Ok heres the situation. Ive got a 4850 i got as a gift from my girlfriend.(very nice card by the way) unfortunately ive got an sli motherboard. i was thinking about selling the 4850 for about $150 or so and picking up 2 8800gt(was gonna go for 9800gt but i hear they are just rebadged 8800gt) cards for $220 from newegg.(only a $70 loss for me) Now at the moment im just running 1280x1024 on a 17"lcd but later i was thinking about getting a new 22"(in about a month or so) Any thoughts?

Amd Athlon X2 5600+ (2.8Ghz)
2GB G.Skill 800Mhz PC6400
Gigabyte M55sli-S4
320GB Hitachi Sata 2 (7200rpm)
Rocketfish 700w psu

Well, sadly with your processor, the performance increase will be very little. I suggest you upgrade your processor first. Then your video card.

It's because I have a similar specs to yours, and when I changed my video card from the Radeon 3850 to the Radeon 4850. The game I wanted to have higher FPS on higher settings but ended up with similar framerates, which is GRID and Crysis. This maybe means that in some games, getting an SLI will be fruitless as you'll be CPU limited.

I would keep the 4850. (it will work fine on that MB)

stridervm is right about the cpu. You'll get some bottlenecking either way, but I would still go with the 4850

Just keep the 4850. Dont bother with processor or motherboard upgrades, then the price starts quickly going up and the whole original idea/plan is just a cluster F**k. Your current system is fine.

Well look at the ati fanbois rush in, let me apologize for them.

Now, to your original question. Even at 22'' I don't think you would need 2 8800's, I have a 8800GT and use a 24'' LG monitor and I can run basically anything within reason(not crysis on very high).

Personally, I would look at benchmarks, see if the 8800GT in sli would even benefit me in any of the games I play, if they didn't, I would look at how the single 8800GT compares to the 4850 in the games I play, then I would choose a single card solution. As I said, even with a 22'' you shouldn't have problems in most games with a single 8800GT or a 4850 which ever one you decide on.

The comments on your CPU are somewhat correct, it is somewhat poor, but not terrible by any means.

Check the benchmarks out, avoid personal opinions, see if a single card solution will suit your needs and then choose between the two cards. If you must go SLI, the 8800GT's sli amazingly and if the games you play support it, it would crush the single 4850 as it should being two cards.

Good luck-

8800gt SLI is pretty good for its age, I dont see any reason not to get them. I mean, yes the 4850 is a great card but if your mobo is SLI then by all means switch it over.

Also depends on what version of the Nforce4 chipset his board has. Some of them were 16x/1x, some 8x/8x, and the Nforce4 Ultra being 16x/16x. I think the performance between 8/8 and 16/16 is the same with the 8800GT, so as long as he has either of those he should be fine. Two 8800GT's outperform a single 4850 no doubt, thats not even in the question.

But being that he already has a 4850 and it would cost him an additional $70 to sell/buy.....Just seems like a questionable decision for something that he recieved for free, regardless of performance numbers.

By the way, no need to apologize for "ati fanbois" Liderc, I dont think there is any of that here in this thread. Dont be so fast in attempting to "stand your ground" next time.

Did You miss the part where he said he already OWNED the 4850. Why would he sell it and get just a single 8800GT?

My personal opinion: SLI and crossfire are still to immature. You have some games where performance nearly doubles, and other where performance remains stagnant. Although 8800GT SLIed would dominate some games, on a 17 you wouldn't see and on a 22 you might (depends on the game). Something else to think about: When you upgrade you CPU and mobo you'll have a newer card to consider doing a dual card set up with, rather then being locked into SLI and older 8800GTs. So basically when you can upgrade past being CPU limited, you will want the 4850 instead of two 8800GTs.

No, I didn't miss this, I didn't say sell the 4850 at any time in my post, I suggested he see if a single card solution would be sufficient for his needs. He can sell the 4850 and buy something else if he wants. He asked if he should sell the 4850 and buy an 8800GT for sli and I brought up the fact that he probably wouldn't need two 8800gt's in sli to play games on a 22'' monitor.

Keep the 4850 as it will do for 17", most likely for a 22" as well. If you upgrade your CPU and/or mobo in the future, you could go for another SLI board and drop in another 4850. As stridervm said, you might find you are limited by your CPU.

i'm not fan of NVIDIA nieghther AMD/ATI
i only listen what my pocket says, what is important here is the Graphic Chipset Technology, as u see Nvidia's Series 8000 is older than AMD's.
if u think about the future keep 4850 and set Crossfire in Future with apropriate Chipset like P35, or AMD790

Personally I think it makes sense to just keep the 4850. To appreciate the added power of the 8800gt SLi fully you are probably going to need to overclock your CPU, and well the nForce 4 boards aren't known to be terribly good overclockers. Well that may only be for a game like crysis ^_^, but in most cases you should see a good increase going from your 4850 to the two 8800GTs. If you don't mind parting with that extra $70 though then two 8800GTs would make a fine option. Really though couldn't you just get the reciept to return the card and use that money toward your 8800GTs?

I wouldn't SLI without upgrading your PSU. I hate to sound critical, but that Rocketfish is Circuit City's (or was it BB?) "house" generic brand, and I read a recent review that said it was among the worst measured performance and worst quality PSU they had ever reviewed. Solid PSUs are so cheap nowadays. I would not trust any kind of SLI setup to that PSU--which may influence your decision.

But on the bright side, have you OC'd your CPU? You could likely get more life out of it if you can get it up a couple MHz.

Good luck!

Sure, SLI 8800GT is quite a bit more powerful in most games. That's what I have gamed on for 10 months now and I find driver support/ and performance scaling to be very good. But, I would highly recommend you just keep your HD4850 and only upgrade if/when it lets you down (new games, new monitor at higher res, etc.) You may find you will want a new rig at that time and it may support crossfire. (hopefully X58 will support both SLI and crossfire on the same mobo).