Being a gamer who (generally) waits for the price of the TOP games to drop off the top shelf has always allowed me to build a reasonable budget gaming PC. About a year ago I built my first SLI machine quite by accident, its a Dual Core 4200+ on an ASUS A8N, 2Gb Ram. When the Motherboard/CPU/RAM arrived and I realised I'd bought an SLI motherboard and I decided to dabble a bit with 2 6800GT's to replace my very ageing XP2800+ 1Gb RAM and Radeon 9600SE quite nicely. The part I researched the most was the 6800GT's, bought second hand on ebay, I could never have afforded them new when they first came out, but know that many cards that came after them just didn't cut the mustard - the nasty shock was the extra power required to run them... (additional Thermal Take SLI PSU solved that) and then I find out not all games get a great kick out of an SLI configuration, go figure? But building it is part of the hobby... and its much quicker than the previous PC and I can now play Quake4, FEAR, C&C3, BF2142 etc at reasonable quality and looking to put Crysis to the test soon, hence I'm thinking I may need to tweak the graphics upwards! Enough of the background - I think I can only go so far with the motherboard/CPU/RAM I have, with a graphics card upgrade before the newer graphics cards are throttled back by the PC I slot them in. Prices of the GeForce 86/8800 are well under £100 and I was thinking now is the time to push the graphics up (and maybe another 1Gb of RAM too) to get the best out of this machine, before I dive into my next upgrade... which I'd build incorporating the new graphics cards I upgrade to now. Will I benefit from a 3 figure upgrade if I buy a pair of any of the following? XFX GeForce 8600 GT 256MB Fatal1ty Edition Gigabyte 8800GT SLI 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB Sparkle GF 8800 GT SLI 512MB My main fear is that I wont see too much of a performace lift from the 6800gt's and they wont act as the stepping stone to my next PC (possibly a quad core next year) as they are not the same quantum leap I made from the ATI9600SE to the GeForce6800GT... any advice or thoughts welcome on the cards I have looked at or others in the big wide world of graphics cards
Pretty much anything in the Geforce 9xxx or HD4xxx series will be a quantum leap. As Chai said, the 4850 will provide the most performance for it's value.
Isn't ATI Crossfire? If I wanted to stay with twin cards SLI doesn't it have to be NVIDIA for my mobo? and will the 9xxx still give the performance or will it suffer on my motherboard/CPU... with 2gb ram? As for the 9xxx itself - from my basic brains, best always in the x8xx part of the series and a GT(s) if the ££'s allows?
if you wanna remain twin SLI cards, yes..you do need a Nvidia chipset mobo (they run pretty hot imo)..well, if you do wanna remain on the Green side, just get 2x9800GTX+ (on par with 4850 if not mistaken)as for the ram, which OS are you running? I'll suggest going for 4gb since you do game.make sure you do have enough power to power up those gpus
Staying with XP Pro ATM ...not a VISTA fan. Infact I was forced off Win2k Pro only a couple oy years back when games stopped supporting them ...Lord of the Rings if I remember rightly I'm not upgrading MOBO/CPU in the next few months - its a sneak cashflow upgrade - new GFX now that are suitable to run on existing SLI MOBO - then when I do upgrade the core of the PC, the new GFX cards I get now, will cross over to the new system. 9800's are still a bit pricey - but for the next leap up that I want in performance to make it worth while - that may have to be the choice. From your responses; my fear that the 4 cards I'd looked at were ££'s wasted as the performance lift would not be (in the short term) future proof to my next PC seems founded. Cheers!
XP will be fine for gaming (it won't support DX10 but oh well), just make sure you get 64-bit if you are going for 4 gigs of RAM. If you live in the US/Canada then newegg has a really nice deal on RAM: Newegg.com - CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Desktop Memory
UK based nice to meet u! Could someone please advise if buying a PCI-E 2.0 graphics card and putting it on my Asus A8N-SLI is ok? As I'm sure my mobo is not PCI-E 2.0 and all the NVIDIA 9800's seem to be... hence - will I get a performance drop off and in current mobo, to be increased when I upgrade to include a Motherboard with PCI-E 2.0 or will it just not work at all? Really in the dark over all this PCI-E stuff, used to be fine when playing with AGP all those years ago
Get a Radeon 4850 or something equivalent. If you have your processor overclocked, that'll at least reduce the bottleneck when playing games such as Crysis.
