Keep 8800GTS 512 or CF (2) 3870's?

Ok, so im one of those guys that can never really sit still with my hardware. I always have to do something every so often even if it is putting new fans in or a fan control, or new Video card or something. ANYWAYS!

I purchased an XFX 8800GTS 512 Alpha Dog several months ago and have it OCed to 750/1000, I'm Extremely happy with it. There are a few times when I wish I had something just a little bit more, like when things get hairy in COD4 and the smoke is everywhere, or World in Conflict, and a few other titles. I've been flirting with the idea of selling my 8800GTS off to a friend for the normal $250 that they are going for, minus shipping wait and a free install by me. The warranty can be moved to a 2nd person with XFX so that person is all covered.

I have an Asus P5W DH motherboard which uses the 975x chipset. Which means one card will run at x16 pci-e speed but 2 in crossfire would run at x8 x8 speed. I can pick up (2) 3870's for about $150ish each. Would this be a big enough boost in performance to vouch for selling the 8800GTS and paying the little extra in cash? I'm also worried about the PSU, will that handle 2 3870's? It says it takes 550W in CF but you know how that goes.

ADVISE?

Your Coolmax is on the certifed for AMD Crossfire list:

http://game.amd.com/us-en/crossfir [...] s.aspx?p=3

As far as performance, I would stay with the 8800GTS, unless you have an enormous screen.

Do SLI or CrossFire always improve performance ?
Not Always , there are some games that dont take advantage of SLI or CrossFire , so you wont see a difference between 2 cards and 1 card in those games , but in games that take advantage of SLI or CrossFire , 2 cards will perform better than one.

I knew that, but since it's 1.5 years old i wasn't sure about the newer cards.

a year ago I would have agreed, but 90% of the games out there now benefit from it so this isn't a valid argument for me anymore.

In some of the benchmarks I saw it does, like in COD4 and several others. However I also saw in COD4 that the x8 x8 setup takes a good hit with performance. A few others as well. As far as CPU bottleneck, lets not get into this debate. If I had a lowend 2xxx or 4xxx Core2 or x2 AMD chip I could accept that a little, but my OCed e6400 wizzes by, no problem.

you more than fine. I mean the 8800 GTS is pretty much a 8800 GTX with less RAM from what benchmarks I've seen. The 2 3870s are slightly higher than the Ultra, and the Ultra is a bit higher than the 8800 GTS.

Your more than ok.

Give me your card i'll give you my 9600 GT OC lol!

yeah.

Your best bet would be to wait till Summer and see whats new and what went down in price.

I'm regretting buying the 9800 GX2 soo quick, but when I play games and get the high frames I forget about everything

Worse comes to worse I'll trade it in for a new card

but ur 8800 GTS 512 is a very well balanced card!

Hey man,

As a side note to your thoughts....I just bought an EVGA 750i FTW mobo, E8400 and some new memory.

After that, I plan to get a second 8800GTS 512 and SLI them.

Since you already have a 775 CPU, and DDR2 memory, buying the $199 EVGA 750i board may be the best move right now. Then down the road, you can upgrade the processor if you want. The 750i is also supposed to be an exceptional overclocker, so you may be able to get a better OC than you currently have.

Food for though. (And the 750i FTW is just such a bad ass looking board, how could you NOT buy it?)

The SLI is 16/16. It has been debated on line, but straight from EVGA: there was a mis-print in the manual stating 8/8, when it is in fact 16/16.

But sadly, id have to go with NO, on the other two counts. Its DDR2 and I dont think the next gen Intel will be 775. =(

But, in my opinion, DDR3 is still not quite worth the cost, and the 45nm 775 CPUs are not maxed out at this point.

However, if you want DDR3 and next gen support....and you have a burning desire to tinker.....i guess crossfire will keep you busy for a while.

If you run at higher resolutions which I'm assuming since you have a 22" your at 1680x1050 native. I would say the Crossfire would help. I currently am running a 8800GTS 640mb and have sold it to a friend. I will be replacing it with 2x9600GT in SLI because of price vs performance. I really don't want to spend any more until the next get cards come out. I think CF 3870 and SLI 9600 will outrun just about any single GPU card.