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Should I / do I need to get two 8000GTX in SLI?

theufnk007

theufnk007

theufnk007

Associate
Joined
23 May 2007
Posts
208
Location
Loughborough
Hi Guys,

First post, so go easy. I currently have one 8800GTX in my current set-up, am just enquiring as to whether I would see some benefit in upgrading to two?

I play my games on a 24" dell widescreen monitor at 1920 x 1200 resolution. My current games list includes titles such as:

Command & Conquor 3
Supremem Commander
Dark Messiah
Stalker
LOTR online

Also some great titles are going to be released this year, so should I think of upgrading or will the one card alone be able to handle these games at that resolution with mostly max settings?

Not related to graphics, but I currently have 2gb of ram, should I think of upgrading that at the same time?

Sorry for all the 'noob' questions, but hopefully someone can steer me in the right direction - am looking to be able to play games max setting with excellent framerates.

Many thanks.
 
With the rez you play at it wouldn't hurt to get another GTX especially if you want to play with the highest possible settings and loads of nice AA and AF and see smooth gameplay. Were going to need all the power we can get when crysis and other DX10 games hit the stores, to play them at max setting and a nice rez.

Regarding extra memory, it would be wise to go to 4GB with games getting more and more memory intensive, with the price of DDR2 memory being real low at the moment, it would be a good time to upgrade. I had 2GB with BF2 and i would lag a few maps in to the game and when i alt and tab to desktop and i had dire performance with Vista and BF2 with only 2GB, now with 4GB its as smooth as silk even though i only get 3GB to play with as I'm running XP 32 bit.
 
theufnk007 said:
Hi Guys,

First post, so go easy. I currently have one 8800GTX in my current set-up, am just enquiring as to whether I would see some benefit in upgrading to two?

I play my games on a 24" dell widescreen monitor at 1920 x 1200 resolution. My current games list includes titles such as:

Command & Conquor 3
Supremem Commander
Dark Messiah
Stalker
LOTR online

Also some great titles are going to be released this year, so should I think of upgrading or will the one card alone be able to handle these games at that resolution with mostly max settings?

Not related to graphics, but I currently have 2gb of ram, should I think of upgrading that at the same time?

Sorry for all the 'noob' questions, but hopefully someone can steer me in the right direction - am looking to be able to play games max setting with excellent framerates.

Many thanks.
Click to expand...

Ok at the risk of asking the obvious... do you notice slowdown in games? If not, then that is the answer to your question. The 8800GTX is a monster of a card, and only one should be needed for the resolution you are running at. Don't waste money on SLI, it's uneconomical in terms of cost, heat, and performance. Just wait till the next generation comes along (G90), sell your 8800GTX, and upgrade to that. Running the fastest single card you can is the way forward. :)
 
Thanks for the replies guys - I will upgrade to 4GB of ram, for some more future proofing and current gaming. It seems you disagree on the card set-up :eek: - undecided here, do not want to spend a fortune on another GTX card to notice 'little' difference.

Some of the games, for example S.T.A.L.K.E.R sometimes when I am sprinting around like a madman with setting on max it seems to judder abit, same on LOTR online, not as smooth as I feel it could be, I have settings all on max and play at that res, that is probably the problem.
 
What CPU are you running?

Have you upgraded to the latest Nvidia drivers (last months set were really good)?
 
Recently installed Vista - so upgraded to vista drivers about two weeks ago, also upgraded other drivers for the system as well.

Am running 5200+ AMD dual core processor.
 
I would imagine you are pretty CPU limited even with just the one GTX, a second wouldn't show you much performance increase unless you upgrade that processor first.
 
theufnk007 said:
Recently installed Vista - so upgraded to vista drivers about two weeks ago, also upgraded other drivers for the system as well.

Am running 5200+ AMD dual core processor.
Click to expand...

I agree with the above post, thats a nice CPU, but I don't think you'd get the benefit from another GTX. Or put it this way - it's not worth £350. Wait until Nvidia release a new card in Q4 2007. Or change to a C2D and overclock it - I saw a good speed increase going from a [email protected] to a C2D [email protected].
 
theufnk007 said:
Recently installed Vista - so upgraded to vista drivers about two weeks ago, also upgraded other drivers for the system as well.

Am running 5200+ AMD dual core processor.
Click to expand...

In that case a Core2 rig OC'd to 3.3ghz+ would likely yield a decent boost. But seriously, another GTX just isn't worth it. If you do it with a sensible budget (I suggest a Gigabyte DS3P and E6420/E6600) then you will be able to sell your existing CPU/Mobo on Ebay and barely lose out on it.
 
Ok guys, thanks for clearing that up - am new to all this, so was unsure as to what was causing the small slowdowns from time to time, my system is like 6 months old, do you guys tend to keep constantly upgrading as new things become available, or just let things get fairy old before replacing them?

I will look into the chips you are referring too - and possibly install one of them.

