Potentially idiotic question about 9800gx2

[thegoonden]

Doesn't seem to be mentioned in the product descriptions (saying only "SLI ready".....but can a GX2 run in a non SLI board? is the SLI done entirely internally?

And while we're at it, are they any more stable/functional (or less insane/useless) than 2 physically distinct cards in SLI?


That's the important stuff.....below is the usual goondenous rambling as to what's happening in my rather deranged brain.....


I still feel the need for an upgrade, and I dunno, I've been told (see my thread re:IQ ) that the 4870 will not really be much better than my 8800GTX, at 1920, with as much AA as I can set it to. (though it's been suggested the 1GB model may well stretch it's legs a wee bit in this respect). And I really don't fancy a 280, because....well it uses like 400W or somethng stupid, and is hotter than Satan's crotch on a summer day in hell (although at least it vents it's lava out the back and not into the case like the 4850).

Given that, and the silly prices OC are doing GX2's for, it seems it is also an option. (yes, it doesn't have DX10.1, but according to their naysayers, NV are causing that to vanish from all games).


I can see this one coming down to a coin toss.....

While I/ won't I?
FLIP
ATI or NV
FLIP
if ATI: 4870 or 4870x2
FLIP
If NV: old gen or new
FLIP

etc

 

[TheRealDeal]

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/ati_radeon_4850_4870_performance/page14.asp

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/ati_radeon_4850_4870_performance/page15.asp

Check those links out should put you a little more at ease of how the 4870 fairs at your res with high aa. Seems to take less of a hit than the gx2 when the res is at its highest.

 

[thegoonden]

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/ati_radeon_4850_4870_performance/page14.asp

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/ati_radeon_4850_4870_performance/page15.asp

Check those links out should put you a little more at ease of how the 4870 fairs at your res with high aa. Seems to take less of a hit than the gx2 when the res is at its highest.

Cheers, that makes it clear (though I don't think of 8x as "high", it does show the 4800's stamping on the NV's, and it would surely continue at higher settings).

This why I keep asking silly questions, the more I read and search the more my brain hurts LOL.


BTW, I feel honour bound in the interests of fairness, to say that I'd believe the benches on those links a lot more if the pages were not wallpapered in ATI ads.
(nothing in it at all, I'd say, but you can bet if it were a page showing NV's as better, with NV ads everywhere, the ATI "fundamentalists" (possibly just mentalists) which make up a proportion of our number here, would have shredded it (hell they even shred Vantage as "nv biased" and it's got Sapphire sponsorship in it).

But WOULD a GX2 run on a non-sli board, or an X2 on a non Xfire board?

 

[kevpuk]

Yes - either card will run in a non-SLi or non-Crossfire board

 

[TheRealDeal]

Yea just done a quick google no need for sli board. Never heard anyone saying that firing squad reviews are biased towards ati but ya never know lol. Thing is aswell 9800gx2 has the same size of bus and memory as the 4870 but has half the memory bandwidth of the gddr5 thats on the ati card. Gx2 is faster in reviews than the gtx280 a lot of the time but when the resolutions go up high with aa it seems to suffer from its lack of memory and bus size.

 

[thegoonden]

It is starting to look more and more like a 1GB 4870, with the option of a 2nd one then.

That's based on current (potentially inaccurate) benches which do not show the internal interGPU communication as being any better at all than 2x cards in Xfire.