The new 8800GT graphics card

Links stolen from the Interlopers thread:

http://www.vr-zone.com/articles/Nvidia_GeForce_8800_GT_Review/5369-1.html

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/10/29/geforce_8800_gt/

It's fast (almost as fast as the GTX with 512MB of Ram), cheap (250$ range), silent, takes only one slot and otherwise more thought-through than previous 8800 models.

Should run Crysis at good speeds.

That's the first card of this generation I find to be within a reasonable price/value range. I think about getting this one. What do you say?

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Why snark works.

Doesn't seem half bad for ?130 ish. It's just a shame that's ?130 more than I can afford LOL. Never mind, my 8600 GT does just fine for the current stock of games I play. Perhaps next year I will look into it, but even then this card should have been bettered by somethign else.

Fry's is selling the EVGA version card for $230!

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Great, this is what I was waiting for. I'm glad I'm such a patient guy :biggrin:

PS: Crono, just noticed your avatar

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Why snark works.

Crono (or anyone really) is it worth running those two 250$ cards in SLI? Or just buying one 500$ card and running that solo?

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Posting And You

From what i read, it would have a lot to do with the mother board its self. The second slot usually pulls only half the data speed. I might be wrong (and it might only be on AMD boards), your probably better off not listening to me.
But ether way, i know on the average modo, second slot is slower.

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Reality has become a commodity.

It's because of the chipset. If you've got an nVidia chipset you need at least the nForce590 for both slots to run at 16x.

I, personally, think it would run damn nice with two of these. It would be more powerful than a 8800GTX or something like that by it self. On the developer side of things, if you were interested, you would have unlimited possibilities. (Think about implementing Physics and Collision detection with deformable geometry on one card and doing dynamic global illumination and particle effects on the other :o)

I'm not sure how many games directly support SLI, though, and I don't know if that's actually required, or the drivers take care of it for you.

In any case, you wouldn't need SLI with this card, yet. I would imagine that this thing could run Crysis at fairly high settings and that's, pretty much, the most graphically demanding game that is coming out, or that will come out until Alan Wake.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

This will probably be the next card i buy if Ati doesn't top it with their next line. I'm starting to lose faith in AMD though. Plus i need to update my whole system. My socket 462 sempron 2400 doesn't really cut it anymore.

wow, Alan Wake looks good.

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Reality has become a commodity.

This will probably be the next card i buy if Ati doesn't top it with their next line. I'm starting to lose faith in AMD though. Plus i need to update my whole system. My socket 462 sempron 2400 doesn't really cut it anymore.

wow, Alan Wake looks good.

AMD Quad Cores are coming, which are designed from the "ground up" to be quad core (not 2 dual cores) with some slick new abilities.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

AMD Quad Cores are coming, which are designed from the "ground up" to be quad core (not 2 dual cores) with some slick new abilities.

So iv read. I can't wait for the charts to show up on Toms Hardware. Hope it was worth the wait.

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Reality has become a commodity.

I read that SLI is not (yet?) supported by Crysis and certain chipsets. More information should be hidden in the links I posted. Maybe that's just a few driver updates away, though.

I waited so long but now that a Crysis-worthy card of this price range pops up I'm tempted to wait a little longer and see what ATI will deliver in the next few weeks. And only if it's to see how Nvidia will react (a new line of cards should follow the 8800 GT and there should be another price drop). Oh finally.

PS: Does SLI work with different cards? I always hear of people buying two cards of the same type. But can I hook up a 8800 GT with a hypothetical 8900 GTXYZ later to the same effect?

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Why snark works.

No they have to be identical chip set, otherwise your gonna have one bogging down the other. In other words SLI only works as fast as your slowest card.

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Posting And You

Damnit. I was looking forward to combine my card with others in the future instead of throwing my old one away (or selling it for 20 bucks on ebay). It sounded too good anyways. :sad:

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Why snark works.

Quit whining, it used to be you had to use identical cards (same manufacturer, same amount of memory) now you just need to make sure they both have the same chipset.

Of course, SLI would work a lot better if the video card generations didn't get accelerated after Shader Model 2 came out. It didn't used to be every year, remember?

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

I must admit I always found the idea of buying two cards for 400+$ each just to be able to run a newly released game at high settings quite obscene. If you can afford, or if you are a gamer who enjoys staying at the top of the line, then of course it's OK. But companies present these setups like buying 2 cards at once is the most normal thing in the world.

Imagine a company advertising their super-shiny graphics in screenshots and video presentations, mentioning "SLI systems" being required to actually run the quality we see. And that happens quite a lot. By that they suggest spending 800 bucks on graphics cards alone, not even counting the extra RAM/CPU costs etc.

People have complained about the PS3 costing... what 500$? 600$? No-one complained about graphics cards being even more expensive for the PC, not even offering the remaining hardware and usability comfort of a console system.

I think I've posted this before, but when I go and compare the price and performance of each generation of graphics cards as they jump to the following generation, the logical development would be that I need a new graphics card in 2009 that costs 600$, runs its current games at 15 FPS at medium quality and is outdated by 2010. That trend can't go forever.

The 8800 GT is a step towards sanity. That's what I like about it.

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Why snark works.

I don't think it will. The reason why there's been so many different "generations" is because EVERYTHING in home computers has been changing the last few years. I think after Quad core processors become standard there wont be as large of a push for these things.

I don't think they ever intended people to buy two cards at once ... the idea really is to extend the life of the machine later ... but the damn things just aren't around by the time you want to do that. Personally, I wouldn't mind putting another 7900GT in my machine ... I mean, I bought that like a year ago ... can't find the card now, the only one out there is a 7900GS and that wont work with my card in SLI.

I'm not really that pissed about any of these prices or time lines, because ... well ... the prices have always been high. And you can always upgrade to something reasonably priced if you wait a little bit.

There's nothing out there that actually demands you have two GF8800 Ultra cards running in SLI.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

How would you set up your system with this card? MoBo, Ram, and all that.

Who? Me?

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

I'd put the motherboard in first, slot in the ram, then the video card, put a hard drive in it, make sure everythings connected right then power it up.

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"If you talk at all during this lesson, you have detention. Do you understand?"

• My yr11 Economics teacher