"Real world performance" SLI

th3ha1og0d

th3ha1og0d

New Member
I've done more pondering about an 8800gt SLI setup and I've seen many benchmarks that shows 8800gt's in SLI beating HD 4870's and GTX 260's and even 280's in some things...

What I want to find out is, how consistent is this performance? (I know SLI only works in certain games) but is it only going to yield high performance in certain games or will it give me a decent boost in most games? Like say you compared it overall to a GTX 260...would the 8800gt's in SLI be getting a comparable average framerate in most games, or would they get beaten out...also do you guys think that 8800's in SLI are fairly future proof @ 1440x900?

At the moment I'm running an AMD x2 4600+ processor, so I am getting bottlenecked (~8750 in 3dmark06)...in certain games I notice some stuttering in certain parts but for the most part they are smooth...I'm happy with Racedriver: Grid and GoW and Cod4 and CoH, but to be honest my computer gotreamed playing Mass Effect. I could play it okay, but in combat I could notice a drop...it wasn't playing butter smooth. I kind of bought my card at a bad time, before the ATI 48XX series was released but nonetheless I got a decent deal...

Bottom line is if I was to do this again, how should I do it? Regardless of what new graphics card I get, I'll be getting a new Intel CPU and an SLI motherboard, so I figured I'll just double up with the 8800's and be good to go. But, I am worried about dumping all that money in for 20% gains with SLI.

Sorry for going on so long I just wanted to get all my info out there...Is real world performance (i.e. average framerates and general gameplay) with the 8800's comparable to say a similarly configured system with a single GTX 260 or an ATI Radeon HD4870?

Also, I wanted to buy a 9800GTX+ for around @200 but then I figured it's not worth the money for an extra 10fps.

Thanks for reading my mundane long post.:D
 
well, with that processor, adding a 2nd 8800gt wouldnt make a difference anyways. a 8800gt setup should get about-ish 12k if I remember right. meaning you card should/could perform 1,5x better as it is now. so i'd look into upgrading the processor (and motherboard?) before looking into grafics :)

about the SLI question. I found SLI to be quite consistent when it came to different games. (I used to run 2 7800GTX's in sli, before I bought a 3870, later I bought a 2nd one) I got about 10k with those grafic's cards (and a 4400+ X2 processor, overclocked) wich I dont think it bad. imo, it was worth it (since I got the 2nd card cheap-ish) but thats a matter of oppinion.
 
Hey Arghangel thanks for the reply. I will definitely look into a better motherboard and processor. (I'm thinking either an Asus P5N-D or EVGA 750i SLI FTW, both of those have PCI-e 2.0, 16x for both lanes, 45nm support. I want to have some good future proof hardware this go around.) The reason SLI is so appealing is because I can pick up a second GT for less than $100 if I buy used, probably even around that price new with all the sales that have been going on lately. I figure even if I wasn't going to go with a dual card setup I'd pick up a motherboard that is SLI ready just so I have that option in the future.

So now if I do the math:

New mobo: $~150
New CPU: $~190

GTX 260: $~300 (tax, etc.)

The way I figure it, even if I wanted the GTX 260 It costs a heck of a lot more than throwing in another 8800. Plus, I'd have to sell the 8800 I have now and take a big loss on it :(

The positive for the GTX 260/4870 would be that they are both current and futureproof, meaning that later on I could add another one of those, but if I go 8800's I would have to start from scratch when they both age.

BUT If I go with an Intel quad, 4gb ram, and a 2nd GT that is a pretty mean setup and should handle games easily for some time. (Of course, I could wait till boxing day and eat up all the sales, or wait until October when stores start unloading old inventory in preparation for new Christmas products.)
 
I found the performance gain between the 3870 and the 4870 not to be too great to be honest, hence I bought another 3870 when they dropped in price over here. so imo, if you can pickup the 2nd card cheap, yea its worth it. ofcourse, people might beg to differ.
 
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