Single 8800GTX vs 7950GX2 (quad)SLI

So I was curious if the 8800GTX will hold it's own against a quad SLI setup.
My PC (AMD FX60 @ 2.75ghz | 2g DDR500 | Abit AN832X | 2x 74g WD Raptors RAID 0 | -Video Card- | X-Fi Platinum | Samsung 244T | PCP&C 510W Turbo) is my test station, and I am literally testing the 7950s, popping them out, and putting the 8800GTX in and running the tests again.

The contenders:
Two XFX 7950GX2s vs. One XFX 8800GTX "xxx" series

The Drivers:
7950s: 93.71
8800: 97.44

The Tests:
3DMark06 default: Winner: 8800GTX

7950s: 8728 3DMarks


8800: 9767 3DMarks


3DMark06 @ 1920x1200: Winner: 8800GTX

7950s: 7172 3DMarks


8800: 8726 3DMarks


3DMark05 default: Winner: 8800GTX
7950s: 13407 3DMarks


8800: 14926 3DMarks


3DMark05 @ 1920x1200: Winner: 8800GTX
7950s: 11306 3DMarks


8800: 13503 3DMarks


Half-Life 2: Lost Coast Winner: 8800GTX
Settings: 1920x1200, Full Screen, V-Sync Disabled


7950s: 111.95 Average FPS


8800: 119.93 Average FPS

The first two attempts did not complete the test. I don't know if this is a driver issue, or the card, but every time it came to the dock and the guy says "Here let me unlock..." it froze. The first time it dropped to a black screen, the second it went to the desktop, but was completely unresponsive, both times required hard reset.

FEAR:
Settings: 1920x1200 with everything on Maximum, 4xAA 16xAS
Didn't test with 7950s.
8800GTX:


Doom3:
No screens of this one, but at 1600x1200 with everything on maximum and ultra it did 100 average fps non-cached and 135 average fps cached.

Remarks:
Well, I was certainly surprised to see that the 8800GTX was TOO LONG to fit into my case. It was less than 1/2 an inch too long! That was discouraging to say the least! I have a LianLi PC60B Plus2 with 3 hard drives in the lower "vertical" hard drive cage. I had to move them about half an inch closer to the front of the case in order to accommodate the GTX. Insane! After I finally managed to get the card in, the rest was a snap. I didn't have to play with the bios or anything, and installing the drivers was simple as well. I uninstalled the old nvidia drivers, rebooted into safe-mode, ran driver cleaner, rebooted, and installed the video drivers. I rebooted one more time, and then began testing. The most difficult part was the waiting for benchmarks, I wanted to play! Other than the HL2LC test everything ran fine.



I'm very impressed with the 8800GTX. Time to start saving I suppose.

This pretty much confirms what I had feared. I jumped on the bandwagon and bought a 7950GX2 when they first came out thinking I could simply buy a second one later to be ultra-future proofed with Quad-SLI.

Now I'm thinking it would just be a waste of money to go get a second one, when I could just sell my 7950GX2 (how much could I get for it shipped?) and put it towards one of these puppies.

Thanks for the tests!

Nice definitive testing.

just another example of how sli isn't an upgrade path. It's just for bleeding edge. My next board will not be an sli board :/ Nothing wrong with sli if you've got a bigass monitor and you don't mind spending the cash, though

The Tests:
3DMark06 default: Winner: 8800GTX

7950s: 8728 3DMarks

Click to expand...

Hell, my overclocked GTS beats that..... Nice to see that our X2's are holding their own, considering how fast the C2D's are. My GTS scores only ~1000pts less than the GTX, and your rig has a faster cpu. 8800GTS = great bang for buck for us cheaper types. Don't get me wrong, I would rather have a GTX, but my current budget just does not allow it. I am still very satisfied with the GTS, it rocks my previous 7900GT.



So yeah....the 8800's are here to chew bubblegum and kick ass, and they are all out of bubblegum!

Very helpful, thanks for the information.

I've been saying in every "should I SLI?" thread and I'll say it again. SLI is NOT an upgrade path.

Marketing at its finest.

I hate that a lot of the best boards out there are SLI.

Riddlinkidstoner said:

I hate that a lot of the best boards out there are SLI.

Click to expand...

I bought an SLI board, thinking I was going to do it one day, but it turned out to be a non-solution for me. I guess I wasted a slot by doing that, since I change vid cards often enough so that SLI is really not even CLOSE to being cost effective. If I keep a card for a year, that's a long time.

Riddlinkidstoner said:

I've been saying in every "should I SLI?" thread and I'll say it again. SLI is NOT an upgrade path.

Marketing at its finest.

I hate that a lot of the best boards out there are SLI.

Click to expand...

I am not sure that it should have been "marketed" as an upgrade path, however when I went to SLI with 2 7800's it gave a significant boost. I am about to switch to 1 or 2 8800 GTX's and if you use a 30" LCD at high res, 2 cards do make a difference.

theseeker said:

I am not sure that it should have been "marketed" as an upgrade path, however when I went to SLI with 2 7800's it gave a significant boost. I am about to switch to 1 or 2 8800 GTX's and if you use a 30" LCD at high res, 2 cards do make a difference.

Click to expand...

But now the GTX makes that moot as one GTX is enough for a 30" monitor at 2560x1600

2 7950 gx2's only got 8700? I have gotten 8500 on my system in sig...

what res does sli really payoff anyway? I don't have a real sli board but I did kick myself a couple of times when i was using modded drivers to work in sli...IOW, i was limited by the drivers.

I did see a tremendous increase with my 79xx cards in benchmarking...other than that, it was minimal.

today, im content with my board "as is".

added FEAR and Doom3 as well as pics of the card in my case.

Thats awesome to hear -- you wouldnt by chance know how they compare in 2560x1600 mode would ya? Or at least know where i can find the info?

Thanks

Ajbrutico

P.S. Sniper, sending you this as a PM as well.

Well, SLI is a decent upgrade path. Quad SLI versus the single card SLI is not, however, due to a DirectX 9 limitation. But, with a 2.75 GHz AMD CPU and a single 7950GX2, I would hazard to say that you would have got the same or similar scores as you would with quad.

And, just for the record, when I tested my 8800GTX versus my 7950GX2, I scored the same 9800 score on 3DMark06 (CPU bottleneck). With Quad SLI, the score dropped to 9600. Picked up a X6800, and even at stock clocks, the 06 score was more like 12K with the 8800GTX.

Well check my sig for my specs -- would a GPU upgrade to an 8800GTX be worth it? I say this because I think I'd want Dx10 support in vista. Being that games dont use the tech yet, then maybe I'll wait till the price drops.

Thanks!

I found the 8800GTX well worth the upgrade from the 7950GX2 single or quad. I went from quad SLI to 8800 GTX SLI, so it is definitely worth it, especially if you already have a Core 2 Duo.