Graphics Card Decision

All your solutions should work for that resolution but it is going to be your decision how much money you spend

2 9800GTX's in SLI. Cooler, and a better oclock

The ideal would be two 9800GTX's or 8800gts g92's in sli. The 9800gx2 is overpriced and will be consistently beaten by the previously mentioned graphics. 2 8800 gt's would also be superior price perfomance wise if your on a budget. The 1gb 8800gt is a gimmick, don't get it.

go with two 8800gts 512. i think thats the best value.

Hrmmm yea I forgot about 9800 GTX, any idea how much that is going to cost? SLI on that might be a good idea providing it doesnt cost waht the 8800GTX's are right now. I'd really like to keep the cost down, but I mean I'll be getting a bitching Intel system for about 200-250 so I don't mind dishing out some more cash for some graphics horsepower.

300ish per card

9800gtx will be king.but i will wait for gt200 to come out!lol

yea i think ill go with SLI 9800GTX's. its just too bad that they are only 512MB rather than 768MB or 1GB. It'd be really nice to have a **** of memory for the extra resolution.

yeah i was surprise 9800gtx and 8800gts only come with 512mb.shame

...for now...

i wish they come standard 1gb.i know the gt have 1gb onboard.but the gpu is lacking abit.

Ok yea the 9800GTX SLi option is definelty my pathway....I work at BestBuy and just checked... itll go for 399 MSRP but my discount pits me at 249.... meaning that even though I havent seen any 9800GTX SLI benchmakrs, i can ssume itll be 100 bucks cheaper than a GX2 and be more efficent without the hang ups of a dual pcb.

And itll oc waay better without the heat issues

Based on early reviews of the 9800GTX, I would also look into a 8800GTS as a "plan B".

Don't get me wrong, I hope it will end-up being better than that, I got a EVGA card specifically for the step-up option. But there is no way I'm going to pay 100$+shipping for something that translates into an extra 1500 pts in 3DMark06 (and I guess most of it come from the quad they used when I have only have a dual).

Yea I started thinking again and 9800 GTX might not be the way to go. I remembered that the 8800GTX is 384-bit and 768 MB in memory, meaning that it maybe slower but who knows how that extra bandwidth translates yet? I wish that review would have compared the 8800GTX but they only did the 8800GT and the 9800GX2. I wihs they'd just add the 8800GTX to see how it compares.

I would also like to see more than 512mb on the 9800GTX but it should not be too bad since I heard Nvidia is using a new sort of compression on the new cards.
Remember to get an SLI board if you want two nvidia cards.
790i has faster SLI but expensive DDR3, 780i has bad OC but DDR2 and not worth it imo compared to the 790i

For ultra high res, AA, and shader settings, go with the good ol 8800GTX's.

From www.enthusiast.hardocp.com
Talking about memory performance of the 9800 GX2 compared to the old 8800GTX, very interesting.

"Where Did My Memory Go?


We feel that the use of 512MB of RAM and its more narrow bus per GPU on the GeForce 9800 GX2 is a bottleneck, especially when running Quad SLI. Four of these GPUs are very powerful, with an incredible amount of shader power. The shader performance exists here to push pixels at extremely high resolutions and in-game settings and AA settings. However, the storage space isn’t there to support the high resolutions and AA settings that four GPUs are capable of pushing. That combined with the narrow 256-bit memory bus means the GPU shader performance is way out of balance with the storage and memory bandwidth supporting each GPU. This was proven with GeForce 8800 GTX SLI (2 GPUs, but backed by 768MB of RAM and 384-bit memory bus) allowing higher settings than Quad SLI, and smoother more consistent performance."