase is a more realistic expectation with multi-card solutions - while in some cases performance will not increase at all. For this reason, multi-card solutions usually don't make sense when using cheaper graphics cards, because a more expensive card will almost always outperform a pair of cheaper ones. With this in mind, SLI/Crossfire solutions do not make sense for most consumers. When one is looking to enable more image quality features or to run games at extreme resolutions such as 2560x1600 that is generating over 4 million pixels per frame, solutions like these are the only answer."

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/07/31/graphics_beginners_2/page10.html

 

[imported_wicka]

Originally posted by: Elfear

Originally posted by: wicka
I just bought a new board, and it supports SLI, so I was wondering if I should use it or not. I'm not quite sure how reliable Tom's Hardware is - I've always been wary of them - but their VGA chart shows an X1900XTX beating out an dual 7800GT's on at least a couple of tests. Regardless of the benchmarks, buying one ATI card of similiar performance is a heck of a lot cheaper than buying two Nvidia cards. What would you guys recommend to buy? I'd like to keep it down around $400, but if I end up using SLI I would buy one now and one later so the price could be more than $200 for just one card.

Like I mentioned in another thread, having gone from two 7800GTs@550/1300 to my current card I'd say performance is pretty similiar but I get the benefits of running one card. I don't have any more tearing issues with my LCD (issues that even DXTweaker couldn't fix) and software voltage adjustments are a ton easier to do. I don't have to worry about my cards being run at higher volts 24/7 like I did with the 7800GTs, I can just oc when a game I'd like to play requires it (currently FEAR and Oblivion of the games I have, everything else runs well at stock clocks).

The 7950GX2 is a faster card than the X1900XT/XTX, but IMO it's bang for the buck is no where close. You can get an X1900XT for $309.99 AR , while a 7950GX2 will cost you $519.99 AR. That's a 67% increase in price for a 20-25% increase in performance.

What games do you play most often and what resolution do use?

The games I play the most are HL2 and Far Cry, but I'm going to buy FEAR and Prey too. One of the reasons I want to upgrade is because Crysis comes out Q4 this year and it looks crazy awesome.

Looking at the Wikipedia page on G80, one of the rumors is that the 8800GT will cost $300-$400. If that is true and it does come out fairly soon (I heard August-October) it would be in perfect placement for my birthday.

 

[Elfear]

Originally posted by: wicka

The games I play the most are HL2 and Far Cry, but I'm going to buy FEAR and Prey too. One of the reasons I want to upgrade is because Crysis comes out Q4 this year and it looks crazy awesome.

What resolution do you use for gaming?

The games you've mentioned will run fine on either of the solutions you've mentioned. The 7950GX2 will have a pretty good advantage in FEAR and PREY. Crysis is yet to be seen which hardware will prove better. I am anxiously awaiting that game as well.

Looking at the Wikipedia page on G80, one of the rumors is that the 8800GT will cost $300-$400. If that is true and it does come out fairly soon (I heard August-October) it would be in perfect placement for my birthday.

The GT model of the 8800 series will probably move down into the $350-400 range after a few months but initially I'll bet it's closer to $450-500. Should prove to be a pretty sweet card though. You can always buy an X1900Xt now for $310 and than wait to see R600 vs. G80 benchmarks in December (or there abouts) to decide if it's worth upgrading to. You wouldn't lose too much in the sale of your X1900XT if you decided it was worth it.

 

[imported_wicka]

Originally posted by: Elfear

What resolution do you use for gaming?

The games you've mentioned will run fine on either of the solutions you've mentioned. The 7950GX2 will have a pretty good advantage in FEAR and PREY. Crysis is yet to be seen which hardware will prove better. I am anxiously awaiting that game as well.

I usually run 1024x768 4xAA 8xAF. Sometimes I drop the AA/AF lower but not usually; I don't go higher res because it gets to the point where it drops below 30-40FPS.

 

[Elfear]

Originally posted by: wicka

I usually run 1024x768 4xAA 8xAF. Sometimes I drop the AA/AF lower but not usually; I don't go higher res because it gets to the point where it drops below 30-40FPS.

What res does your monitor go up to?

 

[imported_wicka]

Originally posted by: Elfear

Originally posted by: wicka

I usually run 1024x768 4xAA 8xAF. Sometimes I drop the AA/AF lower but not usually; I don't go higher res because it gets to the point where it drops below 30-40FPS.

What res does your monitor go up to?

After 1280x1024 it starts getting crappy, but I run my desktop at 1152x864 just because I'm used to it.

