8800GTS, 320mb SLI vs. 640mb

[Zumbador]

Hello,

$290 will buy two eVGA 8800GTS cards with 320mb.
$230 will buy a single eVGA 8800GTS with 640mb.

Which would you choose? I'll be running twin 30" monitors as a CAD/CAM workstation. I'm building an identical setup for my business parter for graphics and video production. I will be playing games like COD4 during lunch and misc goof-off hours.

I guess I should add the $290 8800GT with 1gb to the mix, though that requires PCI-x 2.0, and I haven't yet decided if our new mobos will have that.

Thanks!

 

[Lithan]

8800gts 640mb probably the single worst purchase you could make right now.

9600gt 512meg sli beats the 320meg gts sli and costs about the same or slightly less.

8800gts 512meg STOMPS on the 640mb gts and costs about the same or slightly less.

 

[Zumbador]

Thanks Lithan.

Only issue is that all those cards you mentioned require pci-x 2.0. If I go that route, I have to add a few bucks to the mobo.

How does the 8800GTS 512 compare to the 8800GT 1gig?

 

[Lithan]

No card requires pcie 2.0 It's a feature not a requirement... just like usb 2.0, it'll still run on usb, it's just not capable of the 2.0 speeds... and since pcie 1.0 isn't even close to being maxxed out with these cards...

The 8800gt 1 gig seems to perform about the same as the 8800gt 512meg and both are a few percentage pts slower on average than the 8800gts 512meg.

 

[error8]

Yes, PCI-Express 2.0 cards DO work in PCI-Express 1.0 or 1.1 motherboards.

 

[Zumbador]

Aha, thanks folks.

 

[klee]

the 9800 gtx will be out on april 1st

 

[betasub]

Originally posted by: klee
the 9800 gtx will be out on april 1st

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3275

OP: I hope you require PCI-e (Express), not PCI-x (eXtended) - you may want to edit.

Like most ppl with high-end screens, you want the GPU power of the G92 core with the memory bandwidth that NVidia made available to the G80-series. That probably means finding a G92 card with fast (albeit only 256bit) memory. 9800GTX may fit your requirements, but could be expensive at launch. Moving to 1GB vRAM is unlkely to give much benefit over 512MB (unless it's also faster clocked).

9800GTX, 8800GTS-512, 8800GT and 9600GT are all G92, and the faster the GPU, the more limited you'll be by memory bandwidth at high resolutions on your 30" screens.

 

[Denithor]

9800GTX @ $329 if you can find one in stock.

Otherwise 8800GTS 512MB will provide ~90% of the performance for 70% of the cost.

Just make sure you get a G92 GTS (all of the 512MB models), the older G80 versions suck at this point and are priced about the same (or even higher, for some stupid reason).

 

[imported_wired247]

There isn't any "great" option for 30" LCD gaming @ 2560x1600 that I'm aware of.

And the fact that you want to run dual monitors means you should probably drop the SLI idea (it will become somewhat of a nuisance to switch the SLI setting on/off)

I'd probably get a fast single card, the 8800gts 512mb is still one of my favorites for the price point.