i purchased the computer in the sig and now ive been wondering about switching to a single card setup. i can sell the dual 9800GT i guess for around $200, and i was looking at the GTX 260. on nvidia's website when you go to their gpu section and choose your gpu on the product info page, there's a "how fast would your pc be with this card" and 3D MARK will scan your pc and then add the new card into a new score. it will show your current score (which mine is 12,600 right now which doesnt seem right to me) and your score with the new card your looking at. so my pc would jump from 12,600 to 14,000 with a GTX260. but my question is since i only game at 14x9 (19" monitor) i really dont need SLI correct? so i have an overkill because SLI is better used at higher resolutions than 14x9. so would a GTX 260 be a good single card that would preform well for a year or so and get good frame rates for current and future games? basically would i loose any performance at my current resolution by switching to a GTX 260? so i would really appreciate any advise on this and i dont know if its allowed but if it turns out that a GTX 260 fairs to be a good choice then if anyone is looking for SLI 9800GT's im selling them for $200. thanks for any help in advanced.

If you're fine with the GF9800GT in SLi then you could keep it, it's fairly competent, and if you're losing money by switching to a single card, I don't think it'd be worth it. SLi does introduce a slight bit of overhead at lower resolutions compared to the relative benefit, but if it's going to cost you extra money to move to a single GTX260, I wouldn't bother.

Both will fulfil your goal of "perform well for a year or so and get good frame rates for current and future games". The only major advantages to a single GTX260 would be both the slightly larger memory size (assuming those are 512MB GT cards), and not having to worry about an SLi profile. So you might find the GTX outperforming in those situations, and the GT in SLi outperforming in others. Either way you'll be fine, but I wouldn't spend to much making the switch. If you're getting the GTX260 for the $200 you're selling the others for, then it'd definitely be more worthy of consideration IMO.

You can put the sales request in the deals section: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/forum-8.html

It's fine as is at the end of your request, just don't make a habit of it of course.

9800gt is just renamed 8800gt, and 2 in sli will far outperform single gtx260.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/sho [...] =3341&p=13
http://www.anandtech.com/video/sho [...] =3341&p=14
http://www.anandtech.com/video/sho [...] =3341&p=15
http://www.anandtech.com/video/sho [...] =3341&p=16
http://www.anandtech.com/video/sho [...] =3341&p=17
http://www.anandtech.com/video/sho [...] =3341&p=18
http://www.anandtech.com/video/sho [...] =3341&p=19

Nvidia will have you believe otherwise so they can sell new hardware. Don't believe them.

And 12600 is far too low for dual 8800gt. Check that sli is enabled. My single 8800gts get 16000.

Agreed. If you're OK with the 9800 GT SLI setup, don't change (especially at that resolution). Don't switch just because nVidia tell you to (imagine that - they want to sell you more GPUs)

Well your score is low because your CPU is stock. OC that bad boy and watch her shine.

If you buy the 260 you wont get what they promise without OCing your CPU, and when you call and whine they will blame it on your system.

hey dagger, your running the professional version so it probably detects dual gpu's. i only run the free version. and i feel that i dont need SLI at 14x9 resolution to play games. and SLI can get annoying sometimes.i can switch and get rid of the micro-stuttering and worrying about bad scaling.

i looked at some benchmarks here on toms hardware and although they dont test at 14x9, i look at the closest one under which i think is 12x10, and the GTX 260 preforms just as good as SLI 9800GT. i dont plan on upgrading my monitor size anytime so why SLI. i can get the same performance and forget about SLI issues. and actually at the moment, im only using 1 9800GT to play games. and a GTX 260 is far better than a single 9800GT. so thats why i think im going to switch. still any advise is welcomed. i want to see what more people think.

There is no chance a q9300 quad can bottleneck that much. I bet sli is disabled. And with that 650i chipset plus the q9300's low 7.5x multiplier, he/she won't get far with oc anyway.

Free version runs sli just fine. There is no difference. Download gpuz, it'll show you if sli is enabled.
http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/

You're paying extra money for what amounts to a pretty huge downgrade. If you really want to get rid of the sli setup for single card, consider a single 9800gx2 instead.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814133231

hey dagger, i do enable SLI before running the free version and i do use gpu-z and it shows SLI enabled, but i still get 12,600. and getting a 9800Gx2 is SLI on one card. that wouldnt solve my SLI problems. and from what i saw, the GTX 260 preforms at/above 9800GT SLI at my resolution so how would i be downgrading?

9800gx2 is internal, as a single card, you cannot disable its dual setup(sli, if you will).

If sli is already enabled, something else is at work and sli isn't the culprit. Which means the underlying problem may very well affect single cards such as gtx260 too. Imagine the lower gtx260 performance level get cut in half.

And I'm not aware of any single gtx260 outperforming 8800gt/9800gt sli at any resolution. Care to link?

The earlier benchmark shows the exact opposite, as expected. Scroll down to the second graph and chart, at 1280x1024, 8800gt sli get 57.3 fps in Crysis, gtx260 get 43.8, and gtx280 get 50.1.
http://www.anandtech.com/video/sho [...] =3341&p=13