Anyone try 8800GTS 320mb and 8800GTS 640mb in SLI???

[steve252]

I was just wondering if its possible. I was looking at their site and it says that the cards must be matched but the list does not distinguish between the different GTS's. Just curious...

 

[Collector619]

man , 2 8800 gts in sli are worse than an 8800 gtx , if you have the money take the gtx, if not 1 gts , if they are 320 mb , 2 cards wont be 640 , the total amount will be only 320 mb ... you got it
and i dont think that they will work because the diffrent amount of ram...

 

[joewho]

Try it.

 

[xlfirstclass]

Don't waste your money. Just get the GTX. It also depends on your motherboard and whether or not it supports x16 x16 in SLI. If it's only x8 x8 then it's not worth it. You'll be better off just using one card.

 

[steve252]

Oh I'm not getting 2 GTSs I was just curious. I read an article the other day, I forgot what site, about GTSs in SLI: is there a performance difference between the 320mb and the 640mb. So they went through the whole review and there was pretty much no difference in any benchmark. At the end of the article people posted about how much of a wasted article it was because when 2 vid cards are in SLI it only makes use of the 2nd GPU not the additional memory. It kind of shocked me. If thats true what a waste of money. I never caught that when I was reading about SLI, now that I went back it does only mention the GPU. If this is wrong please someone tell me because right now I'm really disappointed. It did get me curious about the above question and possible vid cards down the line that are identical but have different amounts of memory.

As for me I just ordered a GTS 320mb. I keep myself busy with older games like CS and WoW and I still have a CRT with max res at 1600x1200 so this card will be great for me. I'll upgrade to something later when I get my big 30" LCD!!

 

[Habeed]

Steve, here is how it works. Both cards have the EXACT same memory states when SLI is working. This means either you'll have 320 megabytes of video memory available, from the point of view of directX, or it won't work at all.

Anyhow, both cards have the same data in memory, and each card is instructed to spend it's time drawing some of the frames. Therefore, while SLI can be much faster, you'll never have more available video memory for games than the memory of one card. It IS using the ram on both cards, but games can effectively access only one.

 

[steve252]

Steve, here is how it works. Both cards have the EXACT same memory states when SLI is working. This means either you'll have 320 megabytes of video memory available, from the point of view of directX, or it won't work at all.

Anyhow, both cards have the same data in memory, and each card is instructed to spend it's time drawing some of the frames. Therefore, while SLI can be much faster, you'll never have more available video memory for games than the memory of one card. It IS using the ram on both cards, but games can effectively access only one.

I see, thanks for explaining it clearly. I would think there would be a better way to make use of the memory especially with new vid cards with 1gb of memory each.

 

[knowsitall]

2 x 8800gts 640mb in sli > 1 x 8800gtx, u should of went with the 640mb gts which is greater and will be gaurenteed to shine more then the 320gts in directx 10, since the 640 obvioulsy has more ram, it will obvioulsy produce better fps in directx10 gaems which have more detail and would have more ram to store info in..

 

[Heyyou27]

2 x 8800gts 640mb in sli > 1 x 8800gtx, u should of went with the 640mb gts which is greater and will be gaurenteed to shine more then the 320gts in directx 10, since the 640 obvioulsy has more ram, it will obvioulsy produce better fps in directx10 gaems which have more detail and would have more ram to store info in..

Barely, and even if you chose an 8800GTS SLI pair, you would need a better powersupply and would be without an upgrade path.

 

[joewho]

Or, you could wait until 4-23-07 and watch all the fireworks when the two knock heads again. (AMD/Nvidia) I still think about my 7800GTXes which cost $589ea a little over a year ago. Now they are worth SHiiittt.

 

[knowsitall]

Or, you could wait until 4-23-07 and watch all the fireworks when the two knock heads again. (AMD/Nvidia) I still think about my 7800GTXes which cost $589ea a little over a year ago. Now they are worth SHiiittt.

well i m sure those sli'd 7800gtx's could rock out any game at 16x12 maxed resolution so its still good enough.

 

[Habeed]

Steve, there isn't a way to make better use of the memory. Trying to do so would defeat the whole purpose of SLI. See, each card has a GPU and memory controller and ram all specced to work well together. So, one GPU running needs ALL of the bandwidth of the memory it is soldered to to work well.

So there's no way for 2 cards to each "share" a common pool of memory and hence give you the ram of both cards combined. Sorry.

 

[joewho]

They do exept Quake4 Ultra Settings due to 256mb each. It will play for a bit. Before '''''''''.

I'll upgrade when some dx10 titles are out and service pack 1 for vista is out.

Thinking about the X6850 3.0Ghz for $299

 

[steve252]

Steve, there isn't a way to make better use of the memory. Trying to do so would defeat the whole purpose of SLI. See, each card has a GPU and memory controller and ram all specced to work well together. So, one GPU running needs ALL of the bandwidth of the memory it is soldered to to work well.

So there's no way for 2 cards to each "share" a common pool of memory and hence give you the ram of both cards combined. Sorry.

Habeed, once again thanks for explaining the underlying technology. I'm glad with my choice of vid card. I've been without a good computer since before Christmas waiting for AMD/ATI to release the R600 and I just couldn't wait any longer. I'm just hoping that when I do decide to upgrade to another set of vid cards I won't have to upgrade my mobo because of new bandwidth requirements and PCI 2.0.

P.S. I'm using a 266mhz Gateway right now LOL. I've been using it for months so when I do get my new comp up and running it's going to feel like lightning!!