If you want to stick with sli go with the nvidia 9 series... i would probably recommend a 9800 series card if you can... Those are a huge increase over your current 6800 setup... as for vista and dx10 if you want to go vista i would recommend vista 64-bit and 4gb or more of ram... I'm currently running 4GB of ram and vista buisness 64-bit and have no issues with games i am currently playing fallout 3 on high settings with my x1950pro 256mb graphics card and love it... If you want one of the cards you listed go 8800gt sli and thats a sweet spot on those ... the gtx just doesn't yeild a big enough performance gain over the 8800gt's and the 8800 gt runs colder... as for brands i would stay clear of sparkle as i have never heard of them... I would recommend XFX, eVGA, BFG as i think all of those have lifetime warranty atleast i know bfg does.. So stick with this and i don't think you will be disappointed..
Sparkle is reasonably well known, because you never heard of it doesn't mean it's not that good. Although XFX/EVGA/BFG are the most known brands. Just check how much warranty they give and how their customer service is then make a choice. Plus 8800GT aren't really worth it to put in SLI now imo, the smarter choice would be to get an 4850/4870 or maybe even a XFX GTX260 Black Edition (beats GTX280 on stock).
I say HD4870/4850. unless you want to played PhysX feature than you should get Nvidia SLI and value 9800GTX+ card.
Do you really need to use SLI though? A single, fast card is much cheaper and faster than two, slower cards in SLI. Unless you need more graphics processing power than the fastest single graphics card can provide, there's really no need to do SLI or CrossFire. I would suggest a single, fast card like the Radeon 4850 or the GeForce 9600 GT/9800 GTX+, if you have to go with NVIDIA. The GeForce 8600 series may be cheap but they are underpowered and not worth the money. Might as well just go for the 9600 GT.
I agree you should probably be better off getting a single fast card like a 9800 GTX+ or a HD4870.. Rather than sli.. See you would spend more just getting two 8800gt's rather than one hd4870 or 9800 GTX280 or such... if i were you get the hd4870 its the fastest card besides the hd4870x2 out right now... Newegg.com has the xfx 8800gt for 129.99 so 2 of them before shipping is 259.98 the Sapphire HD4870 is 199.99 before shipping and the XFX 9800 GTX+ is 189.99 So i would go that route vs 2 8800gt's you will get better performance
For around $260 I strongly recommend this card: Newegg.com - XFX GX260NADBF GeForce GTX 260 Black Edition Core 216 896MB 448-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Desktop Graphics / Video Cards Just get take a look at this review: XFX GTX260 Black Edition Review - Overclockers Club
Thats probably your best bet as you have an nvidia chipset on that motherboard and it will allow you later to sli another one with it... but for now just one will do you just fine..
Sticking with the budget to mid range and (SLI) NVIDIA - purely cos I've got the motherboard and extra juice in my PSU already with my twin 6800GT's. I so nearly stuck 2 8800GT's in the basket last night, then I came across the 384MB XFX 9600 GSO XXX, PCI-E 2.0 (x16), 1900MHz GDDR3, GPU 680MHz, 96 Cores for under £70 each. Two of them for £140 or one 512MB XFX 9800 GTX+ XT, PCI-E2.0, 2200MHz GDDR3, GPU 765MHz, 128 Cores for £147. I just cant fault sticking two of them in and having a play.... what do you think? Finally, I should be able get Far Cry 2 off the LOW settings and see whose shooting at me from the grass! I'm also going to move up from my 2Gb Ram (pc2700) - Mobo will go to pc3200 and if I want to go to 4Gb I've got to replace all 4 of the 512Mb sticks. Does the 333 to 400 make a difference? My budget option is to bump to 3Gb pc2700 and then I'll only be buying 2Gb instead of 4Gb and keeping to my overall £200 budget. This should take my AMD Dual core 4200+ and Asus A8N SLI Premium to the end of its life.... I may yet be convinced to try Vista on it with more RAM to see the DX10 shine but I'm stuck on XP sp3 at the minute. Thoughts on this please.... edit - PS, currently overclocking as well - I have had it over 2600 (knocking down the multiplyer) but it overheats with current CPU cooler and PC is located in its cupboard under the desk and shuts down within 20 minutes of gaming. Nice and stable at 2420Mhz after hours of FarCry2 though....
