Which 8800GTX

Paradiso · 4 Jul 2007 at 13:39

Hi all,

I run a Dell 2407wfp at 1900x1200 with 2 x x1900xt/x's in crossfire. I'm starting to see game suffer in performance now and was considering an upgrade.

I've been looking at the 8800gtx series of cards. Which do people recommend for around £425 inc tops?

Or is there another card on the horizon I should be waiting for

?

Thanks all

BubbySoup · 4 Jul 2007 at 13:49

There is no single card solution that will give you a massive performance upgrade from what you have now at that res. Granted, some games that do not perform well on dual card solutions will benefit from the upgrade, but overall you are not going to be wow'd.

My advice would be to wait until around Oct/Nov when the next lot of cards from nVidia should be out and/or maybe something from AMD as well.

helmutcheese · 4 Jul 2007 at 14:07

I think 1x fastest Ultra would give him a gain at that res but cost too much cash, mines does 705/1180(x2) so far unmodded, stock is 655/1125(x2)

james.miller · 4 Jul 2007 at 14:09

a single gtx is pretty much par for par with 2 x1950's in crossfire. faster in some area, not so in others. for a REAL gain, right now, you need to be looking at sli/crossfire still. 2x 640mb gts's in sli will be very quick. as woudl 2x 2900hd's. its the only decent gains you'd see.

Paradiso · 4 Jul 2007 at 17:28

Thanks for the replies

It's given me an idea actually. Am I right in understanding that I could crossfire an ATI 2900 512MB and my 1900XTX 512MB?

I made a bit of a cockup when I bought the 2 x1900 cards. One was a 256mb card

and hence the video memory for both cards always dropped to 256mb when in crossfire mode, I found 256 mb really hindered performance as you would expect at the res I play now.

If the 2900 and 1900 work together and I keep 512MB video memory this work out a lot cheaper and still see some significant performance increase.

Mind you one card will be DX9 and the other DX10 so I will only see the crossfire benefits in DX9 games.

What do you think ?

XysteR · 4 Jul 2007 at 18:28

Only a complete retard would pay ultra prices. You can get a GTX for £280 now if you shop around, if i were you i'd buy a single GTX now, then later, put another GTX in. You get DX10 and a good speed bonus on just one card. It doesn't matter which brand GTX you go for, they are all the same so plump for the cheapest and install the thermalright 03 plus 8800 cooler if you want to overclock it. Jobz a good'n

All this boll*&ks about waiting for new cards.... nar bugger it, its only £300 or 82p per day for a year lol. If your anything like the folk i know they spend around £100 a weekend just on beer alone........ I vent around £100 worth of V-Power to atmosphere over a single weekend too lol

....Mind you if i were spending big money on something i was interested in, i.e thousands then i would be patient until i was 100% confident i was spending my money on something i really wanted.

£300 lol

helmutcheese · 4 Jul 2007 at 18:36

Why is that, if we can afford, same can be said for any part inc a Raptor, I for one aint a retard and I have both the above, I got a Ultra 655/1125 because it has a rev3 core with no other 8800's had at that time, it also has far more expensive 0.8ns memory and the added cooler on rear of card is good idea, my card does 705/1180 stock so far, I would never run 2 cards period as no need to, thats why SLI came out to replace AGP8x and newer AGP on the cards, just revived old tech of running 2 cards linked to sell you 2 cards.

Some people just cant be happy for anyone with their hardware. :rolleyes:

Ohh and P.S I did not pay the going rate for my card at the time, way, way less but thats between me and the store where ever I got it from.

XysteR · 4 Jul 2007 at 18:36

Paradiso said:
Thanks for the replies

It's given me an idea actually. Am I right in understanding that I could crossfire an ATI 2900 512MB and my 1900XTX 512MB?

I made a bit of a cockup when I bought the 2 x1900 cards. One was a 256mb card and hence the video memory for both cards always dropped to 256mb when in crossfire mode, I found 256 mb really hindered performance as you would expect at the res I play now.

If the 2900 and 1900 work together and I keep 512MB video memory this work out a lot cheaper and still see some significant performance increase.

Mind you one card will be DX9 and the other DX10 so I will only see the crossfire benefits in DX9 games.

What do you think ?

Buy a GTX, sell them, simple as! add another GTX later.

XysteR · 4 Jul 2007 at 18:39

helmutcheese said:
Why is that, if we can afford, same can be said for any part inc a Raptor, I for one aint a retard and I have both the above, I got a Ultra 655/1125 because it has a rev3 core with no other 8800's had at that time, it also has far more expensive 0.8ns memory and the added cooler on rear of card is good idea, my card does 705/1180 stock so far.

Some people just cant be happy for anyone with their hardware.

Ohh and P.S I did not pay the going rate for my card at the time, way, way less but thats between me and the sotre whereever I got it from.

Personally i feel the price difference between a GTX and the Ultra is simply far from justifiable.

helmutcheese · 4 Jul 2007 at 18:41

As I said at time, newer core, faster ram, better cooling on both sides of card and runs cooler overall than a GTX, and fact I DID NOT pay anywhere near the asking price at the time, and I will step it up later to whatever. :cool:

XysteR · 4 Jul 2007 at 18:42

helmutcheese said:
Why is that, if we can afford, same can be said for any part inc a Raptor, I for one aint a retard and I have both the above, I got a Ultra 655/1125 because it has a rev3 core with no other 8800's had at that time, it also has far more expensive 0.8ns memory and the added cooler on rear of card is good idea, my card does 705/1180 stock so far, I would never run 2 cards period as no need to, thats why SLI came out to replace AGP8x and newer AGP on the cards, just revived old tech of running 2 cards linked to sell you 2 cards.

