2-GTS 250s or 3-9800GTs

[Ice2]

I have a problem, i need to figure out which to buy, 2-GeForce GTS 250 512MB Cards or 3-GeForce 9800 GT 512MB

The 250's would cost a little more, but thats ok...

Which one would perform better with my 780i motherboard?
Is there a clear winner of the two options?

 

[Mousemonkey]

Seeing as 9800GT's are only two way SLi'able why would you want/need 3 of them?

 

[Ice2]

Oh really? Crap...ok thanks for telling me that..it would be kinda sad figuring that out later on.

 

[shadow187]

Both of those are inferior to one HD5870, and about equal to a single HD5850 (which can overclock to HD5870 levels). But if you had to choose, the 250s would be better due to efficiency, and you can add another one later.

 

[Mousemonkey]

The GTS250's are 3 way SLi'able though so they would be the better choice if you do have a hankering for three cards.

 

[shadow187]

Only certain cards MM? I had no idea..I just thought it was certain cards for 4-way.

 

[Mousemonkey]

It's been that way for a while at least as far back as the 7xxx series but I'm not so versed up on the 6xxx series, even though I had a couple of 6600's only one of them was a PCIe card and I never bothered with SLi'ng it because I was onto 7900GT's in the game rig by then.

 

[capt_taco]

Those cards are too old-fashioned for a 3-way. What a bunch of prudes.

But seriously, any time you can get the same performance with fewer cards, it's almost always the best option to go for that.

Which means that if you're doing your video cards from scratch, you rarely want to crossfire or SLI unless you're at the ultra-high end trying to be the new benchmark king. For most people, the only time when multiple cards make sense is if you already have a card that's a couple years old, and adding a second one would be cheaper than buying whatever the latest model is.

 

[Mousemonkey]

Or, like me your two cards cost less together than a GTX280 did but seemed to perform the same or better in all the benchmarks that were about at the time.

 

[Bluescreendeath]

Why don't you go for 5x00 cards?

5770 ~ $160 and equals a GTX260 or 4870
1 5850 equals two GTS250s in SLi