tri sli 8800gts or single gx2 or gtx 280 sli

my friend building rig today, but he's confuse which graphics card is best for 780i FTW mobo. any suggestion for these graphics card?

IMO, it's really hard to argue against a 9800GX2 right now. They can be had for a little less than $300 and no single card can touch its performance except the much more expensive GTX 280. In that price range, the only other setup to consider IMO is dual 4850's which is out of the question in this scenario because of the motherboard.

The only downside in choosing the 9800GX2 is that quad SLI doesn't add enough performance to justify getting a second one, so it's pretty much a dead end upgrade path. However, if your friend purchased either a BFG or an EVGA 9800GX2 they would have at least the step-up route as an option.

So, my suggestion is a 9800GX2. If your friend wants to upgrade later there's always step-up, and for right now they'd be getting the best value and performance nVidia has to offer.

if you can get 3x GTS for the price of one GX2, then grab that. They'll do better than the GX2. If not, there's nothing better at $285 than a GX2

It's not possible to tri-SLI 8800GTS.

Of those choices I'd go with a GX2, though the GTX 260 is a nice option as well to consider.

maybe he meant 8800gtx tri-sli

I would just buy a cheap 9800gtx+ and wait for the GTX280b that is due in a month, then have GTX280b sli setup with the 9800gtx+ as a physics card. That will work really well, and fly on physx games like UT3 I believe.

Thanks for the input guys, appreciate it! Well, he ended up getting 2 x 9800gx2. He also told me that he only got 14,200 score on 03dmark06 on single gx2, is that nomal? Also, he didnt tried sli yet. Here's his current specs (all stock):

- Q9450
- EVGA 780i FTW
- 4 x 2gig OCZ reaper PC-8500
- corsair 750 psu
- vista x64

edit: im thinking his PSU is not sufficient, is it? does he needs to get a 1000 plus PSU?

REDTOP said:

Thanks for the input guys, appreciate it! Well, he ended up getting 2 x 9800gx2. He also told me that he only got 14,200 score on 03dmark06 on single gx2 (he didnt tried sli yet)is that nomal? Here's his current specs (all stock):

- Q9450
- EVGA 780i FTW
- 4 x 2gig OCZ reaper
- corsair 750 psu

Click to expand...

Yah that's a fine score for stock CPU. It'll go way up as that quad gets clocked.

what res does he play at?

^^^ he said default 3dmark06 settings.

thas like 1280 x 1024 now i think... so he is CPU bound more then GPU anything...

I get the feeling he's gonna be disappointed with quad SLI. :O

Tell him to sell one 9800gx2 if he only plays 1280x1024. Every game will be CPU limited, even crysis I think. FPS will be just as high with one or two, and quad sli can scale horribly.