How much of an ungrateful barsteward should I be?

[WJA96]

I had a nice SLi system - 2 BFG 8800GTX H2OCs on a hacked X58 motherboard and the whole thing was water cooled - chipset, CPU and GPUs (obviously).

Anyway - one of the 8800GTXs stopped working sometimes and I RMA'd it back to BFG and they very (VERY) kindly sent me a GTX 280 H2OC as a replacement.

So the question is - it's actually slower with a single GTX 280 than the two 8800GTX's in SLi - should I complain to BFG as they promised me an 8800GTX H2OC replacement and then sent me a significantly better single GPU card?

 

[WJA96]

first time i see person who is not happy with a such nice free upgrade

But my PC as a whole is now slower than it was.

 

[WJA96]

Great company!

I agree - I wouldn't buy anything else.

 

[WJA96]

Seems like good service and i think you'd be daft to complain in anyway. As others have said sell the 280 and buy another 8800 if your that unhappy with it.

Have you ever tried to buy a BFG 8800GTX H2OC? They are like hen's teeth.

 

[WJA96]

Just use your remaining 8800 as a PhysX card.

And it would still be slower.

 

[WJA96]

Sell your 8800GTX and buy another 280.

Any excuse for an upgrade

But I was quite happy with a pair of 8800GTXs - why shell out a net £200+ to get another water-cooled GTX 280 that won't match visually?

 

[WJA96]

Now Mike, do please read the first post. It does say that BFG have done me an enormous favour, and I would hope thread title is clearly indicating that I'm not unhappy with BFG, I'm just being an ungrateful barsteward in that I'm going to have to spend more money to balance up my 'second' system. And given that my primary rig already has 3 water-cooled BFG GTX280's in it (one of which was yours), I don't really see the point.

 

[WJA96]

I think what you are experiencing now is another flaw in multi-gpu set ups and certainly one I hadn't previously contemplated.

It's a totally valid point.

 

[WJA96]

That be a great surprise.

It was, I was quite literally doing a little dance with joy.

And not only that - but I posted the card on the 7th February and the new one turned up on the 16th February. That's VERY quick.

 

[WJA96]

Out of interest what hacked X58 board do you have?

Gigabyte EX-X58-UD5

 

[WJA96]

How much slower?

If it's a second system, how much gaming do you do on it?

(Basically, does the performance decrease matter?)


Sell the other 8800GTX, or use it for PhysX and wait until Hydra is released then have GTX280 + 8800GTX.

It's about 10% slower - about 2500 3DMarks. It only matters because I blew £1000 on graphics cards in September 2007 and now I have a slower system as a result of one dying and the manufacturer doing the right thing in sending me a MUCH better card, it just happens to be incompatible with my old SLi setup.

 

[WJA96]

run the other card dry for a few minutes then send it back to them!!!

just kidding

i would email bfg and they will probably replace it for you

the pre watercooled 285 isnt out yet so they will no doubt send you a replacement

I know, I just feel so ungrateful doing that.

 

[WJA96]

Well, I've posted a wanted thread in MM for an 8800GTX H2OC, so we'll see.

 

[WJA96]

if they could have sent you a card the same as yours, they would have. Now stop complaining and sell one of the two cards (i would sell the 8800gtx personally) and unless you play at insane res's with 8xaa and 16xaf i wouldnt bother getting another identical card.
Besides, in games that dont scale all that well, which lets face it is quite a few, you will get significantly better framerates - ignore 3dmark.

I'd be nuts to sell the 8800GTX! If it breaks I can send it back

I'm not looking to sell either really, I'll just get another 8800GTX H2OC to match the old one.

 

[WJA96]

I don't see why everyone is so hell bent on me selling the 8800GTX. It's still a killer card and I'd only get £110-£120 tops for it. If it breaks in the next 8 years (highly likely) I'm not going to get anything less than a GTX 260 H2OC, and quite possibly a lot better.

And I'm not unhappy, or moaning, I'm just saying that I've got a better single card, but a slower overall system and the BFG support technician I 'chatted' with said I would get an 8800GTX back as a replacement.

 

[WJA96]

You got a GTX280 in place of an 8800GTX and your not jumping for joy?

It was, I was quite literally doing a little dance with joy.

Man, you had so much bad luck with hardware you actually don't see your luck has turned hehe!

It's not about luck. On the 1st of February I had a system that would do 25000 3DMarks. Today I have a system that will do 22500 3DMarks - so it's not an upgrade, it's a downgrade.

I'm not knocking BFG, they have done completely the right thing in my eyes - they have swapped my card out for a much better one, and I wouldn't buy any other brand of card now, but the system is slower as a result of the RMA.

If I'm complaining about anything it's that I specifically told them up front that I was running SLI and that, if at all possible, I wanted another 8800GTX. I was told I would get a same-card replacement.

 

[WJA96]

1. keep 280 and 8800gtx run gtx as physix card but u will be wasting electricity as not many games have it yet but 8800gtx will still use power. even if theres no phisix enabled. so basically u will have a card that does not increase performance just eats electricity

Slower than what I had = Fail.

2. Sell 8800gtx get 280 then sli them. great performance but requires fair amount of power. same again increase of electricity bill.

Not to mention the extra £200 it will cost for a water-cooled GTX280 over a water-cooled 8800GTX = Fail

3. sell 8800gtx settle down with one 280. witch would use less power then 8800gtx sli setup will safe u few quids from electricity bill . go to the pub and drink the profit u made from 8800gtx

Still slower than what I had = Fail, but full marks for services to the brewing industry.

 

[WJA96]

u should look at game benchmarks not in 3dmark i bet theres is loads of games that single 280 can beat 88gtx in sli

But not in CUDA. This isn't my games rig. I have a tri-SLI system if I want to play games, but most of what I'm doing is in CUDA.

 

[WJA96]

I'll ignore the first bit, because I'm obviously not getting this across. 3DMark is a synthetic benchmark, but it is a consistent basis to compare teh graphics performance of two systems, especially one based on the same motherboard and CPU.

Giving you the benefit of the doubt (of course) I can only think your approaching this from the angle of a Pro-Benchmarker in which case why are you not running Tri-SLI or Crossfired HD4870 X2's (slacker TBH!).

I have a tri-SLi system too. And I'm looking at a tri-SLI GTX 295 system in April when the new tax year comes in. No slacking here.

In the cold light of day you have a more valuable GPU . . . and dare I say a single 8800GTX would be enough for your modest gaming requirements!

In any light, I have a slower system, and I'm not using it for gaming.

So to sum up, if your really gearing up to break some 3Dmark records you need better GPU's (as I'm sure you know!) and if your starting to dabble in High-Def gaming I think you can do better than circa 2006 GPU's in SLI!

I'm not gearing up to break any records, but for what I'm using it for (distributed computing), the system is less productive. And the 8800GTX may well be a circa 2006 GPU, but 2 of them still beat one GTX 280.

 

[WJA96]

Why not just swap your 280 for my 8800.

excitedly waiting to here from you,

yours faithfully.

Is it a factory water-cooled BFG 8800GTX H2OC?

Nope. didn't think so.