Question about Vid cards for new gaming rig

ID:182852
 
Jan 13 2008, 6:40 pm
Are 2 NVIDIA GeForce 8500 GT 512MB 16X PCI Express cards better than 1 NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 512MB 16X PCI Express Video Card? The price is pretty similar if I go either way. Feel free to explain in terms of stats or just common sense, I'm pretty ignorant in this sector of life.
Jan 14 2008, 10:28 am
I have not had any experience with two cards but IIRC you can have them run as one.

George Gough
Jan 18 2008, 4:56 pm
In response to KodeNerd
I know this is pretty old, but for god sakes do not go for 2X 8500GT. It's about... 20x worse than the 8800GT, 8800GT can run Crysis on near max settings, 8500GTs can run it on maybe low-medium.
Jan 21 2008, 4:57 pm
In response to SpikeNeedle
SpikeNeedle wrote:
I know this is pretty old, but for god sakes do not go for 2X 8500GT. It's about... 20x worse than the 8800GT, 8800GT can run Crysis on near max settings, 8500GTs can run it on maybe low-medium.

Thanks for the help! I was looking at Nvidia's chart here before I remembered this post:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/graphics_cards_buy_now.html

And I was doing my own fuzzy logic looking at the numbers, and pretty much came to the same conclusion, but I wasn't sure if it was actually that much better since I don't understand the weight of the stats I'm looking at. Is the Texture Fill Rate what I'm concerned with primarily? Does memory size even matter that much? I mean with 2 cards I get 512 x 2, but I'm wondering how much is actually cached there.

Well, thanks for the response!
Jan 22 2008, 10:43 am
In response to Rockinawsome
The memory capacity isn't all that important, unless you want to run at high res (like a 1080 monitor).

Go for the 8800gt, far better choice, it outperforms two 8600gts cards from what I hear.

Rockinawsome wrote:
SpikeNeedle wrote:
I know this is pretty old, but for god sakes do not go for 2X 8500GT. It's about... 20x worse than the 8800GT, 8800GT can run Crysis on near max settings, 8500GTs can run it on maybe low-medium.

Thanks for the help! I was looking at Nvidia's chart here before I remembered this post:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/graphics_cards_buy_now.html

And I was doing my own fuzzy logic looking at the numbers, and pretty much came to the same conclusion, but I wasn't sure if it was actually that much better since I don't understand the weight of the stats I'm looking at. Is the Texture Fill Rate what I'm concerned with primarily? Does memory size even matter that much? I mean with 2 cards I get 512 x 2, but I'm wondering how much is actually cached there.

Well, thanks for the response!