Value In SLI? GTX 260 Core 216 Vs. GTX 280
Table of contents
- 1. Does Three Of A Kind Really Beat A High Pair?
- 2. Test Settings
- 3. Benchmark Results: First Person Shooters
- 4. Benchmark Results: Real-Time Strategy
Everyone has his or her own ideas about what value and performance mean, some buyers choosing to bolster a low-end system with high-end graphics while others might inadvertently cripple performance platforms with mid-priced parts. Our most recent System Builder Marathon attempted to balance CPU and graphics performance within strict budget limits, but our most controversial build surprised everyone with its 3-way SLI set of moderately-priced performance graphics cards.
Of course, opinions run strong in our comments section. And while we appreciate the feedback and will use it to guide future System Builder Marathon configurations, we did notice a contingent that protested 3-way SLI as “excessive” for our $2,500 budget, suggesting that a pair of Radeon HD 4870 X2s might have been a better option. The primary argument was one of multi-card performance scaling, where the third card provides the least benefit.
While this first half of the argument is certainly worthy of debate, suggesting that two HD 4870 X2’s would be a better choice ignores the fact that two RV770 GPUs comprise each Radeon HD 4870 X2 card. That is to say, one cannot effectively argue against the “poor scaling” of three graphics processors excessive while simultaneously arguing in favor of four.
Tom’s Hardware is no stranger to controversy and its editors need to be prepared to defend their decisions. Knowing that selecting 3-way SLI with GeForce GTX 260 graphics cards would be far more controversial than two GTX 280 cards, we armed ourselves with two GTX 280 units in preparation of today’s SBM addendum. Let's get to the bottom of how these high-horsepower configuration stack up against each other.
It just goes to show how quickly things move along, and goes to support my personal mantra of "if you're prepared to pay for it, then get it when you want it". You simply cannot hang about now waiting for significant price drops or the next big thing because it all moves along too quickly.
are these better than my gforce 2 mx440?
nice article, but ca you please be consistent with the colours on the graphs, sometimes the 260's are blues sometimes the 280's are blue, this changed on the same page. We can see which bar is biggest we don't need 'blue is best' style colour coding as well.
All looks so very nice! I now have to find out if it is worth it to upgarde to these or wait? I have 2 BFG8800 GTs, perhaps I should wait for the next gen. of cards to come out. I just hope that my 1000 watt power supply will be good enough for the next gen. of cards?!?!
1000 watt is sure enough! You could run two GTX280 cards with that. With the smaller manufacturing processes coming up, graphic cards shouldn't get more power thirsty in the future then the current top line. The GTX280 and 260 are the most power hungry cards in history. It's redicilous actually how much power these things require.
If I were you, I would wait. The 8800GT is still a decent card, and with two of them, you still can run almost every game to the max. I don't know what your processor is, probably an E8400 or a Q6600. With those processors (especially the Q6600), anything faster then two 8800GT cards will be overkill. Your processor will be a bottleneck. Only with the really fast i7 systems it makes sense to put in two cards. You can even see in these benchmarks that the i7 processor here bottlenecks 3 GTX260 cards. I would only put that much graphics power in the i7 extreme processor, and then still it would probably be a bottleneck. These graphics cards are redicilously powerful on their own. There isn't a processor out there yet which can keep up with 3 GTX280, or even GTX260 cards.
i've got a Q6600 on a G33 board with 4Gb DDR800 @ 1066
GFX card is an aging 7950GT (quadro 3500) and its getting choppy running current games at 2560x1024.
what single card can i upgrade to to push that and 3840x1024 happily?
i know the Q6600 is going to be a bottleneck etc, but i'm not going to upgrade till i7 gets down to mainstream, so 260? 280? 285? and has anyone got a massive passive cooling solution for the 200 series?
Forget about all the benchmark crap! Go buy a good card or 2 or 3 and put them in your rig. If you have a great picture and graphics at whatever resolutions you play, then that's all that matters!!!