Torn between keeping my 8800 Ultra or going 3870 CF

[BLHealthy4life]

Parts for my build (some new, some already had from previous builds):

1. Intel Bonetrail DX38BT
2. 4GB Super Talent DDR3-1600
3. Q6600 G0
4. PC P&C 1KW
5. 8800 Ultra


I cannot decide if I want to keep my 8800 Ultra (OC 660/2300) or go with 3870 Crossfire.

I cannot find any DX10 3870 Crossfire benchmarks against the Ultra....

I've been offered $525 for my Ultra....two HD3870s will cost me $450 with shipping.....

ahhhh...!!

What to do, what to do??

EDIT: I'm simply looking for some positive input and a few suggestions. I do not need for anyone to crap on my hardware please.

 

[happy medium]

Dump them both and get the new 8800gt and sli them.

 

[MarcVenice]

Why the overkill parts ? DDR3 is useless, far to expensive for the negligible performance boost over ddr2 ram. X38, nice I guess, but isn't p35 good enough ? 1000w PSU ? Even for CF/SLI-ed videocards, 10 hd's etc etc, a good 600-700w unit would still suffice. Sell the ultra, and sli 2 8800gt's, or crossfire 2 3870's. Or wait for the 8800gts thats coming in 2 weeks, and SLI those.

 

[SniperDaws]

Originally posted by: MarcVenice
Why the overkill parts ? DDR3 is useless, far to expensive for the negligible performance boost over ddr2 ram. X38, nice I guess, but isn't p35 good enough ? 1000w PSU ? Even for CF/SLI-ed videocards, 10 hd's etc etc, a good 600-700w unit would still suffice. Sell the ultra, and sli 2 8800gt's, or crossfire 2 3870's. Or wait for the 8800gts thats coming in 2 weeks, and SLI those.

How much more expensive will the New GTS be compared to the 88GT ?

im only asking because im about to pre order a Zotac 8800GT tomorrow morning.

 

[BLHealthy4life]

Originally posted by: MarcVenice
Why the overkill parts ? DDR3 is useless, far to expensive for the negligible performance boost over ddr2 ram. X38, nice I guess, but isn't p35 good enough ? 1000w PSU ? Even for CF/SLI-ed videocards, 10 hd's etc etc, a good 600-700w unit would still suffice. Sell the ultra, and sli 2 8800gt's, or crossfire 2 3870's. Or wait for the 8800gts thats coming in 2 weeks, and SLI those.

I buy everything used and get great deals on hardware, so that's why I can go "overkill" as you consider it, not only that, do you have any idea of what you are talking about??

1. DDR3 is useless?? LOL

These sticks will run 1800+ at 6-7-8-18 timings and will do 2000 with slightly more relaxed timings....I would consider that MUCH faster than DDR2.

2. P35 does not use all x16 lanes on both PCIe slots with multi GPu setups..X38 does.

3. A 600w-700w PSU would not comfortablly run everything you said AND overclock with sufficient power and stability.

3. And what x38 board is available that supports SLi? Intel chipsets support crossfire, not SLi.

come back when you can actually help....

 

[SniperDaws]

Originally posted by: BLHealthy4life

Originally posted by: MarcVenice
Why the overkill parts ? DDR3 is useless, far to expensive for the negligible performance boost over ddr2 ram. X38, nice I guess, but isn't p35 good enough ? 1000w PSU ? Even for CF/SLI-ed videocards, 10 hd's etc etc, a good 600-700w unit would still suffice. Sell the ultra, and sli 2 8800gt's, or crossfire 2 3870's. Or wait for the 8800gts thats coming in 2 weeks, and SLI those.

I buy everything used and get great deals on hardware, so that's why I can go "overkill" as you consider it, not only that, do you have any idea of what you are talking about??

1. DDR3 is useless?? LOL

These sticks will run 1800+ at 6-7-8-18 timings and will do 2000 with slightly more relaxed timings....I would consider that MUCH faster than DDR2.

2. P35 does not use all x16 lanes on both PCIe slots with multi GPu setups..X38 does.

3. A 600w-700w PSU would not comfortablly run everything you said AND overclock with sufficient power and stability.

3. And what x38 board is available that supports SLi? Intel chipsets support crossfire, not SLi.

come back when you can actually help....

Well you obviously know what you are doing so why ask stupid questions, or was it so you could boast about your new upgrades.

Dont be so rude.

 

[happy medium]

Originally posted by: BLHealthy4life

Originally posted by: MarcVenice
Why the overkill parts ? DDR3 is useless, far to expensive for the negligible performance boost over ddr2 ram. X38, nice I guess, but isn't p35 good enough ? 1000w PSU ? Even for CF/SLI-ed videocards, 10 hd's etc etc, a good 600-700w unit would still suffice. Sell the ultra, and sli 2 8800gt's, or crossfire 2 3870's. Or wait for the 8800gts thats coming in 2 weeks, and SLI those.

