Quandry...

[Rojin]

I've been out of the loop for quite a while now. Not only have I got married but I now have a little 'un on the way and if I'm I'm honest i can't remember the last time I did any serious gaming. Probable the last i-event I went to last November... and it had been a while before then!!!

Anyways, my gaming rig still stands up I reckon. All 4 sticks of my Ballistix ram died recently so I've chucked 8GB in as you do to replace it. It also has a Q6600 running at 3.6Ghz and an 8800GTX, well it did until yesterday... I picked up a 9800 GX2 for £150, bloke bought it for a HTPC (no really!) it was too big and has been sat on his shelf for months... So I have installed that now but I'm not too convinced of its abilities. I've tried half a dozen driver sets and it hasn't made much of (if at all) a difference over the GTX. In the Crysis demo it does run smoother (using 177.39 drivers) but in CS:S it has cut fps by 50% or more!

I don't know whether to sell the GTX and GX2 and get a single 4850/4870 or just keep the GX2. This is probably the last time I'll upgrade for a year so I don't want to be caught short. Monitor res is 1920X1200 so I prefer to game at that...

Any ideas folks, what would YOU do?

 

[Rojin]

Anybody watercooled a GX2? Blocks seem expensive for not many people showing a decent overclock. This might sway me to sell it as I'd like to include it in the loop but I suppose I could just cool the CPU and maybe source a PWM block and leave the GFX as is... hmmmm.

 

[aslco]

If you had no problem with you GTX why did you get a 9800Gx2? It would offer improvement in some games, but someone on here a while ago did a review saying how the 9800GX2 could have been so much more with more Vram, it gets limited at your high res.

You will see a cut in CSS as it doesn't support multi CPUs or GPUs lol.

I guess you want to sell your 9800GX2 and GTX now before they lose much mor emoney, so yeah i guess, get the 4870 in a crossfire setup if you can.

its just Im not sure if the 4870 is that much better than the 9800GX2 but you should see some decent improvement in some games, especially if you crossfire them. Remeber, crossfire 4850's are around £200, so you wouldn't lose any money really whilst seeing a nice boost, am i right people?

You should easily cover the cost of crossfire 4850's with the sales of your graphics. Im just thinking it may be more cost effective upgrading now.

 

[Greebo]

Something wrong. The GX2 should be slaughtering your GTX as it is really two GTX's in one card.

Even when SLI doesn't work (rare now) you ought to be getting your old GTX speed.

If you look at all the GTX280 reviews the GX2 still beats it in a lot of games nd hence beats a 4870.

Of course, if you can't get your problem fixed then selling both and getting a 4870/GTX280/4870x2 would be the way to go.

Perhaps somebody else on here can help you getting your GX2 working properly.

 

[Greebo]

You will see a cut in CSS as it doesn't support multi CPUs or GPUs lol.

The point is the poster is saying the GX2 is 50% slower than his GTX in CSS which is wrong. CSS doesn't support multi gpu which means it should run almost as fast as his GTX.

 

[aslco]

Yeah but remeber that at that res the 9800GX2 can be a bit daft.

 

[Greebo]

Yeah but remeber that at that res the 9800GX2 can be a bit daft.

Thought it was still pretty much okay at that res and it was only when you went higher you hit problems with the reduced memory?

 

[SS-89]

depends with any sort of aa especially with memory management on nvid cards could easily eat the frame buffer in no time.

 

[LoadsaMoney]

Something wrong. The GX2 should be slaughtering your GTX as it is really two GTX's in one card.

No it isn't, its 2x 8800 GTS's downclocked to 8800 GT speeds, so when SLi isn't working its going to be slower than his GTX, and it won't be much improvement over his GTX at that res anyway, as the GX2 is only a 256bit bus, which is no good for high res with AA/AF.

Id get the 4870 for that res, its a lot faster than the GTX, and ATi cards have better texture compression than Nvidia cards, so its fine with a 256bit bus at that res, its even faster than the more expensive GTX 280 in some at that res with lots of AA/AF.

 

[Rojin]

The CS:S issue seems drive dependant. Older drivers the peformance is only slightly worse but games like crysis suffer, with newer drivers crysis runs much better but CS:S slower, ho hum.

I'm leaning towards a 4870. Need to look into crossfire, not sure what you need for that nowadays. I nearly picked uo an 8800GTX to SLi but I would need a new PSU which sort of goes against the low cost upgrade i'm trying to achieve...

Anyone know a good water block for the 4870?

edit: I should have added that CoD4 will probably be my main source o stress relief and the GX2 does rather well with that whcih muddies the waters a little!

 

[Rojin]

If you had no problem with you GTX why did you get a 9800Gx2? It would offer improvement in some games, but someone on here a while ago did a review saying how the 9800GX2 could have been so much more with more Vram, it gets limited at your high res.

GX2 at £150 seemed a bargain (prices have now dropped but that's always the way when I buy something!). The RAM issue did concern me but looking at reviews of current games the GX2 doesn't do too badly at 1920x1200...

 

[Rojin]

PSU blew up on my server yesterday which has changed my view on the GX2 etc. If I'm buying a new PSU I might as well get one for my gaming rig and use the current one in the server. I could then look at SLi'ing the 8800GTX... which in theory should be better than the GX2? Thing is can i track down another BFG GTX...

First time I've had a PSU go on me, big pop followed by hissing and loads of smoke!!! Hope it hasn't taken everything else with it

edit: Scratch that, just realised my mobo doesn't support SLi! It only does x4 on the 2nd slot as well so not the best for crossfire either. Probably just going to keep the GX2.