Some people just cant be happy for anyone with their hardware.

Ohh and P.S I did not pay the going rate for my card at the time, way, way less but thats between me and the store where ever I got it from.

Why did you buy a raptor? is it the 150? <---- scratch that, don't wanna invade the guys thread - Don't then

helmutcheese · 4 Jul 2007 at 18:48

I bought 2 Raptor X's when launched as I wanted and I can afford and as the HDD is slowest part and bottleneck of any modern PC why not buy ?.

There is always exotic parts and OCUK store and forums are not really run of mill items/users, they are for enthusiasts (so store tells me)

james.miller · 4 Jul 2007 at 18:52

helmutcheese said:
As I said at time, newer core, faster ram, better cooling on both sides of card and runs cooler overall than a GTX, and fact I DID NOT pay anywhere near the asking price at the time, and I will step it up later to whatever.

how much faster than a regular gtx do you think they are? price justifiable? you can justify any price in your own terms, but does that make it worth that price tag? most people will want a reasonable return for their money. buying a gtx ultra over a regular gtx does not give this return. likewise buying a raptor over a fast 7200rpm drive doesnt either.

helmutcheese · 4 Jul 2007 at 18:57

As I said I did not pay full price but a Ultra is faster than a GTX and had newer core and faster ram at a price (sure now some other 8800's have rev3 cores), then fact my card is faster again at 655/1125 stock

The Ultra runs cooler and so as I got one with massive cooler on rear of card so its helping card.

You could argue this with cars/cpus/ram/7200rpm HDD v 10000rpm, so there is no real point, if someone want a Ultra they can buy one and its still the fastest card avail.

Some cars and some homes at not worth the money they are valued at, that, but they will sell and some are better than others.

I see no real point in overclocking a already fast C2D and 4gig ram and 8800 Ultra to have a 7200HDD as its a bottleneck in any PC today, some reviews will even say save your cash on them parts and buy a faster HDD as you will notice it more, thats well true for Raptor and more so in Raid 0.

james.miller · 4 Jul 2007 at 19:03

ill put it another way then. most benchamrks show an xfx ultra xxx (675/1674 at stock) to be constantly around 10fps faster than a regular gtx. the xfx's sell for around £470. a regular gtx is under £300 now. £170+ for 10fps is far too little return for most people to swallow. Like i said you can justify any price you want to, but thats silly spending to most people.

I see no real point in overclocking a already fast C2D and 4gig ram and 8800 Ultra to have a 7200HDD as its a bottleneck in any PC today, some reviews will even say save your cash on them parts and buy a faster HDD as you will notice it more, thats well true for Raptor and more so in Raid 0.

neither do i. Instead of buying two raptors, id buy 4x300gb's and raid-0 them instead. if you really want raid-0 in a desktop, they will be faster than 2x 150gb raptors and probably end up costing you less

not to mention a huge increase in storage. that's if you want to go with raid, of course

helmutcheese · 4 Jul 2007 at 19:10

Regardless of above 10FPS (probably more on some cards overclocked) can be diff between playable and unplayale and you getting sore ahead and feeling ill, most games need 30FPS min or you see it and I do feel sickly, Oblivion could get away with 25FPS as its not as fast as most FPS games

If a game was fine at say 35FPS (sure not ideal but looked good and not make you ill) and you dropped of 10FPS, it would be unplayble.

So IMO 10FPS can make the world of diff, not caring about cost here either and the card is better cooled which helped me decide to get it.

I personally dont want 4 HDD's as of noise/heat and blocking airflow and 4 HDD's beating 2 is nothing special.

You seem to be against high end parts, putting aside cost whats the problem with them if we are happy ?, cant you be happy for us ?

james.miller · 4 Jul 2007 at 19:14

10fps will make a difference when the games we play are so slow that 30fps because the norm. but i suspect at that time there will be far faster cards out again

helmutcheese · 4 Jul 2007 at 19:18

If you look back to Oblivion at launch, many had good rigs but it was slow for them, 25FPS was not unheard of for many esp the beautiful 1st outside shots after 1 level.

XysteR · 4 Jul 2007 at 20:32

james.miller said:
ill put it another way then. most benchamrks show an xfx ultra xxx (675/1674 at stock) to be constantly around 10fps faster than a regular gtx. the xfx's sell for around £470. a regular gtx is under £300 now. £170+ for 10fps is far too little return for most people to swallow. Like i said you can justify any price you want to, but thats silly spending to most people.

neither do i. Instead of buying two raptors, id buy 4x300gb's and raid-0 them instead. if you really want raid-0 in a desktop, they will be faster than 2x 150gb raptors and probably end up costing you less not to mention a huge increase in storage. that's if you want to go with raid, of course

Soooo glad you came in here dood, it was boring me cos i wasn't getting through to him. As you say 10 fps is not worth it, its not a good choice at all to choose an Ultra over a GTX. My choice of non raptor raid array was what i'd call 'a good move'. A further 2 drives coming soon

helmutcheese · 4 Jul 2007 at 20:46

Who are you to get through to me or anyone else, what you say is not the damn gospel, I buy what I CHOOSE not what you want me to buy and your opinions means nothing to me and I would guess to others who want a top model GPU or HDD.