2900XT Crossfire vs 8800GTS SLI

Ok from what Iv seen the 2900XT is faster than the 8800GTS on most occassions, especially since the ATI driver updates, although they are pretty much neck and neck..but Iv even seen it almost get up to the GTX in certain benchmarks (lol not many though)


anyway i can get 2 2900XTs for cheaper than 2 8800GTS and cheaper than 1 GTX/ultra.

so Im thinking Im going to grab a pair of 2900XT's and stick them in Crossfire or the 8800GTS in SLI as surely a CF or SLI system with those cards must be faster than a single GTX..right?

the question is what to go for, as i cant really seem to find any CF vs SLI benchmarks, only single card benchmarks

will be paired up with a Q6600 cpu


cheers!

Get them! But be warned the drivers are still a bit dodge. Stalker especially. And the brightness jumps up if you turn your pc off in game. Get the 7.6 drivers if you can, 7.7 are not cool.

BTW i HATE you. i want crossfire....

I will get there eventually.

but if he plays at low resolutions , 2x cards wont be needed

better than gtx sli and scales better...., yea dude(sarcasm). and.., don't forget money grows on trees and the tooth fairy really does exist...

whatever.

if you can get 2x2900XT's for less than the cost of a GTX then DO IT

if anything I'd call me an nvidia fanboy, but at that sort of price point 2x2900XT's will kick arse - maybe even play Crysis on Max

ok for that resolutions , if 2x2900xt is cheaper than a single GTX, then get it

Something to think about cost wise... as I have no idea what the prices are like where you are.

Cost wise, does (1 GTX and lower PS) cost less than (2 2900's and a larger PS)?

You need more juice flowing... but it might be a moot point.

Then why bring up this lame argument yet again?

If I had a nickel for every time I have seen you bring this up I would be a millionaire

Once again, who in their right mind purchases a high end GPU to play games with no AA or AF? Much less SLI'd 8800GTX's or Crossfired 2900XT's

Without AA on the 2900xt usually beats the 8800GTX, unfortunatly, who plays without AA lol.

With AA on it trades blows with 8800GTS, although I must say the resent driver release made AA on the ATI card a lot more effective, it could stil get better.


I think CFAA is intended for use on the 2900xt though rather than standard AA. Using CFAA performance is a lot better and things look just as good.

2900XT CF betas GTX SLI GTS SLI, both of them. Crossfire just works better then SLI does. As someone else said it can send data both ways while SLI can only send 1 way at a time.

ok as far as psu goes i already have an 850w thermaltake toughpower which has 4 x 12v rails at 30amps each, i bought it when i got a 1950pro as i needed a new psu anyway. i figured it would come in handy in the future (lol slight overkill for a 1950pro but i guess im laughing now!)

and yer whats with all the different types of AA, because if i buy 2 cards in crossfire of course i want to use AA!

this CFAA, can i just use that in any game as opposed to regular AA?? for a slight performance increase over normal AA?

I also noticed the 2900's have a thing called edge detect which is meant to help smoothen the edges, as far as i know in games where AA isnt possible this edge detect still works, such as stalker and graw2..

so really i could use edge detect and say 2 x AA plus set it temporal AA to give the effect of say 6xAA with only the performance hit of 2xAA

for those of you that dont know what temporal AA is it just alternates the AA samples every second frame giving the appearance of double the quality ie- 4xaa would look like 8xaa, and it works i use it on my 1950pro all the time(if you use atitool you can set it upto 4x, so 6xaa with temporal could look like 24xAA for the same performance hit as 6xaa!) the only drawback is it forces vsync on (but i use vsync anyway) and if ur fps drops below ur refresh rate it gives a really nasty flicker on edges..

Temporal AA didn't work with my card (in Oblivion). Grainy white dots popped up everywhere, and I had to restart the computer to get them to go away. This was with an old driver though. With 4x AA (I don't remember which type) I get 20-40 FPS outside (15 minimum) and 60 FPS (vsync limit) inside with all of my graphics mods.

temporal aa is great, i use it in CSS and dods atm, but yer id say in oblivion with regular fps drops it wouldnt be effective.

the threshold is there so the flickering doesnt occur when ur fps goes under ur refresh rate, it just stops working below the threshold then kicks back in when ur fps go above the threshold.btw with atitool you can set the threshold to whatever you like.

@ Warezme: Crossfire scales MUCH ******* better than sli.

Does anyone get ANY good frame rates at all with 24x AA? i get like 20 frames...

@ Stanley: The toms charts are using the old drivers i think, not sure though.

Anyway: www.tweaktown.com

wow..i just went to have a look on the review, so now the best value isn't 8800gts but 2900xt? it's lot more cheaper than 8800gtx, and yet got better performance than gtx @@