I have about 350 to spend on a new card and was considering the above choices. I sold my 8800GTS 640mb for a good price so I'm wanting to upgrade to something better. I think it really comes down to either the 8800GTs in SLI or the 3870 X2. Price is almost identical about 20.00 difference in favor the 8800GT after rebate. If anyone has these setups let me know what you think. Don't start a big flame war of Nvidia versus ATI. I own both and have no loyalty to any maker, just the best performance for the price.

8800GT sli would be my prefered option as the single slotness woudl take a lot less room and performance shoudl beat the other 2 setups in most cases.

The ONLY reason I would recommend against any of them would be the following
 
1.  If you get the 8800GT get them in SLI now, if you plan to SLI in the future it may not happen.
 
2.  The 9800GTX (single) will not be as powerful as the 8800's in SLI
 
3.  What motherboard do you have because you won't be able to x-fire a pair of 3870 X2's later if you have an SLI mobo.

 
 Well i think this kind of choice comes down to a couple of things really.
 1 What size/res monitor are you going to be using.
 2 What are your preferances FPS vs Quality/detail (As in AF/AA levels)
    Mactronix

I currently have an EVGA 680i SLI motherboard. If I go with 8800 I would get 2 now. If I ran the ATI it would be by itself with no plans to use crossfire unless I changed motherboards. I thought I saw benchmarks on 8800GT SLI versus the 3870 X2. They changed up all the charts and now I can't find crap. I'm using a 22inch 1680x1050, and I am more interested in resolution with all the effects but not so much about AA/AF.

8800GT in sli is going to be faster.

8800GT Sli. I own the 3870X2 its a fantastic GPU but annoying to w/c aftermarket cool. Also the evga 750i is a fantastic overclocker + board for the budget, 8800GT sli in that baby would be well worth it. Also the 8800GTs are so cheap nowadays! why wouldn't you get one?

I kinda figured the 8800GT in SLI would be the fastest option, since it's also the cheapest that's probably the way to go.

9800 GTX because u can have tri sli option. but if your staying put, 8800 GT is your best bet.  
 

 
 Yes that definatly seems the logical way to go for your wants and needs    
   Mactronix

SLi 8800GT +1

I think I will make the final purchase this weekend.  Two EVGA 8800GT SLI. I was trying to see some numbers on the 8800 in SLI in games like Crysis. Since they have changed the charts around I can't find crap anymore. If someone could put a link to some benchmarks I would appreciate it.

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardwar [...] /page9.asp
http://www.legionhardware.com/docu [...] id=716&p=3
 
 
I've been able to play (edit: the entire game, including core, paradise lost, etc.)1680x1050, everything on high, with 2xaa and 16xaf in Win XP.  One 8800GT is nowhere near playable at those settings.  As you can see, if you don't play at hgih res, you will need to enable fsaa to really take advantage of SLI. (at least in XP DX9)
 
Also, no Crysis, but look at the scaling in Oblivion at Anand.  COD4 scales amazing too, but anand unfortunatelty didn't enable fsaa. *shakes head*  That is the key really as in most games no fsaa, no big gains.  FS shows just how good SLI scales in COD4 with the eye candy turned up.  
http://www.anandtech.com/video/sho [...] =3140&p=12
http://firingsquad.com/hardware/nv [...] page11.asp
 
 

Thanks for the links. After seeing the first article, the 9600Gts might be worth consideration since I'm not thrilled with any of my options right now. Since new generation cards are on the horizon. two 96s might be the cheapest way out yet especially at 1680x1050.