New Cards or Sli/Crossfire old cards

[dos1986]

The likes of the HD4870/4850/GTX's are getting all the attention, but the clever buyer will be going sli/ crossfire on the older generation.

Take the HD4850 which is suppose to be near or above 8800gtx performance for $229, at that price you will be able to get 2 x 9600gt's/ HD3870 which will be a nice bit faster for the same price..

HD4870 $330 will be up against 2 x 8800gts

GTX260 $450 up against 2 x 8800gtx

And so on...

 

[iggybeans]

Two 3870s for below $229? Not at this time, although you could get two 3850s for about that. You also could get two 9600GSO cards.
However, a single 4850 might turn out to be just as powerful. Also, it would be a simpler solution. It wouldn't require Crossfire or SLi to work. It would only take up one PCIe slot and it might use less power. All things to be considered.
I guess we'll only know once the benchmarks are out.

 

[mihirkula]

@ Dos...So what...Crossfire 4870 would beat the liquid potty out of 8800GT SLI or even 9800GTX Tri SLI

anyways the official benchmarks aren't out yet so one can't say anything.

 

[cheshirekitty]

The way I understand it SLI only truly shines if you're using massive resolutions (screen sizes above 22" or 1680X1050 at least).

Not to mention a single card solution doesn't make you sink extra or limit your choices in PSU, chipset or cooling.

And then things like memory make a difference as well. SLI 8800GTS will still have a bottleneck of 512MB per card limiting things like AA performance. Rumors are that the GTX280 will have 1GB.

 

[dos1986]

A GTX280 will cost $650

HD4870 crossfire will cost even more..

I am talking about getting 2 x HD3870 for 240, 2 x 8800gt 260, 2 x 8800gts 300, 2 x 8800gtx 400 to take on single HD4850/4870/GTX280..

I believe the bang for buck will go with sli'ing the old cards, no way can I see the HD4850 matching an Ultra in AOC, Crysis and so on..

 

[Dalyinx]

A single 8800GTX eats SLI 7900GTX for breakfast. If the GTX280 is anything like what the 8800GTX was to the 7900GTX, it should do the same, and I hope it is. Nvidia had almost two years to perfect this damn card.

 

[dos1986]

HD4850 €156

http://www.electronicagigant.nl/nl/product/categorie/componenten/videokaarten/sapphire/221182-sapphire-ati-hd4850,512mb

Not a chance in hell will they out perform an Ultra or GTX on a 22" or 24"..

 

[jsc]

SLI/Crossfire performance does not always scale upward. And unless you buy the two graphics cards at the beginning of the product cycle,by the time you buy the second card, you usually have a new, single card solution available at a reasonable price that will outperform the two cards.

 

[ovaltineplease]

well given that the current THG best gfx for the $$ indicated SLI 9600 GT/ATI 3870 HD as being the best bang for the buck cards right now I wouldn't be totally surprised if 8800 GT/GTS were the next best bang for the buck selection.

I really wouldn't get that excited about buying next gen hardware until this fall given that there just isn't enough games out right now to tax it. The only people who should be shooting for 4000 series or g200 series are people who've been sitting on an older graphics array for a while

 

[sean1986]

When are the banchmarks coming out?!?

 

[njalterio]

When are the banchmarks coming out?!?

About a day after the cards come out.

 

[pauldh]

We'll have to wait and see. If a single card performs equally to SLI/crossfire setup for the same price, then the single card is the way to go.

But currently, that is not the case. $300 in SLI more often than not offers alot more performance than a $300 9800GTX.


You do not need high res to benefit from SLI. You need settings not limited by the CPU/system. You may not need SLI aprt from high res for most games, but look at Crysis and even at 1024x768, in DX10 very high SLI can blow out a single GPU. Have a look at the 9800GX2 (basically SLI 8800GTS G92) vs a single G92.
It's a blowout at 10x7. In Crysis, Vista very high is currently owned by SLI , even at low res with fsaa.
http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/digest3d/0408/itogi-video-cr3-wxp-aaa-1024-pcie.html