Ati or Nvidia?

[BlackWolf]

Later today nvidia announces new 9600 and 9800 (at least) as return to that is ati going to drop their 3850 and 3870 boards prices.
That means in finland you could actually buy 2x 3870 (for SLI or crossfire or what evah its called) for same price as one 8800GTS.

What to do?

[Maxi]

I wouldn't go SLI/Crossfire just yet - I'd only consider it as a possible upgrade for later. One 3870 seems more than enough to run most recent games at very high, unless you want to game in 1600x1200 or higher resolution. 9600 GT is close to the 8800 GT in perfs, but cheaper, will be around 180€. I'm building a new rig the coming weeks (based on E8400), and I'm going for a 8800 GTS.

[BlackWolf]

See thats my exact point im going to build 8400 one too...
But atm im much more considering 3870 with crossfirex board...
In recent tests those were able to boost up speed even with 3rd chip a lot...
And with crossfirex you can add 3870 x2 later on to same board... which means you will get total of 3 chips.
Whit cost of 150€ after today announced drop of prices thats only 1.5 times cost of GTS... and in future when that boost is needed it will be even less.

If i only can find crossfirex board somewhere...

[cervantes]

Crossfire and SLI helps imo only if you run games at very high resolution. Starting with one board, Geforce 8800 GT or Ati 3870, and upgrading later to a Crossfire/SLI system, lets say in a year from now is a valid option. But very often it is better to just replace the current graphics board with the midrange bard of the next generation. I am not sure, but usually the board of the next generation beats the dual combo of the current one, please correct me if i am wrong. And for crossfire you need one master board, which are more expensive than the standard boards.

[BlackWolf]

Not true. will explain later on when have time... and talked with maxi so will draw conclusion of it here...
Ahh now back to it...
First of all SLI only work for ultra and GTX versions. As such SLI costs like hell and benefits are next to none. thats it for geforce side.

Today Ati dropped prices of both their main cards 3870 and 3850. This means that 1 3870 costs now about 150 euros. After talking with maxi i now know that 8800 GTS (g92 512mb) costs 240+ euros. (up to around 300)
In performance GTS beats 3870 easily. Its about tied to bit better performing crossfire with 2* 3870.
Now 3rd option is 3870 x2 that is performing even better and costs bit under 400 euros.

Now comes the hard part. If you buy GTS you cant ever update it to any way. Even new card gets introduced few times a year still its possible that combination of 2 SLI or crossfire cards can do better than paying 250 euros for GTS.
So atm both cards GTS and 3870 are doing basicly all games with decent resolution decently well. In future GTS gets slower and slower but with x38,x48 based mother boards should support atis crossifireX system.
That system allows you to combine ANY graphics card with up to 4 cores to same motherboard.
So you could combine 3850 and 3870 together and those would increase your speed for something like 50% on certain games. So far adding 4th core has not shown that much increase but up to 3 cores performance gains are rather stable.

So if you buy 3870 you could later on after prices drop buy for example 3870X2 (with 2 GPUs) for something like 250 euros or 200 euros and add performance boost of over double to your comp. Which sounds rather nice. Thats the situation atm...
Maxi is going for GTS and im thinking of 3870. Tho after i found prices of GTS to be that low on Germany im also considering of ordering one from there for around 250 euros.

[BlackWolf]

This is the set i finally paid today shall see when it arrives...

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 2x3.00GHz S775 6MB tray 172,86 €
Kit 2x1024MB Corsair DDR2 1066MHz PC2-8500 CL5 Dominator 58,63 €
512MB Gigabyte Radeon HD3870 DDR3 2xDVI TVOut HDMI retail 164,39 €
Gigabyte GA-X38-DS4 S775 FSB 1600MHz PCIe ATX 29941 131,25 €
Zwischensumme: 527,13 €
Versandkosten:+ 29,99 €
inkl. UST 19%: 88,95 €
Summe: 557,12 €