 

[Matt2]

SLI will probably give u higher minimum frame rates. Creating "smoother" gameplay. But u will get less IQ and have to live with some of the quirks.

I say higher minimum framerates based on my personal experience with both.

 

[josh6079]

Originally posted by: Matt2
SLI will probably give u higher minimum frame rates. Creating "smoother" gameplay. But u will get less IQ and have to live with some of the quirks.

I say higher minimum framerates based on my personal experience with both.

I don't know, when I used SLI there wasn't anything "smooth" about it. In fact, vsync became a pain in the butt, especially since DXTweaker--the only utility I knew of at the time that could force Triple Buffering--was not punkbuster friendly when attempting to play BF2. When in SLI, if the screen wouldn't rip with vsync it would be choppy and stutter while still giving me good frames. It was weird.

My minimum frames were actually worse than my overclocked card now. In FEAR, I remember looking at nothing but a wall with a barrel fallen on the ground and I had a frame rate of 12 per second with two 7800's. It just depends I guess.

With my ATI card, triple buffering can be forced through Tray Tools and not cause punkbuster issues or make Oblivion crash out of no where. I can also use two monitors now without restarting my computer everytime I decide to use that. To me, all CF/SLI gives you is performance boost in games--and sometimes not even that much of a boost. Don't get me wrong, sometimes it can give you gains up to 100% or more (GRAW and CF for example) but that alone isn't worth the extra trouble or drawbacks that come with it IMO.

 

[fbrdphreak]

What resolution do you plan on gaming at?

I had an X1900XT with dual core AMD and running some games with eye candy on @ 1680x1050 was just not possible. If you plan on gaming in that realm or above, I'd recommend SLI or a 7950GX2 for now. A single X1900XT just won't do it if you ask me

 

[Matt2]

Originally posted by: josh6079

Originally posted by: Matt2
SLI will probably give u higher minimum frame rates. Creating "smoother" gameplay. But u will get less IQ and have to live with some of the quirks.

I say higher minimum framerates based on my personal experience with both.

I don't know, when I used SLI there wasn't anything "smooth" about it. In fact, vsync became a pain in the butt, especially since DXTweaker--the only utility I knew of at the time that could force Triple Buffering--was not punkbuster friendly when attempting to play BF2. When in SLI, if the screen wouldn't rip with vsync it would be choppy and stutter while still giving me good frames. It was weird.

My minimum frames were actually worse than my overclocked card now. In FEAR, I remember looking at nothing but a wall with a barrel fallen on the ground and I had a frame rate of 12 per second with two 7800's. It just depends I guess.

With my ATI card, triple buffering can be forced through Tray Tools and not cause punkbuster issues or make Oblivion crash out of no where. I can also use two monitors now without restarting my computer everytime I decide to use that. To me, all CF/SLI gives you is performance boost in games--and sometimes not even that much of a boost. Don't get me wrong, sometimes it can give you gains up to 100% or more (GRAW and CF for example) but that alone isn't worth the extra trouble or drawbacks that come with it IMO.

For me it was weird. When I ran 7800GT SLI'd, I only got tearing in certain games and it was noticable, but not in all situations and it definately did not ruin my gameplay experience. The Vsync issue is different for everyone. Some cant' stand it, some can tolerate it, and some wouldnt know screen tearing from a fart.

When I bench my X1900XTX in FEAR for example, I get higher max fps, higher average fps, but the minimum is like 25fps compared to 34fps on my 7800GTs. When I replayed FEAR with the XTX, it seemed to chug, when fighting was heavy, I never got that with the SLI.

To each his own I guess.

 

[LittleNemoNES]

Originally posted by: fbrdphreak
What resolution do you plan on gaming at?

I had an X1900XT with dual core AMD and running some games with eye candy on @ 1680x1050 was just not possible. If you plan on gaming in that realm or above, I'd recommend SLI or a 7950GX2 for now. A single X1900XT just won't do it if you ask me

Hey just curious what games you tried. I was getting good fps with most games @ 1680x1050 with 2xAA and 16xAF. The exception is oblivion, of course

 

[Elfear]

Update on pricing:

Just found a deal for an MSI X1900XT for $289.99. That would change the first comparison accordingly:


The 7950GX2 is a faster card than the X1900XT/XTX, but IMO it's bang for the buck is no where close. You can get an X1900XT for $289.99 AR , while a 7950GX2 will cost you $519.99 AR. That's a 79% increase in price for a 20-25% increase in performance.