9800GTX or 280GTX

[mitch04]

Hi I had a look on ebay about this 280GTX it reckons it can beat the 9800GX2 easy. I have a 9800GTX installed on my pc still can get ultra on coh or crysis what you say I would do buy another 9800GTX SLI or should I get a 280GTX and then later on sli it. not sure what should I do?
thanks

 

[raybay]

What power supply is your "400wats..." ?
I would spend the money elsewhere. What you have is good, and the "better" will have limitations on that board with that processor.
But, regardless, I would be sure that 400 Watt PSU is quality, or else go for a more powerful unit.

 

[mitch04]

650watts I got E4000 3ghz duo core. 4gb ram 1066mhz. mabe i should just get another inno3d 9800GTX sli it? what u reckon? would I be able to get max resolution with everything ultra?

 

[fullmetalvegan]

I'm pretty sure the 9800GX2 beats the GTX 280 from benchmarks I saw by around 10-30FPS depending on the game and resolution. I think resolutions between 1200-1800 the 9800GX2 wins, and below 1200 and over 1800 the 280 GTX wins.

How ever the GTX 280 respond really well to overclocking and two in SLI would have a very high FPS rate.

 

[madzach2000]

i would go with the 9800GX2

 

[Rage_3K_Moiz]

Two GTX 280 cards would suck a lot of power and run very hot. Go for them only if you game at more than 1600x1200. For any resolution below that, the 9800GTX SLI will do fine. I wouldn't recommend the 9800GX2 since you already own a 9800GTX, the extra money spent will not show any justifiable performance difference between a 9800GTX SLI setup and a single 9800GX2.

 

[mitch04]

well mabe I should just buy another 9800GTX so sli ? Would I see alot of improvement?

 

[Julio Franco]

Although we haven't formally reviewed any of the new GTX cards, we included the card in our latest graphics card review comparing it to almost every card out there in the market, take a look:

https://www.techspot.com/review/103-asus-radeon-4850/page4.html

If I were you I wouldn't upgrade from a 9800GTX to a GTX 280 in a million years.

 

[mitch04]

k I will just buy another 9800GTX. Can you please tell me about sli. I have to get the exact same one do I?

 

[fullmetalvegan]

You only have to have the same model card, any brand of 9800GTX would work - how ever it's better to get the exact same brand/model card again.

Also, even though the card may be SLI ready, you cannot actually have SLI activated unless you have an nForce powered motherboard with SLI support. Such as in my system, I have the eVGA 750i board, which means I can have two-way SLI. If you don't have a nForce 5 series, 650i, 680i, 750i, 780i or 790i you can't run SLI. On most motherboards with two PCI-E slots you have the option of CrossFire only - which is ATi cards.

So in that case, you are better off buying a 9800GX2 - it's a beast of a card for systems that can't run SLI and want that kinda of FPS option - being that the GX2 is two internal SLI cards in one.

Buying two Radeon HD4850 for CrossFire would also be a good option if you lack a SLI motherboard.

 

[mitch04]

my motherboard has a 2 pci express slots so that would be sli. is it possible can i get a 9800GX2 ? so i have a 9800GTX sli & 9800GX2 so 3x 9800GTX that possible?

 

[fullmetalvegan]

A motherboard having two PCI-E slots doesn't instantly mean you can have SLI, in most cases, it means you have CrossFireX compatibility. Like I said, only if the motherboard has a NVIDIA chipset will it run SLI, you could have four PCI-E slots, but unless it's an NVIDIA chipset you can only run a single NVIDIA card.

And no, you can only SLI the same type of card. You can only have 2x or 3x 9800GTX, or 2x GTX 280, etc, you can't mix a GTX 280 and a 9800GX2 into SLI - it won't work.

Do you happen to know what motherboard you have? That way we can verify if you have SLI or not, my second computer has three PCI-E slots - it's a Gigabyte P45 board. But it's not an NVIDIA board, so even though it has 3 PCI-E slots it can't run SLI, only a single GPU.

 

[mitch04]

The motherboard is a Asus P5KC
thanks

 

[usudor]

9800 gtx is superbly better

 

[fullmetalvegan]

The motherboard is a Asus P5KC
thanks

Your motherboard doesn't offer SLI support so you will not be able to run two NVIDIA GPU's; from the ASUS website (http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3&l2=11&l3=534&l4=0&model=1694&modelmenu=1) lists that the motherbaord has: ATI CrossFire Technology. So you can run two ATi but not two NVIDIA.

The 9800 GTX+ just came out in Australia for the same price as the HD4850, except the GTX+ outperforms the 4850 by a small margin, which stull makes it the better choice. Just as the GTX 260 are the same price as the HD4870 and outperform those as well.

FPS performance aside, it should be noted that if both cards of similiar performance are the same cost, NVIDIA would be the better choice due to much more stable drivers and overclocking ability. When the GTX 260 is overclocked even slightly it can outperform the GTX 280 in some games, that's incredible for a single card solution.