Graphics Card

[wellmad]

Hi,

When I built my machine I stuck in a geforce 8500GTS (256Mb), which is ok and lets me play spiderman 3 ;]

Now I want to upgrade it a bit and I'm wondering, would it be best to spend another £50 on a second 8500GTS and SLI them, or shall I just get an 8800GT instead?

Would two 8500's be comparable to 1 8800? The 8500's are only about £50 so this would be the prefereable option but if it really wont make much difference then the extra money for the 8800 might be worth it

Opinions?

[Rishi]

Personally I would buy the 8800GT. It seems good value for what you are getting and some people have even reported that its near ther performance of the "old" 8800 GTS.

[Aez]

2 8500's wouldn't be close to a 8800gt.
This link has 2 8500 gt's its all i could find but they should be about the same Gigabyte GV-NX85T256H Geforce 8500GT Videocards in SLI Review - PCSTATS.com

[NightshadowUK]

Single card all the way although...

- What resolution is your display?

- What games do you plan on playing?

[moogle]

afaik sli doesnt even reach 2x the performance, usually you get 20 - 30fps more, maybe less. What I've seen it do is. Say you play a game at 1024 x 768 resolution and you get a steady fps. With sli you can play that game at 1600 x 1200 resolution with around the same fps as before. It's always best to get a single card. Power and performance wise they are usually better than 2.

[wellmad]

single card it is then! thanks guys, apart from planning on getting COD4 sometime soon I don't have any real plans for any games...i play fps mostly.

no need for crazy high resolutions, I've got a 19" tft and usually play games at 1024x768 (although 1280x1024 would be nice)

[freddie]

ebay your old card and get a 8800gt if you can find it. it will pretty much double your power! even if it's the 256mb version!

[wellmad]

lol, thanks

[NightshadowUK]

Yeah the 256MB version should do fine at the resolution.

[EarlGrey]

Definately the 8800GT and yes the 256MB card should be fine and is an absolute bargain!

[Pob255]

8600gt sli is about the same as the 8800gts 320mb
8800GTis about the same as the 8800gts 640mb

Looking at theat Link Aez posted the 8500gt SLi is really pants probably because the 8500gt was super pants to start with.

One thing to mention about SLi & CrossFire is that the lower in the series the card is the bigger the boost they get compaired to a single card of that type.
With the mid range cards tending to be the best as the low range card just don't have the performance to make it worth it.

PS I do hope you have an SLi motherboard because without it this is all a bit moot.

[wellmad]

PS I do hope you have an SLi motherboard because without it this is all a bit moot.

lol, think so, its a P5K Deluxe wifi AP with 2 PCI-e slots

[NightshadowUK]

I do believe that board is Crossfire... it doesn't support SLi.

[Dreaming]

I do believe that board is Crossfire... it doesn't support SLi.

:yes: It's a 965 chipset.

Basically, Nvidia SLI only works on an Nvidia SLI board, whereas ATI XFire works on almost all dual pci-e boards and seems to be implemented better if the recent benchmarks about 2x3870s are anything to go by. (Nearly 2x performance in some games)

But I still say single cards are better. Single 8800gt definately, you won't regret it!

[wellmad]

<redface>shucks, I was sure my board was SLI...sorry</redface>

glad the consensus was to go with the single card then, I better start saving!

[hse180]

The P5K has the P35 chipset and is crossfire
The 8800gt is excellent, better than the 3870 in most bench's...............but crossfire 2 of them sounds tempting to me