7800GTX in SLI, or a single 8800GT or GTS

HVDynamo

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Feb 6, 2008
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currently I have an Athlon 64 X2 4400+ 939 and an XFX 7800GTX 256MB card. I just bought a new monitor that runs at 1680x1050 Resolution and the 7800 is ok at that res, but I can start to see it having trouble in the near future. Should I get this used one on ebay and go SLI:

http://cgi.ebay.com/XFX-GeForce-7800-GTX-PCI-Express-256MB-nVIDIA-SLi-Ready_W0QQitemZ320220493213QQihZ011QQcategoryZ40161QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

or, should I wait till this summer and get an 8800GT, or GTS 512. Another concern is how closely do I have to match the 7800's, I know that at one point you had to have the exact same cards for SLI down to the very detail, and I am not sure if the 7800's were before or after SLI became more flexible. Another curiosity, is whether the X2 4400 will bottleneck or not in any of these scenarios, I am not looking to upgrade the whole system just yet, and I don't feel it would be worth it to hunt down the fastest S939 Dual Core chip for the amount of speed increase it would yield.
 

pchoi04

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At this point I wouldnt bother with another 7800GTX. An 8800GT or GTS would beat out a 7800 SLI setup. For games like HL2 a 7800GTX is more than enough. I went from a 7950GT to a 8800GTS and it was like entering another dimension.

But to answer your others questions SLI has gotten a bit more flexible. Answers on SLI can be found here: http://www.slizone.com/page/slizone_faq.html

I think that your system may bottle neck a 8800 a little bit but I think the performance increase you'll get will still be quite noticeable.
 

pauldh

Illustrious
A single 8800GT is easily better than SLI 7800GTX 256MB. In newer games it would be no contest whatsoever. Plus you will only have 256MB of RAM and a card that doesn't support FSAA+HDR at the same time in a game like Oblivion, Farcry, etc. Shoot, the feature difference list goes on and on.

Not sure what that card on ebay will sell for or what you would get from yours either. But a single 8800GT or even 9600GT is much better your card in SLI in both features and performance. So I say forget buying another 7800GTX; sell the 7800GTX and grab something better.
 

Evilonigiri

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You're getting old, pauldh.

But anyways, I agree with the others. It's not worth it to buy another 7800GTX, unless you can get it for dirt cheap.
 

HVDynamo

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Thanks for the input guys, I was kinda leaning that direction anyhow, I just feel like I should use the SLI capability in the motherboard that I bought, but it really doesn't make sense to if its not worth the money to get a second 7800, and its guaranteed that 2 8800's will bottleneck the CPU. I am still kinda debating on whether to go with a GT or GTS(G92 of course) thought, any thoughts on that. I have plenty of space for the Dual slot cooler. I will hang on to my 7800 GTX though, when I build a new machine I intend on moving the 8800 over at first, that way I can put the 7800 back in my current one and have a second machine. Anyone happen to know how well a Athlon X2 4400+ S939 might overclock, I would like to squeeze a little more out of it if I can.
 

jerseygamer

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Bide your time. As it stands Nvidia is not releasing a dx10.1 solution in the 9 series. Its worth looking into the x2 or the new ATI line when it launches. If you do the research you will see this is an iffy time to be buying Nvidia cards.