Upgrade: SLi or A Fancy New GPU?

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Yo.

I currently have an nVidia 8800GT that I bought on Ebay, oh, almost 2 years ago. Works great, love it - I've been very happy with it. But now my PC is starting to creek a bit with age. Some time in the next year, I'm going to try to upgrade the CPU to a quad-core, with new Mobo and 4gb of DDR3 Ram. I'm amazed I can do all that for under $500. God bless the tech race.

Anyhoo - I'm sure that around this time I'll want to beef up my graphics while I'm at it. But the 8800GT is, without doubt, the best GPU I've ever had, and all things considered is still a trooper. And I always feel wasteful upgrading before I absolutely have to. Here's my question:

Since my current mobo is (and my future purchase will be) SLi capable, I could pick up a second 8800GT for less than $80 right now (1/3 of the price I paid on Ebay 2 years ago) for what I would assume to be a substantial boost in my GPU power. I've never done SLi before, so I don't know how having 2 average GPUs stacks up against 1 superior, late model GPU (say if, for example, the 2 GPU's combined RAM is equal or greater to a single newer GPU, etc.). But the cost savings certainly makes me wonder. And at that point I will probably upgrade to Windows 7 as well, so I will finally be DX10 friendly, and I don't know if the bells and whistles of DX10 are worth it (if they can't shine on lowly 8800GT's, that is). All in all I'm not sure what the best route is, and as I said, my understanding of the mechanics of SLi is limited.

Suggestions? TIA

 

I seem to remember hearing a lot of issues with SLI/Crossfire in that they seem to be quite limited in their support. If a piece of software uses it then you may gain a speed boost however if they don't then at best it doesn't do anything, at worst having it enabled can actually prevent the software from detecting either card. In addition I read somewhere that it was either/or with some games supporting SLI but not Crossfire and vice versa.
Also, it uses up a second slot which could be used for something else.

I have never tried it my self however so this is all rumours and hearsay.

 

When you keep the old card, you can use it for physics in games. So even if you get a better new one you can still assign the old card to physics.

Can your power supply unit (PSU) handle two heavy cards?

 

I personally don't like dual GPU setup unless it is on one card like the Nvidia 295 or ATi 5790. I would go with the best bang for the buck and right now for Nvidia it is between their 250 GT and 260. The 250 is an old 9800 GTX+ GPU on a smaller die and requires only 1 6 pin power connector. The 260 requires 2 6 pins and some models may require a 6 and 8 pin power connector. Of the two the 260 is definitely superior in every category; however, if you don't mind going with ATi I would recommend the 5770. It is a bit slower than the 260 on most games but it is DX11 ready and well it is very fast for card that has a 128bit interface even though it has 1GB in memory. You can get a 5770 base model for about $150 or so.

If you plan to stick with Nvidia and don't mind spending a bit more I would go with the 260. I'm waiting for the 300 series to be released before I purchase the parts for my next PC.

 

Thanks for the tip, Munchkin. I think I'm going to wait a bit longer (summer, maybe) and upgrade the whole system. I can get a 275 for $300 now, I'm sure it'll be much more affordable when the 300's come out. This way I can do a complete upgrade for around $700 that should easily last me the next 2-3 years.

 

300 series from nvidia are just rebrands again its the 400 thats going to be the new fermi line.

 

The 300 for desktops aren't released yet. What I have seen of the 300 is the mobile solutions. For instance their is no 360GTX it is just a 360GTS, which isn't the same as or as fast as a 260GTX. They did some modifications to the older cards but they have not released their true top and middle tier cards yet.