About two years ago, I bought a brand new PC which included an ASUS NVIDIA 7900 GTX graphics card. I've never felt the need to upgrade, however a recent monitor upgrade (24 inch WS) makes me want a little more OOMPH in the graphics department. I could of course buy a new graphics card, but that's a little pricy for me since I want to do a BIG upgrade in about a year. Therefore, I was thinking about buying a second ASUS 7900 GTX (for 75 euros), and putting it in SLI mode with the other one. Since I'm not really up to speed on SLI, I would like to ask you all if you could give me some advice. For example: - What do I have to look out for (type of 2nd card, etc)? - Is SLI reliable enough (overheating and such)? - Is a new videocard a better option, which one would you recommend? - Can my system handle two ASUS 7900 GTX in SLI mode? System: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ Corsair 2048 Gb DDR RAM (matched pair) ASUS A8N-SLI premium, nForce4, 939, motherboard ASUS NVIDIA 7900 GTX Cooler Master 550W PSU SLI Any decent advice is appriciated! Thanks in advance!
your system will be able to take it, but your CPU will be a MASSIVE bottleneck when SLIing, as SLI and Xfire both utilise alot of CPU. IMO, sell your 7900GTX and upgrade to an 8800GTS 512, or an 8800GTX OR better yet, wait for the 4850/4870/GTX260/GTX280
OK, so SLI is not the best option. So...I'm upgrading with a 200 euro videocard tops. I may be able to sell my 7900 GTX for let's say 50 bucks. That's a difference of 150 euro's while the SLI card would cost me only 75 BUT the CPU would limit the perfomance. So for 75 euros more I have a solid system. I think it will be the ASUS 8800 GT, since I've seem some benchmarks that don't really favor the more expensive GTX and the toned down GTS. Any thoughts on this?
Agreed, the 8800GT is the best performance card for the money nowadays. it would also place far less stress on your PSU than SLI, which could have been problematic with a coolermaster PSU.
Much thanks to both of you! I've decided to go with the Asus EN8800GT TOP/G/HTDOP (512MB). This one seems to give me the most bang for the buck (190 euro's). The 1 Gb version didn't seem to be worth the money, in some benchmarks it's even slower than the 512 MB version! Any final remarks on my choice? Tips or things I have look out for?
if the fan is to loud, which it may be, use the EVGA tool, or Rivatuner to set to 60% for the best ratio of sound to cooling
You can't control the fan speed with rivatuner on Asus cards as they use a 2-pin connector. Fortunately the cooler is quieter than the stock one at the full speed it runs at anwyay - and it cools far better too.
