Upgrade to SLI?

[Raze]

I currently have one 7800 GT and was just wondering would it be worth to upgrade to SLI, after having a browse round i can pick one from 60 - 120quid!

So tell me o' wonderful ocuk'ers is it worth spending my hard earned cash? Or save it for something 'beefier'?



Oh, i have 2gig of RAM and AMD64 3200+

Thanks

 

[lay-z-boy]

what games and res.

your 3200 is going to cap you hard.

 

[Raze]

Games? Anything and everything thats decent!

I 'try' to play at 1600x1200, but lately ive been having to turn down the res to have everything maxed.

You think id be mostly bottlenecked by the CPU?

 

[Doppleganger]

If you can get a second card cheaply enough then it might be worth it, as well as having a go at overclocking your 3200. Don't bank on seeing anything like a 100% increase in FPS though, although I can get close to that in Oblivion in some outside areas.

To give you an idea in that game I play at 1680x1050 with everything on max. Using SLI can turn situations that are unplayable (9 to 14 FPS) into say 25+ FPS. I've noticed this not only in Oblivion but in Tomb Raider: Legend and GRAW too. So for me it's been worth it but for you I'd overclock that cpu first. My 4000+ equivalent has just about enough juice but really struggles on occasions.

 

[SiriusB]

If I were you I would just wait till I had a bit more money and go for something like an X1900XT. Unless you're playing at massive resolutions on gigantic screens, then SLi really isn't worth it.

SiriusB

 

[lay-z-boy]

Games? Anything and everything thats decent!

I 'try' to play at 1600x1200, but lately ive been having to turn down the res to have everything maxed.

You think id be mostly bottlenecked by the CPU?

i would say go for it if you can do a res like that, if you can
overclock the cpu or get a dual core, x2 3800 or something, nvidia drivers are pritty much designed for dual core, offloading the overheads to the second cpu so there is very little fps drop due to overheads that an sli system brings in certain modes of rendering.

 

[toxic]

I 'try' to play at 1600x1200,

Man...** like my buddy....he spent over a £1000 on parts at the beginning of the year...and is constantly complaining that he cant play everything at 1600x1200 maxed out....ie. FEAR, BF2 etc. etc. This is with a 7800GTX. SO hes bought another 7800GTX this week to run sli. 1280x1024 or similar to him is absolutely no use for some strange reason??? He will be bottle necked allreday with his x2 3800 running at stoc...but wont OC it.
Me...I prefer to play at maybe a slighly lover resoulution with planty AA and AF on....whcih you should get easily running two cards in SLI...excellent for adding a a lot of AA.

 

[toxic]

why doesnt this system like 'your' splent as 'u r'.....weird!