£90 2 x 8800GT

domthecondom · 22 Sep 2008 at 14:07

Hi,

I am a bit on a tight budget atm and i have a 8600 GTS OC 256mb,

and i just saw the special offer OCUK has got on the 8800GT

i can spare about £100 notes and really want a new GFX so i can play most games on High and maybe upgrade again early next YEAR.

I want a whole new system next year but want better GFX for now.

I got offerd a 8800GTX BFG for £80 but saw this.

Is it worth it?

I want 2 buy 2 and SLI them

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showp...MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail

Emlyn_Dewar · 22 Sep 2008 at 14:12

They're 256mb 8800's aren't they? I wouldn't touch them with an extended barge pole these days.
Edit: For about £100 you could get a 4850 which is an excellent card for the price. Much faster than your 8600 and it punches above it's weight in many games.

silvercut · 22 Sep 2008 at 14:19

Well if you SLI them does that mean that they overcome the problem posed by having 256mb as they would effectively have 512mb memory ?

Having said that I think the 4850 would be a good option in this case given it's price/performace.

FrenchTart · 22 Sep 2008 at 14:20

silvercut said:
Well if you SLI them does that mean that they overcome the problem posed by having 256mb as they would effectively have 512mb memory ?

Sadly not :/

magicroundabout · 22 Sep 2008 at 14:21

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showp...3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail

do it

LoadsaMoney · 22 Sep 2008 at 14:52

magicroundabout said:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showp...3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail

do it

Agreed.

Absolute waste of time SLi'ing 2x 256mb cards, get no benefit at all as your still going to be memory limited by only having 256mb, you'll still have to forget about using AA etc...

Rroff · 22 Sep 2008 at 14:57

8800GT with 512Mb SLI is great... 8800GT 256Mb SLI is a sad waste of time and money.

ACESHIGH · 22 Sep 2008 at 14:58

2x 256MB cards in SLI = 256MB memory overall.

LoadsaMoney said:
Agreed.

Absolute waste of time SLi'ing 2x 256mb cards, get no benefit at all as your still going to be memory limited by only having 256mb, you'll still have to forget about using AA etc...

2nded. 4850 is the better choice.

domthecondom · 22 Sep 2008 at 15:10

£111 :O this is £11 to much haha i will need to borrow my dads card then

will the ATI play games High for a few months? like 4/5 months then i will upgrade the whole system

Adrianr · 22 Sep 2008 at 15:45

Thought about checking the MM for a couple of second hand 512mb 8800gt's? I'm sure that would cost you less or equal to 1 x 4850, and it would perform better.

Happy · 22 Sep 2008 at 15:48

domthecondom said:
£111 :O this is £11 to much haha i will need to borrow my dads card then

will the ATI play games High for a few months? like 4/5 months then i will upgrade the whole system

Another vote for the ATI 4850, they are excellent and yes it'll eat them

FrenchTart · 22 Sep 2008 at 15:58

If you're going to upgrade in a few months then just get a cheap 8800GT to last you (NOT a 256MB one, a 512MB one). £60ish and it'll play games just fine until you get your new system in 5 months.

ACESHIGH · 22 Sep 2008 at 16:12

domthecondom said:
£111 :O this is £11 to much haha i will need to borrow my dads card then

will the ATI play games High for a few months? like 4/5 months then i will upgrade the whole system

Card will last that long for most all games.
And with that card you could upgrade to crossfire (if you dont mind flashing board to HP VooDoo Blackbird BIOS).

domthecondom · 22 Sep 2008 at 16:39

Well i duno about flashing my bios atm, but if the ATI will work fine on my Striker i will take it,

It seems that i don't have access to the MM for some reason :|

I understand i can't go Crossfire on my striker as its a NVidia chip, unless i do what the above person said.

But if i'm upgrading my system in a about half a year there is no point is there for now?

will i need to format my PC cos of the drivers?

ACESHIGH · 22 Sep 2008 at 17:15

The 4850 is a great card and will work fine in your current motherboard.

No need to format. But what you should do is uninstall old drivers. Download and use
"Driver Cleaner Professional ", its very straighforward, just select Nvidia under the cleaning section. Then install latest ATI drivers.

http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=745

domthecondom · 22 Sep 2008 at 19:44

orderd the 4850 and downloaded Driver Cleaner

thanks for everybodys help

EdGey · 23 Sep 2008 at 00:22

when you upgrade, make sure you get a crossfire motherboard so you can have 2 4850's

domthecondom · 23 Sep 2008 at 10:36

When i upgrade i will see what the best option is at the time

By then Nvidia might be winning the race again

This is the first time i use ATI GFX, i will benchmark my 8600 on Benchmark 06 and then benchmark the ATI

I will post results once i get my ATI

Emlyn_Dewar · 23 Sep 2008 at 10:55

Make sure to benchmark some games also, 3dmark '06 is absolutely !!!useless!!!

Colour used to highligh the useless-ness of '06.

kylew · 23 Sep 2008 at 11:42

domthecondom said:
When i upgrade i will see what the best option is at the time

By then Nvidia might be winning the race again

This is the first time i use ATI GFX, i will benchmark my 8600 on Benchmark 06 and then benchmark the ATI
I will post results once i get my ATI

3Dmark 06 doesn't give an accurate representation of the latest offerings from ATi and NV.

I could get 19.5k in 06 with my 3870X2 and Q6600 clocked to 3.9Ghz, but many struggle (me included) to get that with the latest gen of cards. Play some games and record your FPS, that'll be a better representation of the difference in performance.