Would dual GeForce 7600GS's be as good as one 8800?

Question

I know that one doesn't even come close to the 8800, but if I get two and run them in SLI mode, thats still a lot of power isn't it? Thats a gig of devoted GDDR2 RAM (512 each), and each with a factory overclocked core of 500 MHz (which I'm probably going to overclock even higher). Right now I have a 7100GS with 256 MB of on board memory (512 effective) and 2 gigs of RAM with a P4 at 3.2 GHz. With that system, I can play F.E.A.R on medium settings and I can just barely play Oblivion on low (obviously with a processor like that). Everyone keeps saying that the 8800 is the only card thats good enough for oblivion. I'm going to get a 2.13 GHz Core 2 Duo E6420 and overclock it close to 3 GHz. With this processor, 2 gigs of DDR2 800 RAM, and dual 7600's, would i be able to play FEAR maxed, and maybe Oblivion on medium or so? I only plan on using a res of 800x600 unless i can get it to go higher.

According to this list (http://www.slizone.com/object/slizone2_game.html) both FEAR and Oblivion (among other games i like) support SLI mode

Answer 1

Not even close, two 7600GS in SLI is not even in the same league as an 8800. SLI is a bit overrated, it will not always double the power, in fact it rarely performs that well. Usually the performance increase is much less than that. But even if it did manage to double the power of a 7600GS, an 8800 has much more than double the power of a 7600GS. If you have a budget in mind for your video card, I can give you a recommendation for the best graphics solution for that price. Send me an email or instant message me.

Answer 2

I doubt it would be as good as an 8800. 7600GS is a pretty average card now, and 8800 way at the top of the line. Also, most games don't seem to support SLI as of yet, so you'll probably be only really utilizing one card most of the time. Just save up and get an 8800, two 7600GS cards are pretty useless.

Answer 3

I'm saying this from experience because I have built a set up using two 7600s, and no, they aren't as good. Although the numbers look better, 1Gb combined is never as good as 7##Gb onboard (forgot acutal 8800 ram cap). Plus, 8800 has unishader architecture, making it run SOOOO much more effeciently, and it is DX10 enabled, so you can actually use it in the future. For the price, you are definetly better off with one 8800.

Answer 4

I have 2 7900GS Extremes in SLI and it dosnt quite come close. To 1 8800.

Even super over clocking both cards to the max my 3d mark score was about 6500.

Mine came close to 1 8800 but not quite. I didnt notice that much difference in the over clocking G-cards. So I retuned them back to stock settings.

Answer 5

If you overclock your stuff, you won't see much difference. Overclocking just tends to break stuff, it was tuned at the clock speed it's at for a reason: because the manufacturers determined that is the correct setting for the part to last.

Combining video cards will not double their performance, I don't know of any games that really can even use 2 video cards. Since 99.9% of systems only have 1, your games will probably ignore the second card.

Answer 6

ya, I agree I've got an sli mobo but from the testing that I've done and the other bench marks that I've seen two cards running in sli doesn't double your frame rates...just like having two core's doesn't exactly double your processing power with a cpu....

you'd be better off with one 88xx than two 76xx, you'll run into less conflicts especially if you intend to oc your vid cards in sli, and most games don't even support it anyway..it seems like a great idea and if it worked with a lot of games it would be great but it just doesn't...

with one 88xx you should have any prob's running at higher settings with those games and even better if you oc it...heat is an issue but just slap an extra fan on it and you'll be fine.