Widescreen Gaming Forum

Except for a few, usually useless, features, I can run games at max. I haven't and probably won't raise my resolution any time soon.

When I have some time I might play around to compare sli vs not in newer games I'd added but I won't get my hopes up to see much of a difference between both.

According to charts sli 88gtx/ultra is about same to a single gtx280/285 and close to that april-bound ati card.

So far the only recent game I've had any interest in is burnout paradise, and even if I wanted to I can't buy it since it's not available anywhere.

The demo runs quite well apart from that worthless super-shadows options so it's not a reason to look for a new card either.

I'll have skipped 9xxx, gtx2xx and might even skip the next gen if no games come out that are remotely useful.

If the consoles didn't have the same lack of games, I'd probably buy a 360, ps3 or wii next.

You never said what resolution you intend to use. If your not gaming at 1920 or above resolutions i dont think you need to jump yet. It seems more and more PC games are 360 ports with no graphical advantage to the PC. I say wait...

I'm running 5040x1050, and SoftTH allegedly doesn't play nice with SLI so this has me considering running just one card instead of two. The GTX 285 or 295 is tempting me.

As was already said: I wouldn't bother unless current games are already giving you unplayable framerates. At 1920x my 8800 GTS 512 is still keeping up splendedly with every new game I throw at it which doesn't have "Crysis" in the title. Somewhat dissapointingly it doesn't look like anything is coming out in the forseeable future to change this either.

wow 8800 gtx in SLI is so good why would you want to upgrade now?
it can still run everything at max.

Softth works with SLI only as long as you have 3 cards.

I played around with it a bit with 8800ultra in sli + a pci-e 1x 8400gs to get 3 monitors.

As for getting rid of 8800 gtx sli, I'm considering it myself. So far it seems a 4890 or 285 would give me about the same performance as I get now, it would also allow me to fetch a 2gb vram model to help with fsaa at 1920x1080

SLI is very overrated in performance.

Most apps I've tried 1 vs sli with my current cards at most show about 5-10% difference max if at all. And that's not counting the heat these put out or the stability problems that causes.

The main reason I'm looking into it however is to reduce the footprint of my gaming rig. I'm currently seeing if the zotac mini-itx with pci-e 16x could be a way to make a decent gaming rig without the real-estate it's taking right now. I've thought about building it without changing cards but the problem I run into is the card length.

The best and mostly only viable case I've found so far only allows up to 9" cards. I'm even considering buying it, cutting it and extending it a bit. For it's price though, I may as well build one from scratch.

I'm currently seeing if the zotac mini-itx with pci-e 16x could be a way to make a decent gaming rig without the real-estate it's taking right now. I've thought about building it without changing cards but the problem I run into is the card length.

IIRC, that PCI-E 16x slot is only 4x electrical, so it's a bottleneck of epic proportions.

I thought about replacing my 4850, what with the fan dieing and having to keep the side of my case off with a desk fan blowing in to keep it from over heating.

Then I thought, there's not really anything I can buy that will justify the money that is vastly better than my current one. I'll wait until DX11 cards come out, and then again wait until they are down into the 200$ range.

I smell thread necromancy around here :P

[quote]I'm currently seeing if the zotac mini-itx with pci-e 16x could be a way to make a decent gaming rig without the real-estate it's taking right now. I've thought about building it without changing cards but the problem I run into is the card length.

IIRC, that PCI-E 16x slot is only 4x electrical, so it's a bottleneck of epic proportions.

From what I read the jetway models are 16x physical 4x electrical but the zotac one is supposed to be 16x/16x, still to be confirmed of course.

I haven't looked that much into it either and I'll likely wait since the trend for smaller gaming capable boards has only just started.

Hopefully by the time the next batch of cards come out I'll have more case and motherboard options to make a micro-gaming rig that'll at least equal my current one.