video card overkill?

May I suggest going with one 8800GTS or GTX?

Better option IMO.

GeForce 8800 > just about any nVidia SLi setup. It will pound any pair of cards you could throw together to dust.

And just as a note, when you use two cards in SLi, you do NOT add their memory pools together; the only thing you can really add together is their texture units and pixel shaders.

hmm. looking at the prices its something around this
8800GTX : $760
8800GTS : $569
7950GT : $330
2x 7950GT : $660

obviously the 8800GTX surpases SLI 7950 GT... but price wise the 7950 GTs fit between the 8800 GTX and GT, i know basing the performance on price is stupid but would in order of performance this be correct?

1. 8800gtx
2. 2X 7950gt
3. 8800GT

Or does the GT and GTX both surpass most cards?

I thought my X1900XT was powerful until I plugged up my new 8800GTX. 8)

Yes, the 8800GTS (not GT, note, it's called GTS) easily passes a pair of 7950GTs. It's more like a pair of the BEST G70 cards, the 7900GTXs. It's that insanely powerful. I recall a quote from nVidia along the lines of, "My engineers told me we could double the power by doubling the amount of silicon, so I told them to go ahead."

The chip is MASSIVE, over 600 million transistors, and over twice the size of the 7950GT's G71 core. Plus, it's clocked faster, and pretty much vastly superior in every way; not even a pair of cards can touch it.

ne one hear of someone using sli'd 8800gtxs? (would probably make for some interesting benchmarks)

Hmm thanks for all the input.

do you guys think its worth getting a Sli Mobo even if im just goin for the 8800 GTS so that eventually when prices come down and new vid cards released i can just pop in a nother 8800gts... or do u think by the time that happens Sli will have changed/evolved enough id need a new updated Mobo?

just for the records......

I hate you

just for the records......

I hate you

LOL get in line

Yes true, the GTS has lots of OC potential too, although alot of the parity with the GTX seems to be under CPU-bound conditions. Also seems that there were some initial anomalous results too.

I still don't like recommending based on OC potential, especially so early in the life cycle of a card. But the improvements were impressive from the few reviews that bothered, like Firingsquad, but they have since tempered their intial enthusiasm somewhat but still solid performance boosts in many situations;

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardwar [...] rclocking/

Very nice Rob. Although I hate seeing you limited to 1280x1024.
That being said, you you get two cards? How in the hell did you get 12k 06??

Nice.

If you can afford a Single 8800 GT / GTX, go for it. If not, I suggest you settle for something in the US$ 200 - 250 range and upgrade to DX10 after it stabilizes, and there is good software supporting DX10.

Right now, DX10 is yet to be launched, and there are no games supporting it. No point in paying a premium for something you will not use to full potential now. Makes sense to hold off till ATI launches their DX10 product, since this will trigger some price cuts.

Personally, this is what I intend to do and I bought a Sapphire X1900XT 256 Mb for US $250.

My two cents worth

Hopefully that will change once that patch it for DX10 which should make it run much better as well as look better.

Right now its pretty much a horribly coded game as I dont think it looks much better than 2004 version which I ran max just fine on my X1900XT with aa and af even added.