Vista - Xfx 9800gt sli vs xfx gtx black ed

hey guys should i get xfx 9800 gt in sli or should i go for 2 xfx gtx+ and get 3 later on or should i get 1 260 gtx black ed and upgrade it to sli later on in life? my money limit for now is around 400 trying to stay under 500

SLI is not worth it IMO. You can just buy a better card ad get better performance than the two lower cards SLI'd.

Get the 260.

ty first time builder so i dont really know whats good and whats not xD

i would always look for the best single card solution, SLI is overrated IMO, i mean you pay the same for both cards (in most cases) but you get nowhere near a 50% performance increase.. not to mention the fact you double your chances of something going wrong with the setup.

for 1680x1050 i'd go with either the 9800GTX+ & SLI at a later date when this card costs nothing or the GTX260 BE (its a great card ) this will max everything @ 16x10 for a bloody long time.....

the XFX black edition card is i think still the fastest factory clocked 260, & out performs the vanilla 280 in a lot of benches..

i'd hold off for a little while until the 55nm amature benches start rolling in, at the moment theyre not looking too hot but they may turn out to be great clockers....

but if your not into all that the XFX card is the one to go for.....



SK

BTW I would suggest eVGA for a brand.

I've seen a lot of review sites saying if you're on a low budget and have something like an 8800GT, 2 8800GTs can outperform a single 260, but if you're buying 2 cards at the same time, then a 260 would be better to go for then save up and get a 2nd one later on.

I wouldn't get tri-SLI though. It's still very rough in a lot of places and a lot of games show lower performance than just SLI with it.

My buddy has 2 evga 8800GTs and my one 9800GTX+ blows them both away.

And the 260 blows away the 9800GTX+ sooo..

Dual 8800GTs are pretty much the same specs a single 260 has:




What I'm saying is, if you already have something like a single 8800/9800 and can't afford to upgrade straight to a 260, getting a 2nd card and SLI-ing them can give the same performance as a single 260.

If you're buying a new PC and thinking "should I get two 9800s?", then I'd recommend just buying a single 260, which could be cheaper as well.

hey if i post a trend asking someone to build me a computer with the parts i want is that aginst rules in this froums rules?

Theres nothing on that chart showing an 8800/9800GT, but this chart does.
Charts, benchmarks Gaming Graphics Charts Q3/2008, Crysis v1.21

All I know is that my 1 GTX+ scores quite a bit better on benchmarks than 2 8800GTs SLI'd. (Same processor/ram..)