Upgrading(?) From X1900XTX to Nvidia SLI 8800GTS

[Flappy]

Hey Folks,

[Mermaid Man]

8800GTS 640MB are much slower than the G92, don't bother with them. The 8800GTS 512MB G92 is faster, and in SLI GT will push ahead.

[Slotback]

Older 8800GTS has 96 pipes while the G92 has 112.... there a 640mb 8800GTS+ that has 112.... which one do you have?

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/ha ... iew-4.html

If it's the 112 8800GTS 640 then it should be good - but if I had the choice I would try and get a G92. Depends on price I guess.

[Flappy]

Thanks Guys,
    Well it's already done so it's academic at this point although I can send 'em back to the egg if they REALLY blow. Also evga has a trade up program good for 90 days although I'm sure they would only allow you to trade up one of the cards. BTW it is the one with 112,also has the fastest clock on the CPU available from a Manufacturer for the G80 GTS. Hopefully it will not tank too badly.
    The main reason I went with an older G80 based card was the numerous problems and cost associated with being able to run PCI-E 2.0 cards on my aging 570SLI. I just went through the phone-in activation for my FSX and was not looking forward to doing it again or having to do it with my new copy of Vista X86 Ultimate as getting a new mainboard would involve re-installing and activating and I'd REALLY like to put that off as long as possible!

[Mermaid Man]

Bad choice. And you're CPU limited, if you're into FS-X doesn't use SLI, just single cards- so a single 8800GTS is much slower than a 8800GT. Could have picked up second hand 8800GTS 640MB for peanuts.

Should have just put your budget into a 880GTS 512MB.

[Slotback]

I don't think an 8800GTS 96+ SSC will be THAT much slower than an 8800GT - it does have a fair bit more bandwidth too.

[Flappy]

Well, they're here now and I was right they ARE the 112 shader part in spite of being on the G80. My 3dmark went from 6502 to 10982 with no overclocks or tweaks applied and performance in FSX w/ acceleration is roughly double with the same quality settings.
    I realize that I won't see 50% increases clear across the board but so far I'm VERY happy with this purchase! The only real downside was setting up SLI and putting up with a couple of blue screens until I got the drivers configured under Vista. (First time I've ever BSOD'd Vista )
   I can highly recommend this upgrade and with Newegg letting these evga cards go for 229 a pop with a 30 bone rebate (on one card only) for me it was one of the better Hardware purchases I've made in a while.
    Thanks Vodka and Mermaid for your insights and I think I'll be off to enjoy FSX and Bioshock for a while!

[Mermaid Man]

In FS-X performance is exactly the same with SLI and single card, as FS-X doesn't use SLI. Not even sure it supports Crossfire, which is normally supported in games as it works differently. Take a 8800GTS and try FS-X, it should be exactly the same.

For a FS-X rig I would have just got the fastest single card you can afford, rather than SLI. Do y you play other games to make SLI worthwhile?

[Flappy]

Mermaid,
    I've got over 1000 PC games that I've managed to collect since I started collecting them in '98. So I suppose I have a "few" that might take advantage of SLI. At any rate this is the card I bought : http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/evg ... sc_review/

As you can see it does have 112 shader pipeline, and its' performance isn't TOO terribly shabby. Also SLI does work w/ FSX, just not FS9 ACOF or earlier without tweaking up the nvidia settings. Granted it isn't as elegant a solution as a 3870X2 would have been, but as I mentioned I didn't want to go through the hassle of re-activating my Vista install because of changing mainboard over to a  setup w/ PCI-E 2.0 to support the 3870 natively. I would be looking at upgrading my WHOLE setup at that point basically as I'd be a fool to keep the AM2 solution in the face of overwhelming superiority of Intel.
   Overall in most of the games I've thrown at it it performs at least 50% better although to be sure it a pain to configure at times compared to my ATI card. All in all for my budget for this upgrade it has exceeded my expectations . Also since I threw a couple of bucks at a Zalman for my 5600 I can OC it up to 3.2 G fairly easily w/o going over 41 degrees at full CPU load.