BFG 8800 GTX - 712 Meg Mem

[FireOf59]

Ladies and Gents,
I have a home built machine now that has a BFG 7900 GTX Vid card w/512 Meg.
Machine has 2 Gig RAM and I cant remember the CPU I put in it (I decided I'm not a PC Builder; Will pay for a Pro to do it next time)

I get 55-60 fps now in AHII, depending on intensity of what is going on around me...

Question is; I'm debating between upgrading to an SLI config on the 7900 GTX card, or selling it and going to the 8800 GTX card.

I've been told that extra RAM over the 2 Gigs wont buy me much (MOBO = ASUS A8N-SLI- will hold up to 8 Gig w/4 slots) and that I'll get a LOT more performance increase from selling my card and upgrading to 8800 vs SLI.

Thought I'd ask some AHII folks.

Ideas? thoughts?

Thanks

[humble]

you have some other issues IMO. You should have much higher frame rates. There is just no way that the VC is the bottle neck at that FR level. Something else is going on or your processor is "substandard" for the rest of the system. your wasting $$$ bumping the VC IMO until you explore why your performance is suffering....

[jigsaw]

Single 8800 (any model) is faster than the 7900 in SLI.  If you get an evga 8800 through mwave.com they usually have a rebate of some kind.

Couple of big gotchas on the 8800s.  Make sure you have enough power. Make sure you have enough room in the case. They take up two slots worth of space per card. Check and make sure you don't have any motherboard connections that would be under where the card sits. I had an issue with the onboard PCIe power slot.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

SLI gives you least bang for buck. So by definition you lose money when using it.

The only plausible scenario for SLI usage would be getting two currently fastest cards and SLI them for an ultra high-end rig where performance matters and money is no object. With dated hardware SLI is just a splendid way to waste money with marginal benefits. As said earlier, you end up paying 80% of the price of a newer product and get only 50% or less performance.

[FireOf59]

Thanks all for the replies.
You reiterated what I had been told but I wanted to make sure from people that play the only game I ever play.

Humble,
I caught your ideas of something else slowing it down.
I found the rest of the specs (I think) from downloading and running a program called 3D Mark06, a benchmarking program and added those to my sig below

I usually use "EndItAll" before firing up Aces High, and am using TrackIR and teamspeak at the same time I run AH.

I did have an Audio card that I sent back when I built this machine but Ive read since that using on board audio can take away processor power. The people I work with tell me that this isnt an issue.

I also use the Hi-Res pack and one of the downloaded sound packs.

- Could using On-Board Audio be causing slowdowns?
- Is the Hi-res pack graphics worth the cost of fps (or is there any?) ?
- Is there a good XP tweaking program out there?

Thanks for the help

[332nd outlaw]

on board sound is never a first option as these are cpu dependent a good sound card will help free up some cpu cycles.

55-60 fps isn't bad and won't hurt anything remeber anything over your monitors refresh rate isn't really happening anyway.

high res textures tho as nice as they are will drain fps quickly if you don't have enough cpu behind it to push the card but your video card would be the last thing that be slowing you down.

if you do want to try the video route the 8800 is better then 7900sli tho the money would be better spent else where if you truly want more fps.


the things i would be asking my self is the fps close or with my refresh rates on my monitor for the res you are running are there any stutters in the game. if so i would look to see what is running in the back ground eating resources that you could do away with. can you upgrade to a faster cpu? this would be where i would look next.

[humble]

From what I recall Skuzzy feels (felt) that Aquamark is the best benchmark for AH. I have a 256mb 7900 GT. It was (building out a new box with it right now) in a 3500+ with 1 gig of pc3200 and my FR (with Vsync off) would go from low 80's in the tower of a bombed out vulchfested field to 200 up high and alone {all sliders maxed, 1024 tex}

The box I had it in had/has driver conflicts with anything Nvidia since it has ATI onboard. The ATI memory control manager driver for the MB just doesnt mix well with the 7900. It would cause framerates in the 17-38 range along with spiking in the net status. After a minute or two it would normally settle down and go "flat line" and I'd jump to 80-95 in tower. I'd also be moving at about 4 times normal speed if I tried to take off prior to that.

If you look at the Toms hardware VC roundup there isnt much that out performs what you already have. From what I've absorbed about AH performance the card you have is "under performing" reasonable expectations. With all the core duo specials I'd consider upgrading my CPU/MB {and probably memory} before the VC. right click on my computer and select properties. That will tell you what CPU your running....curious what you have. Then whatever benchmark you run will have a way to check your "score" vs expected equivalents.

[LePaul]

That 8800 768mb is a beastie of a card.  Reading the Customer Reviews on NewEgg is quite entertaining.  Some there are using those in a SLI config...I just can't imagine the power usage of two of those!

If your system has 2gb in it, if you fire up "taskmgr" (from the Start / Run) line...under "performance", how much "PF Usage" do you have?  I'm at 411mb with antivirus, web browser and Yahoo messenger going.  When its game time, I shut those all down and get down to 230mb.

When I was buying additional RAM for my system, I bought when there was a RAM sale going on at Best Buy.  My machine had 2 512s in it and thought I'd buy two more.  But they had 1gb sticks for sale for $89.  I couldnt pass that up, I had the spare cash so I bought 4.  Gross overkill, having 4gb...but man, once something is loaded up, it runs nicely

So 2g...4gb...depends what you run.  I notice games like Joint Operations really soar with the additional RAM  (maps load faster, etc)  The pre-load stuff in Aces High II zips by for me.

[FOGOLD]

55-60 frame rate is normal unless you have overridden the refresh rate of your TFT which is usually default 60 or 75 if you set it manually.

AH defaults to v-synch.

[38ruk]

Im going to go out on a limb here and say that the cpu is more of a bottleneck than the video card . If AH is all that you play then i would say save your money and build a core duo machine and reuse the 7900GTX in it .

The system in my sig plays the game silky smooth without any chop anywhere , so your's should too . I would make sure that you dont have something else using resources while playing .

If you decide to sell that VC i would like to give you and offer so let me know 8).  38

EDIT
Sorry humble , i didn't read the whole thread before i posted , seems we are thinking the same thing . 38

[FireOf59]

Humble & All,

Thanks; I think I have all the pieces in the sig block now.

Is the CPU the bottleneck? I'm def not a PC guru but getting that from the answers I'm seeing.

[FOGOLD]

Theres nothing wrong with that system, especially for AH. Save your money. Enjoy the game.

[humble]

As mentioned already your system should handle AH fine at all settings. IMO your getting lower frame rates then you should. Your system should be pegged at your max refresh all the time (I'm guessing you have an LCD capped at 60).

If you have a lot of process's running that would explain the "drop" in F/R. I'd work on optimizing what you have if your unhappy with performance...otherwise I'd leave it alone. I'll run  a search and see if I posted my aquamark score for the system I was running....

[FireOf59]

Downloaded and tried The Aquamark tests; the "Basic" tests" ran a score of 76.327 (76.3 fps?)

Maybe i"ll look at spending my bonus elsewhere; like a big screen monitor, etc...

Thanks very Much, All...

[NOT]

I have same card, it does EVERYthing i want it to. Save your money.


NOT