I buy everything used and get great deals on hardware, so that's why I can go "overkill" as you consider it, not only that, do you have any idea of what you are talking about??

1. DDR3 is useless?? LOL

These sticks will run 1800+ at 6-7-8-18 timings and will do 2000 with slightly more relaxed timings....I would consider that MUCH faster than DDR2.

2. P35 does not use all x16 lanes on both PCIe slots with multi GPu setups..X38 does.

3. A 600w-700w PSU would not comfortablly run everything you said AND overclock with sufficient power and stability.

3. And what x38 board is available that supports SLi? Intel chipsets support crossfire, not SLi.

come back when you can actually help....

You might want to check out this 179.00$ psu . It's rated top tier psu by Johnny Guru .
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16817608007

The review...
http://www.jonnyguru.com/revie...s.php?id=50&page_num=4

 

[Miklebud]

Well...in one benchmark I saw 2 3850's come to GTX power. So...I could only imagine 2 3870's would trump an Ultra. And for less than the price of a GTX.

 

[happy medium]

Skulltrail does support sli.

http://www.hothardware.com/New...Supports_SLI__Sort_Of/


Read the update on the page.

 

[spittledip]

What a dilemma! I really feel it for you brother.

 

[BLHealthy4life]

Originally posted by: happy medium
Skulltrail does support sli.

http://www.hothardware.com/New...Supports_SLI__Sort_Of/


Read the update on the page.

Skulltrail supports SLi with an additional chip from Nvidia...BONEtrail doe snot support SLi...

 

[happy medium]

Intel's X38 chipset to support SLI?
by Cyril Kowaliski ? 10:06 AM on June 27, 2007

At Computex earlier this month, motherboard makers made no secret of the fact that Intel's upcoming X38 Express chipset will support AMD CrossFire multi-GPU setups. That may not be the whole story, though. The folks at The Inquirer say the X38 will also work with Nvidia SLI configurations, making it a sort of multi-GPU jack of all trades. Nvidia has vehemently denied that the X38 will support SLI, but The Inq claims to know for a fact that the contrary is true. Anonymous "engineers" tell the site that SLI drivers for the X38 are "in the final state of polishing with a few bugs left to quash, but plenty of time remains to finish things up."

 

[BLHealthy4life]

Originally posted by: SniperDaws

Originally posted by: BLHealthy4life

Originally posted by: MarcVenice
Why the overkill parts ? DDR3 is useless, far to expensive for the negligible performance boost over ddr2 ram. X38, nice I guess, but isn't p35 good enough ? 1000w PSU ? Even for CF/SLI-ed videocards, 10 hd's etc etc, a good 600-700w unit would still suffice. Sell the ultra, and sli 2 8800gt's, or crossfire 2 3870's. Or wait for the 8800gts thats coming in 2 weeks, and SLI those.

I buy everything used and get great deals on hardware, so that's why I can go "overkill" as you consider it, not only that, do you have any idea of what you are talking about??

1. DDR3 is useless?? LOL

These sticks will run 1800+ at 6-7-8-18 timings and will do 2000 with slightly more relaxed timings....I would consider that MUCH faster than DDR2.

2. P35 does not use all x16 lanes on both PCIe slots with multi GPu setups..X38 does.

3. A 600w-700w PSU would not comfortablly run everything you said AND overclock with sufficient power and stability.

3. And what x38 board is available that supports SLi? Intel chipsets support crossfire, not SLi.

come back when you can actually help....

Well you obviously know what you are doing so why ask stupid questions, or was it so you could boast about your new upgrades.

Dont be so rude.

I was not boasting about anything, i posted my hardware so that others knew what the rest of the system specs were; thought this was normal practice on a hardware forum when asking for advice.

It hardly does any good to ask if a 3870 CF setup would be better than an Ultra if I'm running subpar hardware an no one knows it but me...

I wasn't trying to be rude, but when another member comes into my thread and basically begins crapping on my hardware, how would you like for me to respond? i didn't feel my response was inappropriate especially when someone is suggesting that i run SLi on a non-SLi chipset right after they crap on my hardware.

edit:mispelling

 

[BLHealthy4life]

Originally posted by: happy medium
Intel's X38 chipset to support SLI?
by Cyril Kowaliski ? 10:06 AM on June 27, 2007

At Computex earlier this month, motherboard makers made no secret of the fact that Intel's upcoming X38 Express chipset will support AMD CrossFire multi-GPU setups. That may not be the whole story, though. The folks at The Inquirer say the X38 will also work with Nvidia SLI configurations, making it a sort of multi-GPU jack of all trades. Nvidia has vehemently denied that the X38 will support SLI, but The Inq claims to know for a fact that the contrary is true. Anonymous "engineers" tell the site that SLI drivers for the X38 are "in the final state of polishing with a few bugs left to quash, but plenty of time remains to finish things up."

