Quad 8800 GTS or Dual 8800 GTX Ultra?

[serendipetey]

Hypothetically, which setup would be the best? They both cost about the same in my neck of the woods, Australia:
4 x 640mb Asus GTS = $2400
2 x 768mb 8800 Asus gtx ultra = $2370

OR

2 x 768mb 8800 Asus gtx = $1800


Would it be a viable purchase in say, august/september?

Or would it be wiser to just stick to 1 asus 8800 gtx ultra/ 2 gts :?:

 

[chuckshissle]

Yeah it's better to go with dual 8800GTX SLI. The Ultra is not that big of difference than the GTX. Most importantly what are you going to use the graphics cards for? What resolution/screen size?

 

[Slobogob]

Is it just me or is there no motherboards that have 4 PCI-e 16X slots that can run quad SLI. Maybe i'm missing somthing here.

You are, indeed, correct.
Given the "great success" of quad SLI (specifically the success of twin GX2s) i have my doubt that 4 8800 Ultras could even beat a regular 8800 SLI setup. :lol:

 

[serendipetey]

I was just reading this :

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/News/Motherboard/News_List.aspx?NewsID=1314

specifically -

Quad SLI-Ready
Supporting NVIDIA Quad SLI™ technology, with true dual PCI Express x16 connectivity for up to 4 of the latest NVIDIA GeForce® 8800 GPUs, GIGABYTE Quad SLI ready motherboards provide flawlessly smooth 3D video rendering and screamingly-fast frame rates. With an additional PCI Express x8 expansion slot, users are able to add a standalone physics graphics processor for a significant boost of graphics performance, taking games to the next level of hyper-realist detail and effects.

 

[blade85]

ummm....wwwhhhyyyyy would you need 4 top end cards?? what are you running and at what resolution???

also that mobo has the normal 2 16X slots and 1 extra slot that is 8X. Im guessing what they mean by quad sli is what ati and nvidia did recently by combining 2 gpu's on one board. or am i mistaken???

 

[prozac26]

Four 8800s are a major overkill.

I would recommend two 8800GTXs instead, if you really want two top end cards.

 

[choirbass]

my memory is a bit rusty, and it was in an article that THG posted before (its most likely archived now)... but i believe the reason for the poor quad sli performance was due to the performance and architecture limitations that DX9 and earlier suffered from... given that, there 'should' be a substantial improvement moving up to DX10, even with quad sli, because they completely reworked everything... though were still waiting on improved drivers, SP1, etc... ...even still though, youd definetly want to wait for reviews anyhow, standard sli is better suited than quad sli as it stands right now

 

[elbert]

Hypothetically, which setup would be the best? They both cost about the same in my neck of the woods, Australia:
4 x 640mb Asus GTS = $2400
2 x 768mb 8800 Asus gtx ultra = $2370

OR

2 x 768mb 8800 Asus gtx = $1800


Would it be a viable purchase in say, august/september?

Or would it be wiser to just stick to 1 asus 8800 gtx ultra/ 2 gts :?:

Any of the 3 would perform well in SLI and you may even want to look at 2X or 4X GTS 320's as best bang for the buck. Here is some benchmarks of SLI and CF.
http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/hardware/grafikkarten/2007/test_nvidia_geforce_8600_gts_sli_8600_gt/32/

Its also important to determine if any CPU is worthy of such GPU setups or if 1 GPU Highly OC'ed would be the best. For the price of 1 ultra almost any OCing kit is available. Vapor phase change is possibly the best OCing tool and comes in just above the price of 1 8800 ultra.
http://www.octools.com/index.cgi?caller=articles/asetek/lightspeedl/lightspeed.html

Ive seen benchmarks of OC'ed 8800's were even 3.7GHz CQD's bottlenecked the GPU's.