This is my current motherboard - Asus A8N32-SLi Deluxe nForce4 SLi X16 (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard.

Should I upgrade this as well, as is seems it only accepts amd chips?
Cheers very much.

Lea
 
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theufnk007 said:
Ok guys, thanks for clearing that up - am new to all this, so was unsure as to what was causing the small slowdowns from time to time, my system is like 6 months old, do you guys tend to keep constantly upgrading as new things become available, or just let things get fairy old before replacing them?

I will look into the chips you are referring too - and possibly install one of them.

This is my current motherboard - Asus A8N32-SLi Deluxe nForce4 SLi X16 (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard.

Should I upgrade this as well, as is seems it only accepts amd chips?
Cheers very much.

Lea
Click to expand...

Obviously you're going to have to upgrade the motheboard to upgrade to the different range of CPU's as they use very different sockets, i'm sure you can figure that one out for yourself with a bit of research on the net. :)
 
I think you're going to have to have a bit of a butchers to clarify the issues surrounding computer function with the recent updates in motherboard technology, etc., before stepping out into the realms of playing with your hardware.

Not to be patronising at all, but I do think you should consider learning a bit about what is out there and what it all does before committing to a course of action.

You have to remember that a graphics card only really (classically, anyway) paints textures, etc. onto 3D wireframes for models: these models and their movement is calculated by the CPU of the computer. So all the graphical horsepower in the world will mean nothing if the underlying wireframe models aren't moving fast enough.

An SLI'd 8800GTX setup is a monstrously powerful setup and one I'm not sure would really be necessary on your system: the second card is really only necessary at 2560 x somethingridiculous as that's when the massive amounts of texture/shader shifting power becomes necessary: you're moving 3megapixels of data around many times a second, so the logic is reasonably obvious. However, the same principle applies: if the underlying wireframes aren't moving fast enough, adding a second GTX is not going to make any difference. I'm not sure any stock CPU from either AMD or Intel is fast enough to REALLY stretch a single GTX at this point (feel free to correct me - I don't own one): only when overclocked do they really start to stretch the graphics cards (as previously mentioned).

As you are unsure about what posters are talking about when they suggest you upgrade your motherboard and CPU, I'm not confident that you'll be satisfied with dropping £350 on another GTX when it won't be of most benefit to you. People here are suggesting you improve the underlying hardware of your system to ensure that you'll get better frame rates without adding in another card.

However, the choice is, in the end, yours. Adding another GTX will probably improve your framerates somewhat, and lessen the impact of adding lots of anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering, but your median low frame rates (where a game slows down to its, erm, slowest point) will not improve at all... because the CPU begins to struggle.

So, you need to determine what the weak link is within your system: is it the graphics card? Probably not. Is it the CPU? Probably.

However, I'm taking a punt that you're not really having any problems running games at this point in time, anyway. So I wouldn't bother spending the cash. But it's your wallet.
 
theufnk007 said:
This all starting to get very confusing :confused:
Click to expand...

Then spend a few hours doing some reading up, won't take long to get a basic familiarity with the different CPU/socket types, it's not especially complicated. :)
 
And don't forget - the new AMD Phenom will hopefully be out later this year and it should run in the AM2 socket (there will be an AM2+ but it remains to be seen how much of a performance difference there will be between the two). If you're not in a mad rush to upgrade the CPU it might not hurt to wait a while.

Edit: Firingsquad has a couple of articles on CPU performance with the 8800 series cards: http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/geforce_8800_gtx_gts_core_2_performance/
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/geforce_8800_gtx_gts_amd_cpu_scaling/
As you'll see - there's not that many instances where a GTX is severely bottlenecked by the CPU at 1920x1200.
 
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Ok thanks for the heads up, I will spend some time doing some research into the different processors - it is a steep learning curve, attempting to upgrade your PC yourself, I have always paid for it and it seems that you can save more money doing it youreslf, whilst at the same time getting some satisfcation from it.

Thanks,
Lea
 
Ahh - you replied while I was editing. Having a look at those firingsquad articles I mentioned wouldn't be a bad place to start.
 
Uriel said:
And don't forget - the new AMD Phenom will hopefully be out later this year and it should run in the AM2 socket (there will be an AM2+ but it remains to be seen how much of a performance difference there will be between the two). If you're not in a mad rush to upgrade the CPU it might not hurt to wait a while
Click to expand...

I'd forgotton about that! Check and see if you have an AM2 socket motherboard. If so, it should fit the new AMD CPU's arriving this year, in which case you could wait another 6 months.

I still think you have a very nice system as it is. Your other option is to get a second smaller monitor for gaming. I know it sounds like a bit of a downgrade, but 2 monitors are nice to have anyway ;) I still have my old 19' CRT Flatscreen, it's a bit big, but it comes in VERY handy for gaming, as it can handle any resolution.

Also keep your drivers up-to-date. Make sure you have installed the latest NForce4 system drivers/sound drivers/Nvidia Graphics driver.
 
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