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SLI with 2 8800 GTS 320Mb

sir-les-mp

sir-les-mp

sir-les-mp

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Just looking to find out if when i try and sli two of these on my current mobo
Foxconn NF4SK8AA-8EKRS Running Nforce 4 SLI chipset. Will it work ok

From what i read of the manual when enabling SLI it lowers the speed down from 16x to 8x

Also from various retail vendors where they still have the 8800GTS 320Mb on sale they appear to warn that these cards will only SLi in 16x slots

Yet when checking both nvidia's site and the two site's of the card makers there is nothing there stating they can only be Sli'ed in 2x 16x slots running at 16x

im not worried about the rest of my system
PSu is a Silverstone Strider 750
Mem is Muskin Redline XP 4000 3 gig's worth
AMD X2 4400+ 939 socket
Various sata 2 drives totaling 1.4Tb
Running both XP 32bit and Vista 32bit

So basically have i jumped the gun a bit by getting a second card before having a mobo that will allow me to run them in sli
or will i have a pretty decent system once i put this in and get it working
 
They will SLI fine in 8x slots and there will be little to no performance drop with the 8800GTS 320Mb using x8 over x16.
 
The gains will depend a lot on the specific game, resolution, etc.

With crysis I saw only a 50% increase in benchmark scores - but my average framerate was over 70% higher when actually playing the game. In some games you will get almost double the framerate.
 
Not really interested in benchmark score's
i want real world differrence would nice to turn up come of the eye candy
Currently try to game at 1680x1050 when possible
last game i played and finnished recently was Splintercell double agent
had to use a lower res 1280x960 i think it was and i was also unable to use AA or AF
each time i did framerate was in single digits had to be as in certain parts it was crawling
Would also like to see NFS Pro street at full pelt as well, not to mention oblivion
 
I'm pretty sure that I read in "Custom PC" magazing that 2 320MB 8800GTS's don't perform well in SLI at all - actually slower than a single card?

I may well be wrong, but I can't find the issue to check to be sure.

I do remember this sticking in my mind as I have (had - it went bang last week!) an 8800 GTS 320 that I was thinking of going SLI with.

No doubt somebody will tell me if I'm right or wrong....
 
Seriously, don't bother.

One 320mb GTS past its best, and buying another is just a complete waste of money. Not to mention that SLi will be very limited by that CPU, and that you're only running at 1680x1050 which is a bit low.

Sell what you've got and buy a Radeon 4850.
 
I have a pair of 8800GTS 512's and they run really well in SLI now since I changed the board to a n750i which uses the NF200 switch chip to give 2x16 PCI-E

In my older N650i 2x8 board there was a perfomance improvement from 2 cards but I'd get around 35 FPS in Crysis 16x10 High Vista whereas with the new board I get >50 easily and if I switch to DX9+ OC the CPU a little more I can touch 60fps.

If you can pick up a cheap GTS 320 from Members Market .... typically fetching £35-40 then why not try SLI, you won't know unless you try and if it doesn't work out all you'll loose is a little postage. If you're thinking of paying some of the crazy retail prices .... buy something else as above the 4850 would be a good card .... Just don't be tempted but the 9800 series ..... as they are rebadged sometimes clocked 8800 cards for a lot more £££

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Agree with the people above, its a non starter, your still going to have to reduce resolution, reduce AA/AF etc... as your still going to be memory limited to 320mb, its nowhere near enough these days.
 
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Ive already bought the second card from a member via members market (£40)
as for buying a more powerful single card i wish i could but dont have the spare £200+ at present if i did id be looking at a new CPU mobo and memory.(but not intels i7)

What im looking for just now is a bit more Graphics grunt till i can afford to fully overhaul my system around feb march time when both amd's denab and intels i7 should have settled down price wise and direct comparisons should be availeable. Also current phenom and core2 quads should be down in price as well

As for reducing res and AA/AF i would think i should be able to turn them up a bit as each card is really only rendering half the screen,so the limit of the 320Mb shouldnt be such a problem in games that support SLI.

current 320Mb card is OC to 635/910/1600 form 500/800/1188
with the second card being an inno3d id expect it to OC similar if not better
if im not mistaken this is similar to G92 8800gt performance
 
The memory can be an issue as two cards won't give you 640MB, the memory is duplicated accross both cards which is one of the overheads SLI imposes.

The most common mode is alternate frame rather than split screen so the full image need to be rendered

You don't say what res you're gaming at but if you avoid AA 320MB should be fine even up to 16x10.... you can always back the details down a little in the odd game if needed.

It's Sunday .... get it installed and enjoy!

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sir-les-mp said:
as for buying a more powerful single card i wish i could but dont have the spare £200+ at present if i did id be looking at a new CPU mobo and memory.(but not intels i7)

As for reducing res and AA/AF i would think i should be able to turn them up a bit as each card is really only rendering half the screen,so the limit of the 320Mb shouldnt be such a problem in games that support SLI.

current 320Mb card is OC to 635/910/1600 form 500/800/1188
with the second card being an inno3d id expect it to OC similar if not better
if im not mistaken this is similar to G92 8800gt performance
Click to expand...

Yes, the memory will be a limiting factor, and no, it's not going to perform as well as a G92 8800GT. You only need to spend £100 for a card that will be significantly better than one or even two 320mb GTSs.

Not to mention the heat, noise and power issues that two old G80 cards will give you.

It's a bit of a waste of time IMO but let us know how you get on anyway :)
 
To be fair the G80 GTS cards are extremely quiet up to 60% fan speed. That said, I probably wouldn't recommend SLiing two 320 cards, two 640's would make more sense in the current day and age where any amount of VRAM under 512MB is a limitation and 1GB is certainly seeing its usefulness at 2560x1600.
 
GTS320-SLI is pretty flawed as in order to take advantage of all that raw gpu power you need to be running high res / AA; the problem is under those conditions, 320meg VRAM isn't enough.

In some games you will see pretty big benefits, but I'd definitely recommend reducing texture detail to medium in the more demanding titles.
 
how things change
just over 12 months ago GTS 320 SLI was one of the recommendations if you couldnt afford to purchase the top end nvidia cards
i will just have to install it and see once it arrives
 
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