First and foremost, most modern motherboards do run both pci-express slots at full 16x speed in SLI.
Two GTS's in SLI would definitely be a performance beast, but they would offer nowhere near the 150%-175% performance boost that the previous poster claimed.
Before you go and buy these cards, please keep a few things in mind:
First, SLI is suited for very high resolutions, 1680x1050 and up. If you play below those resolutions, just get a single card, you will not be able to notice the difference. You can always add another card later if your needs change.
Second, two GTS's in SLI consume a tremendous amount of power, and you must make sure that your power supply is capable of running both of those cards safely. The most important number to consider is the amperage on the 12-volt rail.
Ah, Pompeii, I hoped you would say that, so I can add to what you said.
First of all, Under most circumstances you would be right on with the fact that the 150%-175% that I mentioned is way off. and it is. By the way, I did not mean a 150% increase in performance, merely 150% OF the performance.
I meant more of a 25%-50% increase in total power over a single gtx. Now, lets look at some numbers.
First, the benchmarks.
This benchmark clearly shows the 8800gtx outperforming the GTS in all applications. Correct me if i am wrong, but I believe that this is due to a greater amount of dedicated ram and a faster core clock speed.
Also note that the GTX has an even greater gap when used at a higher resolution. The cause for this is a greater amount of memory in the card.
Now, if you take into account the two GTS 640mb cards, and assume for the moment that the memory is not hindered by altered speed or poor power supplies. The 768 MB 8800GTX has a higher amount of memory alone, but the amount of useable memory doubles when you SLi a card.
That totals 1280MB of total memory that is useable in this mode. If you run mainly in 1440x900, a single GTS or GTX card is probably the way to go.
Another thing to think about is the Memory clock speed. The higher the memory clock, the faster the card will generally perform, especially at resolutions of 1600x1200 and above.
Now, we need some actual numbers of cards, mainly 8800s.
EVGA 768-P2-N835-AR GeForce 8800GTX 768MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 SUPERCLOCKED HDCP Video Card - Retail
Chipset Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Core clock: 621MHz
DirectX: DirectX 10
DVI: 2
Memory Clock: 2000MHz(effective)
Memory Interface: 384-bit
OpenGL: OpenGL 2.0
Stream Processors: 128
TV-Out: HDTV / S-Video Out
VIVO: No
This is the EVGA 768MB 8800GTX card. As you can see, it has huge amounts of power.
Also take a look at this card.
EVGA 640-P2-N825-AR GeForce 8800GTS 640MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 SUPERCLOCKED HDCP Video Card - Retail
Chipset Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Core clock: 576MHz
DirectX: DirectX 10
DVI: 2
Memory Clock: 1700MHz(effective)
Memory Interface: 320-bit
OpenGL: OpenGL 2.0
Stream Processors: 96
TV-Out: HDTV / S-Video Out
VIVO: No
This is an 8800 GTS my the same maker. Now, as you can see, the specs are not nearly as high. But if you plan to put two of these cards in a machine, there is no doubt that your computer will have greater performance, especially at higher resolutions.
Also, as Pompeii stated, the power consumption of cards needs to be taken into consideration.
GeForce 7900 GTX 256 Watts
GeForce 7950 GX2 277 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTS 273 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTX 308 Watts
Radeon X1950 XTX 280 Watts
Now, the number for the 8800 GTS is 273 watts, which is still quite high. If you plan to run two of these cards in SLi, you need a powerful power supply and an SLi Motherboard that can supply this power to these cards.
The GTX uses about 308 Watts of electricity, which is higher than the GTS, but also much less if it is not run in SLi.
So in short, At high resolutions and in very memory-demanding applications, the SLi'd GTS is definitely the way to go. If you are into gaming at lower resolutions, the GTX may be the way to go.
Look at it this way. The emergence of dual-core and quad-core processors was a great step forward in the processor industry. When people began to use quad-core processors, they also began to wonder why they were not performing as well in some games as the dual core processors.
If you look at the specs of the dual-cores, the numbers are undoubtedly higher than similarly priced Quad-cores. This is because when a processor is separated by core, the power is split up more, allowing the computer to run more tasks or processes, but ONLY if the program is made to support running all of the cores in parallel. To some extent, the same is true in this instance. The 2 8800 GTSs may be like the quad-core, they have more total memory and can run better at higher resolutions. But look at the GTX, as it has higher stock speeds and can no doubt give the SLi'd Graphics cards a run for their money, especially in terms of price
erformance. It all depends on what you want to do, which is the beauty of choice.
Time to end what is no doubt the longest post I have ever made in my life.
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