8800GT Upgrade path, and a couple questions.

[Reziarfg]

Hey folks, long time lurker rarely post much though.

Anyways, I have a question, hopefully you guys can help.

I currently have a GeForce 8800GT 512MB gfx card. It runs most things well on my 1920x1200 23" display. I don't play anything too intensive, and the rest of my rig is pretty good, I'll throw it in my sig after I post this, but suffice it to say, it's an i7 920 with 6GB of RAM and a SSD. Clearly my GPU is the weak point.
The games I do play are things like WoW, and the occasional shooter. So far I've been pretty satisfied with the settings I can run most things at, obviously limited by my GPU. My only grievance is that if I am running something, like, world of warcraft for example, I can't really multitask. It seems like it's playing it just fine but really taxing the system. GPU-Z reveals that the GPU memory usage is maxing out as well, corroborating my theory. So when I tab out, say to do something in Photoshop, photoshop becomes very laggy. Even non-intensive things like watching a dvd-quality movie starts skipping frames. It's bearable but I'd like a smoother experience.

Anyways, that brings me to my point. My motherboard supports SLI, so I suppose a quick fix would be to purchase another 8800gt on the cheap, maybe ebay for ~$50-70. I could also hold out, as I've recently dropped ~900 on the mobo/cpu/RAM/SSD upgrade, and couldn't really afford a new graphics card on the same purchase. So, I could wait, save up, and buy either a GTX470 or Radeon 5850.
I'm aware the SLI option would be more power intensive(I only have a 500W PSU) and clearly not a very good long term solution. But it would also be about 7 times cheaper, which is pretty important. And it would let me run things a bit more smoothly(I hope).
Which leads me to another question, can I tell my computer to run WoW on one card and then leave the other card for everything else? Do I get that kind of control? What kind of performance should I expect?

tldr: 8800GT SLI now? or wait for a GTX470/5850 later?

Sorry I got a bit long winded! Thanks for reading.

 

[digitalgunfire]

I would just wait and get a 5850/470. You gain a lot more than you gain from SLI 8800. The gains will be worth $50 if you can find one that cheap but you'll still end up replacing it with a 5850 or something else in the near future I would guess.

 

[Mokkat]

my tip, and my own current plan - selling my 8800gt and getting the XFX 5770 1gb with the new egg-shaped cooler.

Its a solid upgrade speed-wise and it will run cooler and less noisy. It will play most current games at good speeds, and you can always upgrade to the next gen best value card when the time comes (when AMD launches a new line of cards with stronger DX11 hardware, for instance)

 

[Etherea1]

I also suggest waiting for the 5850. I just upgraded from SLI 8800gt to a 5870 and feel a big change, it's almost too much card for the resolution i play at and a 5850 would have done me just fine. If you wanna upgrade right now, I would sell you one of my 8800s for $50. My post count ain't high enough to fully utilize the for sale section, so pm me.

 

[Q-BZ]

Put it to you this way. I loved the 880GT I had but when I upgraded to a GTX 280 18 months ago it was a night and day improvement.

That being said...any current mid to high end card you buy NOW? You're in another plane of reality my friend. ATI 5770 or 5850 on up or GTX 470 on up and welcome to a new world.

 

[sirmonkey1985]

if the single 8800GT works for you stick with it for a while till prices drop on the newer cards.. but if you can find an 8800GT for dirt ass cheap then go ahead and SLI it..

 

[runwithit]

I'm glad these questions come up... per my post count and my forever lurking the forums, I tend to not post my questions. I think I'm somewhat similar, but I have the 1GB card. It sounds like I should just wait and update my pc too in the somewhat near future.