9800 gx2 - expensive?

dobbinuk · 2 Apr 2009 at 11:52

Life, or probably age, and financial restrictions (kids) has meant that I can't always have the newest and the best. I last updated my PC about a year ago :eek:

with a 9800 gx2. I have scraped together a little spare cash from digging round in the bottom of the sofa and sliding a ruler under the fridge. I thought the hoard I discovered might see me through to buying another gx2, as it looks as though SLIed gx2s erform well, even against more modern cards. Unfortunately gx2s seem very expensive still. Is that just me or have they held their price somewhat?

Now I'm in that age old quandry where I don't know whether to buy another gx2, wait for a newer card or some other option. Any advice most appreciated.

While I've got your attention, if using SLI, is it best to ensure that the gx2s are identical?

gt_junkie · 2 Apr 2009 at 11:54

Unfortunately 2x GX2's are limited by their 512mb onboard ram.

TBH if you were to sell on your current GX2 and get something like a GTX260 or two the performance would be much better.

What issues are you having with gaming at the moment?

gt

dobbinuk · 2 Apr 2009 at 12:05

Thanks for the quick response. I knew someone would be clever enough to ask exactly why I needed another card and I haven't really got an answer, apart from the fact that I want to get a new bigger monitor (24"+ when I find more household caches) and want to ensure that I can still run games like LOTRO with all settings maxxed out.

Roeg1 · 2 Apr 2009 at 12:11

dobbinuk said:
Thanks for the quick response. I knew someone would be clever enough to ask exactly why I needed another card and I haven't really got an answer, apart from the fact that I want to get a new bigger monitor (24"+ when I find more household caches) and want to ensure that I can still run games like LOTRO with all settings maxxed out.

Like GT said your best to stick the Old Card on that famous auction site, or the MM on here and then get a 260. If your going for a 24" monitor i can tell you from experience 512mb will not be enough Vram.

If your planning on playing new games your want at least 768mb.
You wont see any real improvements using a gx2 sli combo, your also generate much more heat and use a lot more power than a single 260.

You can get a 260 for 150 quid on here now that's a steal and will be a great upgrade on the card you currently use.

straxusii · 2 Apr 2009 at 12:16

The 9800GX2 is still a very respectable card, Im not sure it is worse than a 260 or 4870. A quick look around shows people upgrading from a 9800GX2 to a GTX285 and getting no increase in frame rates, of course this will be very dependant on ram usage and game.

kylew · 2 Apr 2009 at 12:18

Roeg1 said:
Like GT said your best to stick the Old Card on that famous auction site, or the MM on here and then get a 260. If your going for a 24" monitor i can tell you from experience 512mb will not be enough Vram.

If your planning on playing new games your want at least 768mb.
You wont see any real improvements using a gx2 sli combo, your also generate much more heat and use a lot more power than a single 260.

You can get a 260 for 150 quid on here now that's a steal and will be a great upgrade on the card you currently use.

From experience then?

What experience is this? Because I've been running a 24" monitor for 2 years and I've never had any problems from having 512MB RAM.

512MB is 'enough' more RAM is better of course, but you're being a bit dramatic really.

512MB can hack it at 2560x1600 on decent settings.

While I'm moaning though, It is better to get a card with more RAM, 512MB is fine now, but it won't be forever. Soon it will be a problem and the average size of RAM will go up to 1GB.

Reality|Bites · 2 Apr 2009 at 12:19

Yeah it's still a good card, only slightly slower than a GTX280, maybe around GTX275 performance. The only thing that lets it down is the 512MB of memory.

Greebo · 2 Apr 2009 at 12:39

kylew said:
From experience then?

What experience is this? Because I've been running a 24" monitor for 2 years and I've never had any problems from having 512MB RAM.

512MB is 'enough' more RAM is better of course, but you're being a bit dramatic really.

512MB can hack it at 2560x1600 on decent settings.

While I'm moaning though, It is better to get a card with more RAM, 512MB is fine now, but it won't be forever. Soon it will be a problem and the average size of RAM will go up to 1GB.

I disagree. ALready there are plenty of games where the ram runs out on 22" screens never mind 24" screens eg GRID and GTA4 and that is without applying lots of AA.

Take GTA4. At 1680 x 1050 and my GTX260 I can have the highest textures but only 31% view distance or medium textures and 100% view distance before it uses up all of my 864mb of memory. You need 1gb of memory to run that game on max details at 1680 x 1050 never mind 1900 x 1200.

