SLI 6600GT over 1 6800GT

[Moshenokoji]

I'm building a computer for a friend and this is all in his best interest when it comes to price and performance because he's a gamer. I was wondering if two GeForce 6600GT 128mb GDDR3 cards would over power a single 6800GT 256mb GDDR3 card. I don't have any experience with dual video cards so if any one knows anything about what I'm asking, I'd appreicate the knowledge.

[Samuraid]

Yes. Check the benchmarks here for a good comparison:
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/gra...l#3d_mark_2005

[Moshenokoji]

thanks for that link, I'll take it into consideration. He may not want two 6600GTs. He was thinking of getting another 6800GT later on.

[edczxcvbnm]

Before you buy the cards also consider what else will be coming out, when it is coming out and how much of a price drop/difference it will cause with the older cards.

I have had 1 6600gt for a year now and I play games like Half-Life 2 with everything up no problem.

[Samuraid]

Ya, I have a 6800GT and I can run just about anything in max quality with will anisotropic filtering and antialiasing without much trouble at all.

[Yamaneko]

The 6600GT suffers at higher resolutions with AA on. It's considered a low mid-range card now. The 6800GT still pretty much runs anything with no problems as long as you have a gig of RAM and a good proc. I wouldn't go with SLI in the 6 series only because the 7 series is eventually going to replace it. Your friend might want to look into a 7800GT. You can usually find one for around $400.

What proc do you have, Samuraid?

[Samuraid]

Pentium D 830

(Athlon X2 would have been my choice had it been actually a reasonable cost at the time, but the D830 still performs excellently)

[Yamaneko]

FX > X2 for now. Nothing, but pro software utilizes true multitasking. The FX-57 is a beast.

[Samuraid]

True, but I am a "pro software"/heavy multitasker, so it was either the dual core or the dual CPU route. There's nothing that beats encoding an audio/video stream at 6GHz. (10 fps faster than it plays in realtime)

Ya, for pretty much any single thread uses, the FX series is amazing.