And like I said in my second post, what motherboard AVAILABLE supports SLi??? NONE!

Not only that, it is a rumor from the INQ nonetheless...

 

[happy medium]

That setup is ultra high performance. So why use a board and video card thats upper mid range? With a high end setup like that it's begging for the new 8800gts in sli.


I'm just trying to help ..jeez

Mabe I misunderstood what parts do you have allready?

 

[nitromullet]

Keep the Ultra.

The other problem with CrossFire is that it simply doesn't always work, so a pair of 3850s is not necessarily a better option than a single 8800 GT or GTX. Case in point would be the two other games that we wanted to include here: Quake Wars and Call of Duty 4, both gave us lower frame rates with CF enabled than without. AMD's release notes for the Radeon HD 3800 drivers informs us that some applications may show a performance decrease with CF enabled, so we're not too surprised.

http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3151&p=10

 

[ayabe]

Xfire and SLI are still so hit and miss performance wise I don't know why you would want to go that route given your current set up.

I'm not going to flame you for going DDR3, I just hope you didn't pay ~1000 for those sticks because you are not getting any benefit right now despite what you might think. When Penryn comes that will change however, so you are gtg for a while.

 

[BLHealthy4life]

Originally posted by: happy medium
That setup is ultra high performance. So why use a board and video card thats upper mid range? With a high end setup like that it's begging for the new 8800gts in sli.


I'm just trying to help ..jeez

Mabe I misunderstood what parts do you have allready?

jeez! That's how I feel with some of the posts in here! LOL

Hey, no problem.

I know you were trying to help and I appreciate it! It would be great if X38 supported SLi, but it doesn't right now of course....so i'm not able to use SLi.

Yes but it seems that two midrange cards from ATI is better than one high end from Nvidia.

I'm pretty sure it's not even worth the trouble to go to 3870 Crossfire from my Ultra.

The parts listed in my first post are the parts that i already have...just need to put together...

 

[happy medium]

Keep the ultra.........:thumbsup:

 

[swtethan]

Can we trade computers?

 

[spittledip]

Dump it all and get a Tandy COCO

 

[BladeVenom]

Originally posted by: BLHealthy4life

Originally posted by: MarcVenice
Why the overkill parts ? DDR3 is useless, far to expensive for the negligible performance boost over ddr2 ram. X38, nice I guess, but isn't p35 good enough ? 1000w PSU ? Even for CF/SLI-ed videocards, 10 hd's etc etc, a good 600-700w unit would still suffice. Sell the ultra, and sli 2 8800gt's, or crossfire 2 3870's. Or wait for the 8800gts thats coming in 2 weeks, and SLI those.

I buy everything used and get great deals on hardware, so that's why I can go "overkill" as you consider it, not only that, do you have any idea of what you are talking about??

1. DDR3 is useless?? LOL

These sticks will run 1800+ at 6-7-8-18 timings and will do 2000 with slightly more relaxed timings....I would consider that MUCH faster than DDR2.


come back when you can actually help....

http://images.anandtech.com/re.../ocz-ddr3-1800/800.png
Enjoy your DDR3.

 

[RyanPaulShaffer]

Why?

From all accounts I hear, SLI/Crossfire are buggy and not really supported, and don't generally give you 2x the performance.

 

[secretanchitman]

keep the ultra. its the fastest single card out there now.

 

[BLHealthy4life]

Originally posted by: BladeVenom

Originally posted by: BLHealthy4life

Originally posted by: MarcVenice
Why the overkill parts ? DDR3 is useless, far to expensive for the negligible performance boost over ddr2 ram. X38, nice I guess, but isn't p35 good enough ? 1000w PSU ? Even for CF/SLI-ed videocards, 10 hd's etc etc, a good 600-700w unit would still suffice. Sell the ultra, and sli 2 8800gt's, or crossfire 2 3870's. Or wait for the 8800gts thats coming in 2 weeks, and SLI those.

I buy everything used and get great deals on hardware, so that's why I can go "overkill" as you consider it, not only that, do you have any idea of what you are talking about??

1. DDR3 is useless?? LOL

These sticks will run 1800+ at 6-7-8-18 timings and will do 2000 with slightly more relaxed timings....I would consider that MUCH faster than DDR2.


come back when you can actually help....

http://images.anandtech.com/re.../ocz-ddr3-1800/800.png
Enjoy your DDR3.

Are thoswe 1T or 2T? My Super Talent will do 1T..HUGE difference.

When Penryn is released in a few months, then you guys with DDR2 will be crying with the bottleneck your memory will be giving you...