Curious about possibly upgrading from my 8800GTS SLI

Syribo

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Mar 9, 2008
Messages
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Honestly, my build has served me very well since I originally put it together. I haven't had any problems playing any of the games that I play, or doing pretty much anything. Since I don't play too many graphic intensive PC games, I can get away with high settings on a lot of the ones I DO play on here.

But I have this sinking feeling that one of my cards might be biting the dust finally. I've just been having some issues, and have done a lot of troubleshooting and all of the obvious steps to see if it's a driver problem or something, but still having issues.

So, since I haven't been really up to date with the newest cards and hardware, I was wondering.. I should be able to get the same or better performance with a single card, without having to spend, let's say about $400, as my EVGA 8800GTS 512MB cards, right? I don't know if it's possible to budget right this second, but I need to start somewhere.. and having a price point is the first step.

Would this specific card, for example, perform better than my SLI? I imagine it probably will?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130827

Honestly, I really don't know.. I've fallen so behind on the times now. I don't need anything super spectacular like I was shooting for when I first put this build together. I play most games on my consoles and my 3DS and DSi, but on the PC I just play TF2, sometimes WoW, Sims 3, Portal, Fallout 3, etc. Just looking for some advice on what should be a good fit for me, without having to spend as much I originally spent on the 8800GTS's!

My main PC's specs are in my signature. Thank you in advance!
 
What resolution do you game at?
If it's over 720p or so you're going to want something more powerful than the 650. That said, it is indeed faster than your current cards.
 
What resolution do you game at?
If it's over 720p or so you're going to want something more powerful than the 650. That said, it is indeed faster than your current cards.

Ah, right.. I forgot to put that. I usually have it set at 1920x1200, and my current cards actually play fine at that. I wouldn't even think of replacing them yet if it weren't for the fact that I think one of them needs replacing. I mean, if I could find another new 8800GTS, I could probably be happy with just getting that and continuing with the SLI of them. It probably sounds crazy that I'm okay with them, but so far.. no big issues. The only game I specifically has issues with was The Sims 3. This is when I had about 6 expansion packs, and thousands of custom content downloaded. It would run extremely slow with all the mods and custom items, but I didn't attribute that to the graphic cards themselves.

I knew the time would come when I would have to think about upgrading, but it's still sad for me. I'm the kind of person who will have a system for at least 4 years, hopefully 5 or even 6, until it's so outdated that it's become sluggish. Or the hardware has failed finally. But.. it would be nice to replace the GPUs with a single one with even just slightly better performance.

Wow, I actually just realized that it's almost been 5 years since I put this system together.. I thought it had only been 4. I can't believe how well it's aged for five years!
 
If the 8800s are artifacting you can always try the oven trick. Pretty solid success rate really.
 
If the 8800s are artifacting you can always try the oven trick. Pretty solid success rate really.

I think the hardware was damaged, unfortunately. Everything was fine until after Hurricane Sandy. Our power was out for 5 days, so I had brought my system to my friends apartment in Queens, since she had power. I just wanted to get my already converted video files onto my iPad, so I had things to watch at home for the next few days.

At first I thought that maybe something had come loose, but I have disconnected and reconnected everything over and over. I re-did the wiring over and over, and again just recently after taking it apart to clean out any dust inside of it. I think something happened on the car-ride there. It's just the one card, the other one seems fine. But when I specifically only use that one, and disable SLI, I am getting constant BSODs and other freezing and locking up issues. The same kind of problems I had when I first put the system together and one of the cards was DOA. I had it exchanged for another, and it was fine after that.
 
I think a 650ti would be faster than those by a large margin, and it is pretty cheap. 8800GT was a good card back in the day but a 512MB version right now is very, very slow. A single GTX 260 is faster than that setup.
 
I think a 650ti would be faster than those by a large margin, and it is pretty cheap. 8800GT was a good card back in the day but a 512MB version right now is very, very slow. A single GTX 260 is faster than that setup.

Thanks for that advice! I see there's a 1GB model and 2GB model. Obviously, the 2GB would be the better bet.. and it doesn't seem THAT much more expensive than the 1GB I see. I need to do something fast, because these problems are driving me nuts. I keep trying out the other card as my primary, and just keep getting hit with display issues over and over again simply playing TF2 no matter what settings I use, which driver I use, etc.

This may be a good thing to use the $200 check I got from the Unclaimed Funds office last week ;) More people need to do that. Another friend got a check for $900 she was owed from an insurance company from 10 years ago. Mine was from my 401k at my last job. This seems like a good thing to use that money for.
 