Also the GX2 although fast and still holds up well even today compared to the newer cards does have a stuttering problem and struggles at high res with modern games.

The days of 512mb being enough memory went out of the window about 6 months IMO.

Mr Kingston · 2 Apr 2009 at 12:43

i have sli 9800 gx2s running my 24" screen at native res and i have no issues wuith 512mb of ram being the issue at all, to the op i did make sure my cards were nearly identical, the only difference is the core clock of 1 card is quicker by 25 mhz so i flashed the slower card to the faster cards bios.

I say go with quad sli as tbh the 9800gx2 is one of the best cards ive ever owned

psychas · 2 Apr 2009 at 12:45

well if u want to add another 9800gx2 u electricity bill increase dramatically

reflux · 2 Apr 2009 at 12:47

9800GX2s are hot, noisy and a bit last year tbh. I liked mine but I sold it on six months ago. They're powerful but there are better solutions out there right now.

From everything I read about Quad SLi, the performance is poor and not worth the outlay. That might have changed by now though.

I'd suggest you just sell the GX2 and go for a GTX260, HD4870 1GB, GTX275 or HD4890. Whilst they won't be significantly faster, they will run cooler and you've got a better guarantee of compatibility with games.

Don't worry about gaming on a 24'' - I have a 260 and it deals with everything I've tried fine.

arc@css · 2 Apr 2009 at 12:50

512 of vram is ok, good even on most games but I'd still advise to go for a greater amount of ram. Something in the form of 260 / 1gig radeons would keep going nicely for quite a long time.

Mr Kingston · 2 Apr 2009 at 12:55

so what would the op be achieveing if he decided to get a new card apart from very little performance upgrade and having the ability for a bit more memmory usage, i still think quad sli is overkill but i use it daily and its awesome, especially with the 295 being quad sli to the drivers are a lot better than the earlier tests that were carried out.

Wish the op the best of luck with his decisission

gt_junkie · 2 Apr 2009 at 12:55

kylew said:
From experience then?

I have had experience of the card and found it to be excellent but if the OP is wanting a 2nd then i see no reson to have the power of four cores allied to only 512mb of ram. I did find an increase moving to the 260 although not massive.

It might not be such a limiting factor now but that is only a matter of time.

It was only a few years ago that 256mb was the holy grail for GPU VRAM volume.

gt

dobbinuk · 2 Apr 2009 at 13:05

Wow. Cheers for all the useful feedback. I think I may do the eBay option but will wait to see how things look with the 4890x2s. Again, thanks for the views.

dobbinuk · 2 Apr 2009 at 13:14

Just seen these, which might be useful but haven't looked to see if there is any bias regarding results (or any other validation):
http://www.guru3d.com/category/vga_charts/

Roeg1 · 2 Apr 2009 at 13:32

kylew said:
From experience then?

While I'm moaning though, It is better to get a card with more RAM, 512MB is fine now, but it won't be forever. Soon it will be a problem and the average size of RAM will go up to 1GB.

Maybe you have a magic 512mb on mine it didn't cope not at full settings on a list of games from cod4 -world in conflict - gtr evo to name just a few games. That made me gett a card with more vram.

And that was 12 months ago, The newer title out not definitely require more than 512mb of vram check your vram usage when playing games but seeing as you only have 512mb i guess you cant see it going above that figure as you dont have the extra vram to be used.

And the games coming out this year will be using closer to 1gig.

Rroff · 2 Apr 2009 at 16:06

I'd agree with what people are saying above... I had a nice 8800GT 512Mb SLI setup and performance wise it rocked, but when I changed from a 1440x display to a 2048x display there were several games that were VRAM limited at that res when using max settings... and I didn't buy that display to run stuff at lower settings so it was 260GTX SLI time

512Mb is still fine for most games at upto 1920x res unless you go mad on the AA but there are some new games where it is a limiting factor and they happened to be ones I played.

mpj88 · 2 Apr 2009 at 16:12

dobbinuk said:
Wow. Cheers for all the useful feedback. I think I may do the eBay option but will wait to see how things look with the 4890x2s. Again, thanks for the views.

Correct me if im wrong but i dont think they are making a 4890x2

arc@css · 2 Apr 2009 at 16:14

I remember buying my 4870 512 and playing Clear Sky and a few other games which I appreciate was buggy at release but my card despite being a factory overclocked one and o/c a bit more to 850 / 1100 just couldn't quite cut it at max settings at 1680 x 1050 so that's when I thought sod it and impulsively bought the 4870 X2.