Currently I have a 19" monitor. I was wondering if I should uprgade my performance and get sli 8800gt or should i get bigger display with one 8800gt? I will be buying in May. Is there another upgrade I should make instead?

What is your current monitor resolution? And what is the resolution of the monitor that you are considering purchasing?

Also what do you do on your computer?


~Physx7

In all truth sli may allow you to up your detail a small amount but unless you raise your resolution you dont get the full benifit from it.

What you have to figure out is if your GT is going to be able to run the resolution/size of your new monitor. I find that the GTs softspot is 1680x1050 on most 22" and thats pretty much the top end of what it is designed to perform at. Chances are if its a nice gaming moniter at 24' a GT just is not enough.

Keep in mind single card solutions allways yeild better returns all around. At this time Nvidia does not support dx10.1 on any of the hardware they released. The 9 series will not support it either.

If I was you and you are not totaly unhappy with your rig I would sit on that rig for another year. Otherwise I would consider moving over to an AM2+ MB. If you are on am2 atm you can swap over to AM2+ socket and keep all your current hardware and gain the pcie-2.0 and xfire support. AM2+ would open the door for future upgrades. You are kind of in a wierd place with that rig. Its good enough but you dont have much upgrade options that will pay off atm.

My monitor i have right now is 1440x900, the one im considering is 1920x1200 and I play games like crysis

I seriously doubt you will get playable frame rates in Crysis at 1920x1200 with an 8800 GT, even SLI'd GT's.

I don't think SLI will cause a major jump in your current setup. But if you get the 1920x1200 monitor then I would recommend SLI.


~Physx7

The thing is, it's one or the other

That seems to be the problem. One upgrade doesn't seem to be worth it without the other.....

~Physx7

I say compromise and get a nice 22" 1680 x 1050 monitor, that should be plenty of res for ya.

Is there anything else that might need upgrading? Ram? Hard Drive? Cooling?..........

Please list your entire system.

~Physx7

It it's only one or the other, then do neither.

-Wolf sends

+1

Don't buy anything. Save your money. If you want to get another 8800gt, don't ha. But if you REALLY want to, wait until the few more Geforce 9 cards and Radeon 4000 series cards are released. Then sell the 8800 that you have and then use that money, combined with the money you have now to buy the high end 9 series or 4000 series. Then after summer, buy the newest 45nm processors from either company (whichever one is faster) and combine that with some nice ddr3 ram. Then park your car in the garage, instead of outside your house, because you don't want it to give away information about your rig. Wait... what the hell were we talking about it?

I vote to get a nice 24" monitor. Your 8800GT will run many games just fine on it. You will always have the choice to run the monitor at less than native resolution, or to tone down the graphics detail if you need it.

Save your old monitor and use it also. A dual monitor setup is a wonderful convenience.

The benefits of sli are iffy, it helps some games, and doesn't help others. The next upgrade is probably best done with the follow-on to the 8800GTX.

I have a 24" monitor (Samsung 245bw) with a 8800 GTS 640mb SC and absolutely love it. By the way, i run crysis at mix of high/medium settings at 1920x1200 at around 20-25 fps, and dont notice any lack of performance. I mean sure it can be better, but i dont notice any lag or anything that makes my gameplay unpleasant.

So imho buy a 24" monitor and i recommend Samsung, either the 245bw (if you are on a budget) or the 2xxT series (if you want the best).

I have a centurion 5. Everything has stock cooling. 2gb of ddr2 800 ram. Amd 5600+ @3.2 500gb hard drive

Here's triple SLI - 22 fps no AA @ 1920 x 1200 w/ 3 Ultra 8800 w/ Intel QX9650 2GB Dominator

http://www.extremetech.com/article [...] 900,00.asp

it depends on what part of the game, i get playable frames in crysis @ 1920x1080 all high in the begining part of the game(before you find the aliens) my 8800gt is at 715/1750/2000.

I'm saddled with good eyesight and I find I don't like most LCD screens. The problem I have w/ most LCD's is I can see individual pixels which makes the images look grainy....not so noticeable with moving images but text and still images is annoying. While everybody generally worries about inflated advertised response times and brightness levels which you will invariable tone down, (both which never seem to be equaled in independent testing) no on ever seems to look at:

Color Depth - Most consumer panels are TN types with 6 bit color. 3 dots x 6 bits = 18 bit color. Look at your machines display settings .... if the number is 24 or bigger, the number between 18 and that number is "dithered". Note 32 bit color is not really 32 bit, it's 24 bit color with 8 bits of "non color data".

Your typical consumer level LCD has only 262,144 combinations. This comes from 6 bits x 6 bits x 6 bits (2 to the 6th power) or 64 x 64 x 64 to produce the 262,144 different color combinations. Now 8 bits sounds like it's only 33% better off the bat. But 2 to the 8th power is 256 and 256 × 256 × 256 = 16,777,216 colors.