I would encourage a GTX 660 at the least minimum. Not a Ti, but a vanilla 660. Not the 650. 128 bit bus..? Just... no.
 
If you'll spend $200 I would go for the 660 as well, its a good jump up from the 650ti. Or if you aren't against AMD the 7850 would be a great card as well.
 
That doesn't sound bad, actually. I could swing $200. I'm not looking to max out the newest most graphic intense games, and know that even if I ever did even entertain the idea of buying one of the top of the line cards, it would be held back by my DDR2 RAM and other parts of my system. So as long as I can keep playing pretty much as I do now for a bit longer, I will be happy with whichever card I end up with :)

I was using my ATI Radeon 9700 Pro in my old Dell from 2003 until 5 years ago! Surprisingly, I could play WoW and TF2 with it.. just... on the absolute minimum settings and resolution. So I'm pretty simple. But nice graphics is still a good perk :)

It's been so long that I've really read into the newest hardware, and the kind of systems you can build with a decent amount of money. It blew my mind. The amount of RAM you can have... the specs on these GPUs... I just hope this system will last me a couple of more years!

Edit: So I'm guessing that this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130825 would be a good choice? It seems to be the cheapest 660 I see.
 
I respect your ability to resist the upgrade bug. I personally change my rig all the time just because I enjoy building them so much. I generally sell enough of the old hardware that the new doesn't come out of pocket a lot.

That 660 would be a good card and EVGA has a great warranty and customer service.
 
I respect your ability to resist the upgrade bug. I personally change my rig all the time just because I enjoy building them so much. I generally sell enough of the old hardware that the new doesn't come out of pocket a lot.

That 660 would be a good card and EVGA has a great warranty and customer service.

It kills me :D That's why it would be so hard to come, and see all of the new builds. It makes me insanely jealous! Back when I built this, I remember everyone on here telling me not to spend over $2000 on this build. Instead, spend about half of that, and then save the rest to be able to upgrade in the future. As much as I love this system, and it's served me SO well... that was some really smart and good advice that I just did not take, but kinda wish I did.

There's always the future. I know exciting new things are always coming out.

I will definitely be going with the 660, then. I have a few things to sell online, as well, so that will also help!
 
I would get the ASUS model over the EVGA seeing as the ASUS GTX 660 has a nice aftermarket cooler, factory overclocked and it's the same price. Plus, it has a $20 rebate instead of just $10 on the EVGA GTX 660.

The Zotac for $215 looks good too but I'd just spend the extra $5 for the ASUS model. However, if the Zotac looks better to you than the ASUS I wouldn't have any problems recommending it.
 
If you'll spend $200-$225 I would recommend a 7870, quite a bit more powerful than a 660.
 
Although your suggestion is warranted, the HD7870 is almost $40 more and it seems like OP is acclimated to NV products and drivers. Regardless, for the level of gaming OP does the GTX 660 should be more than enough.
 
Although your suggestion is warranted, the HD7870 is almost $40 more and it seems like OP is acclimated to NV products and drivers. Regardless, for the level of gaming OP does the GTX 660 should be more than enough.

He never said he was nvidia only....

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161404

$200 plus a free game and much more powerful than a 660.
 
Ah I forgot to click lowest price first. Several benchmarks indicate it's not much faster although I can see where your recommendation is warranted like I said. Maybe with the new drivers you'll see it pull even further ahead but they're both fine cards for OP's gaming purposes.

I'd assume after 5 years of using the same cards he'd prefer to use NV cards. I don't have a problem recommending AMD cards especially if a certain model has a noticeable price/performance ratio compared to the NV equivalent. That doesn't really seem to be case here though.
 
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The 650 would hardly be any faster than 8800s in SLI. Quieter and less power used but negligibly quicker. The 660 will be an upgrade tho. I went from an 8800 ECS3 to a 7970 when the 8800 died. I'm waiting for Haswell to upgrade the rest.

Check out Toms graphics card hierarchy. If I remember right the 8800GTS in SLI is similar to a 9800 GX2 - depending on flavor of 8800 as NVidia went insane in the name designations of those cards. Fairly sure that the GX2 was 2 - 8800GTS 512 tho just like you have. The GX2 is right between the 650 and 650Ti. A 260 might be faster than a single 8800 but SLI would depend on the game.
 
I'm an Nv fan as well and normally I would suggest a 560ti/660/660ti here but there's no ignoring the value in the 7850, it's a rock solid choice and by far the best 200$ card. Actually there's one on NCIX atm for 140$ after MIR. Pretty hard to go wrong there!
 
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