9800GTX or 3870 X2?

revorocksrevorocks England, East Sussex, Hove Member
edited June 2008 in Hardware
Basically my friends building a pc and wanted to know what is better.

the 9800GTX
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/144435

or the 3870X2
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/140115

thanks

Comments

  • stoopidstoopid Albany, NY New
    edited June 2008
    http://www.guru3d.com/category/vga_charts/

    It appears to be a slight nod in performance to the 3870x2. I believe the consensus in the enthusiast community is the 3870x2 pisses wattage for breakfast and generates massive amounts of heat. The 9800GTX by comparison is a more refined core and operates cooler overall. For the extra $20 by going with the 3870x2 you get a decent bump in performance but at a cost. This is assuming stock operation, if overclocking I'd go with the refined 9800GTX which has more overhead / gains to be realized. The 3870x2 is already operating close to its thermal threshold with a single cooling solution for 2 gpus.

    Benchmarks shouldn't be the end-all-be-all for your decision, but they will give you a ballpark estimate of the card's potential. I don't own either card so I can't give you first hand knowledge in real life gaming which would be better. I do, however, game with a similar machine to the one in your signature and the 3870 (single gpu) I have is bottlenecked by the processing power (I'm only a tick ahead of you in that department). So, the single 3870 would do more in a more powerful system. Overclocking the 3870 confirms this with only nominal gains (if the system was waiting on the video card I would see realistic gains from overclocking the gpu/vram). Point is - like myself, you may want to look at getting something to hold you over until you buy a whole new system. For around $150 USD the 8800GT and HD3870 are decent solutions for mid-range gaming rigs like ours. And if you get desperate in 6 months and can't afford a whole new system yet, but need more video power, you can always grab another HD3870 or 8800GT for under $100 (by that time) for sli/crossfire. It won't be night/day because of the system's bottleneck, but it will result in some increase in performance.
  • revorocksrevorocks England, East Sussex, Hove Member
    edited June 2008
    Well, He will be getting liquid cooling later on so if he got a waterblock for the 3870X2 then he could overclock it a bit.

    i dont know if he really wants to overclock. if he does then he'll go for the 9800GTX, if not the 3870X2

    Thanks.
  • stoopidstoopid Albany, NY New
    edited June 2008
    revorocks wrote:
    Well, He...

    You know what, if I read your post a bit more carefully I could have spared myself about 100 words. :bigggrin:

    I thought it was for you, then realized after your response it wasn't. Doh! :eek:
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