So 8 bit color has 64 times as many color combinations as 6 bit color. Eizo produces very expensive 10 bit LCD displays and these are what you find in photo editing shops....these cost as much as an entire hi end gaming system.

Display Type - As indicated above, TN is the typical panel type which is found in most consumer level monitors. A good number of S-PVA types can be found at affordable prices. Wikipedia writes:

"The TN display suffers from limited viewing angles, especially in the vertical direction, and most are unable to display the full 16.7 million colors (24-bit truecolor) available from modern graphics cards. These particular panels, with 6 bits per color channel as opposed to 8, can approach 24-bit color using a dithering method which combines adjacent pixels to simulate the desired shade. They can also use FRC (Frame Rate Control), the less conspicuous of the two. FRC quickly cycles pixels over time to simulate a given shade. These color simulation methods are noticeable to most people and discomforting for some. FRC tends to be most noticeable in darker tones. Dithering has the tendency to appear as if the individual pixels of the LCD were actually visible. Overall, color reproduction and linearity on TN panels is poor. Shortcomings in display color gamut (often referred to as a percentage of the NTSC 1953 color gamut) can also be attributed to backlighting technology. It is not uncommon for displays with CCFL (Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamps) based lighting to range from 40% to 76% of the NTSC color gamut, whereas displays utilizing white LED backlights may extend past 100% of the NTSC color gamut – a difference quite perceivable by the human eye."

"PVA (patterned vertical alignment) and S-PVA (super patterned vertical alignment) are alternative versions of MVA technology offered by Samsung. Developed independently, it offers similar features to MVA, but boasts contrast ratios as high as 3000:1. Value-oriented PVA panels often use dithering/FRC, while S-PVA panels all use at least 8-bit color and do not use any color simulation methods. Some newer S-PVA panels offered by Eizo offer 10-bit color internally, which enables gamma and other corrections with reduced banding. PVA and S-PVA offer good black depth, wide viewing angles and S-PVA also offer fast response times using modern RTC technologies.

Color Gamut - As seen above, TN offers 40 - 76% of the full color gamut. The S-PVA tpes hit well into the 90's.

Dot Pitch - This is how close the pixels are put together and affects the "grainy-ness" of the image that I referenced above. The bigger the screen, generally the wider they are....in general. But look at a laptop with a 17" screen and compare the image with a 24" screen and you will see a huge difference. That's cause one has a dpi in the 80's and the other has a dpi in the 130's.

Viewing angle - TN is usally about 160. S-PVA is 170 - 80

So after all that background, I wouldn't think of just buying either one.....I'd save my money until I could buy both or I'd buy the monitor 1st and add the 2nd card later. I'd look to grab a S-PVA monitor with > 100 dpi, > 90% color gamut and given a choice between 2 sizes both with 1920 x 1200, I'd take the smaller one. OK, so your probably thinking, it be years before you had enough buckaroos to grab that. The thing is that S-PVA pricing is coming down. For example the Lenovo L220x ....Comparing it to the Samsung 245bw

-Lenovo L220x / Samsung 245bw

- 22” S-PVA display panel / 24" TN Panel
- WUXGA (1920x1200) resolution / Same
- 325 cd/m^2 brightness / 400 cd/m2
- 1200:1 contrast ratio / 1000:1 contrast ratio
- 92% NTSC color gamut / Not published
- +/- 89° horizontal and vertical viewing = 178° / 160°
- 6 ms response time / 5 ms
- DVI-D and VGA inputs
- Dot Pitch 106 / 94
- portrait/landscape pivot function / not available
- Cost $462 / $469

Don't get me wrong, the Samsung 245bw is a great display....but for the same money, I would grab an S-PVA monitor. Neither has an HDMI port if that is important to you.

You can see a list of Samsung's S-PVA monitors here:

http://www.samsung.com/global/busi [...] mly_id=609

And a review of the Samsung 245T S-PVA here:

http://www.anandtech.com/displays/ [...] i=3221&p=1

And pricing here

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] ung%2b245T

That's what I was going to say. He may not be able to handle the resolution with that card solo. He can always get both. The second card first and then save for the LCD.

I have the opposite problem. I have a 17" CRT and will get an LCD, but all the reviews I've read said to go 24" 1920 x 1200 for the 3870x2 (which will someday be in hybrid Crossfire with at least a 4850 on a new board with a quad core CPU). It seems it can be CPU limited in some games at 1650 x 1080, and really performs at the 1920 resolution.

Right now, I'm really CPU limited but still getting 50-60 in The Witcher, 20-39 in LOTR online, 30-60 in Oblivion, all with settings at full except in LOTR online where I get 5-10 fps more with very high detail instead of 8x anisotropic filtering.