I was wondering, with passively cooled 8600GTS cards available from gigabyte, could you put two of them in a P182 case in SLI mode, and keep the overall temperatures low enough? QuietPC are selling a pre-built machine with such a configuration in an HFX media PC case, but for a price of almost £2,000 ($4,000).
If so, how would the performance of two 8600 GTS cards in SLI mode compare against a single 8800 GTS card?
Single 8800GTS vs. Dual 8600GTS
Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee
Take a look for yourself. Like SLI in general, it's not particularly impressive, with substantial gains occasionally, but quite often very little difference, and even a performance loss in a few cases. Cooling would be a bit easier though, with the heat more spread out, and slightly less of it in total.
Re: Single 8800GTS vs. Dual 8600GTS
You would be MUCH better of with single 8800GTS card. Better performance, cheaper and easier to cool quietly.RBBOT wrote:I was wondering, with passively cooled 8600GTS cards available from gigabyte, could you put two of them in a P182 case in SLI mode, and keep the overall temperatures low enough? QuietPC are selling a pre-built machine with such a configuration in an HFX media PC case, but for a price of almost £2,000 ($4,000).
If so, how would the performance of two 8600 GTS cards in SLI mode compare against a single 8800 GTS card?
-
joelmusicman
- Posts: 42
- Joined: Sat Jun 18, 2005 6:11 pm
I saw a review and it packs a real punch in SLI... but I have just installed one of these into my HTPC with two exhaust fans and one front fan the graphics card heatsink is too hot to touch after just watching TV through media center - never mind after playing a game... I am actually quite concerned.
Hands down, the single 8800GTS /w 640MB of frame buffer will do better. You see, textures are just going to get larger and larger, and while the 8600GTS still packs a decent punch, that 256MB frame buffer is going to run out VERY soon here. VERY SOON. For any kind of future proofing I'd have a hard time recommending anything with less than 512MB.
Seems to me all the cards out now have a shortcoming:joelmusicman wrote:There is one benefit of going the 8600 route... it can decode HD DVDs in hardware, while the 8800 does not. Just something to consider if that matters to you.
- 8500/8600 not fast enough for games, and doesn't accelerate VC-1 video.
- 8800 doesn't have h264/VC-1 acceleration
- R600 too slow for its price and uses too much power (but has h264+VC-1 acceleration)
-
Hardtailed
- Posts: 57
- Joined: Tue Apr 17, 2007 4:52 am
Yet, gamers would've killed for any of these cards 3 years ago...shunx wrote:Seems to me all the cards out now have a shortcoming:joelmusicman wrote:There is one benefit of going the 8600 route... it can decode HD DVDs in hardware, while the 8800 does not. Just something to consider if that matters to you.
- 8500/8600 not fast enough for games, and doesn't accelerate VC-1 video.
- 8800 doesn't have h264/VC-1 acceleration
- R600 too slow for its price and uses too much power (but has h264+VC-1 acceleration)
seems the R600 / HD2900XT does not have full acceleration for HD.. behaves like a Radeon x1950 Proshunx wrote:Seems to me all the cards out now have a shortcoming:joelmusicman wrote:There is one benefit of going the 8600 route... it can decode HD DVDs in hardware, while the 8800 does not. Just something to consider if that matters to you.
- 8500/8600 not fast enough for games, and doesn't accelerate VC-1 video.
- 8800 doesn't have h264/VC-1 acceleration
- R600 too slow for its price and uses too much power (but has h264+VC-1 acceleration)
you gotta wait for the HD2600/2400 for the full Avivo HD effects.
It's so weird. Remember when the 6800 Ultra didn't have purevideo while 6600s did? Same thing for the 8800s and the HD2900s.. the hell?
What is VC-1 acceleration? 1080p?shunx wrote:Seems to me all the cards out now have a shortcoming:joelmusicman wrote:There is one benefit of going the 8600 route... it can decode HD DVDs in hardware, while the 8800 does not. Just something to consider if that matters to you.
- 8500/8600 not fast enough for games, and doesn't accelerate VC-1 video.
- 8800 doesn't have h264/VC-1 acceleration
- R600 too slow for its price and uses too much power (but has h264+VC-1 acceleration)
I guess they have a bit more time to develop the features with the later release dates.jimmyzaas wrote:seems the R600 / HD2900XT does not have full acceleration for HD.. behaves like a Radeon x1950 Proshunx wrote:Seems to me all the cards out now have a shortcoming:joelmusicman wrote:There is one benefit of going the 8600 route... it can decode HD DVDs in hardware, while the 8800 does not. Just something to consider if that matters to you.
- 8500/8600 not fast enough for games, and doesn't accelerate VC-1 video.
- 8800 doesn't have h264/VC-1 acceleration
- R600 too slow for its price and uses too much power (but has h264+VC-1 acceleration)
you gotta wait for the HD2600/2400 for the full Avivo HD effects.
It's so weird. Remember when the 6800 Ultra didn't have purevideo while 6600s did? Same thing for the 8800s and the HD2900s.. the hell?
VC-1 is a video codec. VC-1 acceleration means that the graphics card can help to decode it, reducing the load on the CPU. I don't recall ever seeing anything encoded with VC-1, but it's something that adopters of Blu-ray and HD-DVD would want.revelry wrote:What is VC-1 acceleration? 1080p?
-
~El~Jefe~
- Friend of SPCR
- Posts: 2887
- Joined: Mon Feb 28, 2005 4:21 pm
- Location: New York City zzzz
- Contact:
purevideo and avivo help decode stuff. they just arent the massive awesome 8600/8500 decoder offloader going on.
There is hardware acceleration just not the one you want for no cpu utilization. 8800GTS has a slightly better image quality for watching hd though! They left off the single chip decoder thingie from the card knowing that afficianados would be upset to know that even a slight visual difference could be seen. this is the truth. So, 8800gts right now is by far the best power to performance object in the entire system someone can build. 320meg version seems to be so much cheaper than the 640 meg version, it is hard to justify as a recommendation to get it. However, I am awaiting evga to drop like 40-50 off the card as the 640 one is the one I want. I am all about vid ram, system ram etc. Even hd cache and x-fi cache (there is a card with it on). I feel that the extra ram is a 2-3 watt at most increase in power for a potentially future proofed device.
There is hardware acceleration just not the one you want for no cpu utilization. 8800GTS has a slightly better image quality for watching hd though! They left off the single chip decoder thingie from the card knowing that afficianados would be upset to know that even a slight visual difference could be seen. this is the truth. So, 8800gts right now is by far the best power to performance object in the entire system someone can build. 320meg version seems to be so much cheaper than the 640 meg version, it is hard to justify as a recommendation to get it. However, I am awaiting evga to drop like 40-50 off the card as the 640 one is the one I want. I am all about vid ram, system ram etc. Even hd cache and x-fi cache (there is a card with it on). I feel that the extra ram is a 2-3 watt at most increase in power for a potentially future proofed device.