I want to beef up my gaming power a bit. in terms of price/performance, should I buy a second 8800gts 320mb or is there a better route for me to go with a new single card? I don't want to spend a lot more than it would cost for another 8800 but $50-75 more would be fine.

well... currently you can get 8800 gts 640/320 for about a 100 now... so i'd say sli-ing them would give you best price/performance in a resolution under or equal to 1680 by 1050... if its any higher you want a 4870

the problem with sli is that when you want to upgrade... you have to sell 2 REALLY obsolete cards... so consider that... and you may not always have proper performance with SLI, also you may have driver issues and bug problems...

overall I'd recommend a 4850... its maybe 30 - 50 % faster than a 8800 gts 320... and a sli of the 8800's gives you about 60 % increase on average... so i'd go 4850... and if you have the money go 4870

thanks

No offense, but where did you get the 30-50% faster figure? I have been looking all day for a review that compares the two and came up empty.

I did my own analysis using 3dMark06 results (I know, I know, flimsy at best) and came up with 25% increase over a stock clocked 8800 GTS 320

If you can point me in the right direction I would appreciate it.

If you are able to, I would go with a 4850. It would provide a notable performance increase for a price that is really not too bad. It's still $200 bucks though...

Maybe the discussion on this slightly different, but definitely notable thread will help you out...

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/ [...] 00-8800gts

I checked this topic out a while ago and based on all the info I could find SLI is not a good bet for the 320 because of it's inherent memory limitations, especially in newer games.

If you must upgrade getting a single card with 512 mb of memory is probably a better bet.

I have a 320 clocked at 576 and I still haven't played a game or demo at 1680x1050 that runs badly. After being tempted to upgrade a few times I've pretty much decided to sit this upgrade cycle out.

The 4850 is like an ULTRA in perf or a lil better. The 4870 is a good 20+% faster than the 4850. Hope this helps

alright so 4850 or 4870? apparently ati is winning the battle right now? i haven't kept up on this stuff. well thanks for the help everyone.

4850 is hardly a 8800ultra, please don't spread hype. It's about the same as g92 8800gts.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/HD_4850/10.html

4870 should be faster than ultra though.

At first you said it wasnt as fast or no faster than a GT, now you say its not as fast as an ULTRA. The fact that its a brand new card, and will benefit from driver increases will show even better abilities . Heres some benchmarks in newer games http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/14967/7 http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/14990/13 These cards will only get better, being they are new. The 4850 trades blows with the ULTRA now, but will be better with driver updates, whereas, the improvements for drivers for the ULTRA have mostly already come

Then how does it beat the 9800GTX in most tests? Even though it is just an oced G92 88gts, it is still not It's equal.

Also, its important to look at the filters being used in game/benches. With no AA or little such as 2x, it doesnt shine. Crank up the eye candy, and they tend to overpower nVidias cards

Don't spread lies. I've never said "4850 is no faster than [8800]gt."
You made that up. 4850/8800gts is around 15% faster than 8800gt at
stock.

As for performance, it's more hype than substance. See benchmarks:

Unreal Tournament 3

Stalker

FEAR

Far Cry

Crysis

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

Call of Duty 4

3dmark

True, the 4850 gets better in comparasion at higher resolutions, it
usually takes 2048x1536 for it to outperform cards like the old
8800gtx. Few people have monitors that can even handle that. At more
typical resolutions, such as 1280x1024, many other cards come on top.

Besides, many people are not comfortable with 85+ idle and 95+ load temperatures.

Look, I really like what w1zzards done, love TPU too, but look at my comment on his review in the comments about it. If youll notice, and Ive already said this, and you need to understand this, as it doesnt do this card justice. At lower res, you need MORE eye candy not LESS. Look again at your links, at the 16x10 res, he uses 4xAA and 16xAF, its not 25x16 or even higher res really that these cards are superior, its using higher filters, or 4xAA and 16xAF, just like I said in my comments about the review, and here^. When used, they pull ahead. So, in essence, youre willing to tell me that the 3xxx series with no AA which is on par with the G80 or G90 is legit?By saying what youre saying is discrediting. Ill just say this, using higher AA, or greater eyecandy, these cards are superior to ULTRA,8800GTX and 9800GTX, and will only improve over time with what we currently have, and will see a greater dominance over the cards I mentioned. At 16x10 4xAA and 16xAF the 4850 owns the 8800GTX, and is even more impressive using 8xAA. Recheck your links.

I disagree. Look at the Crysis benchmark you linked. 4850 gets 17.0-21.8fps in High and 13.0-14.9 in Very High. While 4850 pulls ahead in Very High, those frame rates are unplayable anyway! Yes, the benchmarks I linked don't use the max aa, but they're lowered enough to show the performance comparasion of extremely heavy games like Crysis in the 30fps range, which is basically the lowest playable limit for most people. To test performance on a realistic setting where people will be running games is a much more sensible standpoint. No one will be playing at 13fps, the the relative performance at that point is worthless.

Crysis is one game. All the others its different. The 4870 doesnt do great in Crysis. If you go about evaluating these cards on Crysis alone, then everything is skewed. If you pick 1 game, then lets pick Assissins Creed DX10.1? Without the patch? All other games the 4850 beats the GTX on baby drivers with 4-8xAA on. I disagree with his testring methods, where at low res, you leave the filters down or off

I agree with jaydeejohn 100%

By using just 1 game, things look different. Here http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/14967/7 the 4850 beats a G260 and ties the G280 for minimal fps. Like I said, its only 1 game. The minimal fps is more than the average for the 8800GTX

Ive been so bold as to say that the 8800GTX is now a midrange card. Maybe upper mid range, but only mid range, as the 4850 beats it, and like I said, will beat it even worse with driver updates

Compared to the GTX260, GTX280 and 4850, my 3870x2 is still in the competition, but I expect it to be midrange in performance by the time the 4870x2 runs next spring's games.

It's all relative. I've seldom gotten the exact fps in an average review because I have a budget CPU. That will change with Deneb (I hope!), plus I'll go to 1920 resolution in the fall.

At any rate, I find it amusing that Nvidia fans want their card's compared to the 4850 without AA and AF. That's like when the 3850 and 3870 were compared to Nvidia's 8800 series. They did well without filters, but Nvidia had the lead with filters back then.

As for Crysis, it's the kind of game that people play and discard. It's eye candy that only performs well a couple of years later when hardware catches up. I really don't know why developers release FPS with settings that current cards can't reach.

A CRPG has more replayability and yet I didn't see much difference in Oblivion between medium and high settings when I upgraded. Games like Crysis are best purchased bargain bin a couple of years later if all one wants is the top eye candy and 30+ fps.