1 8800m gtx or dual sli 8700m gt's

[Derrik Draven]

I have a chance to get a new lappy with either 1 Nvida 8800m gtx or 2 Nvidia 8700m gt's in sli mode.

 

I really haven't been into pc gaming for a couple years. I realize that there is more to the equation than just graphics card power, ie memory, cpu's, bus speed ect, but...other than the 8800m having more stream processors, I really can't see much of a reason to go with the single card.

 

Any of you pc gaming guru's able to just give me a ballpark suggestion on these 2 setups? Not really sure which on to jump on.

 

Dual 8700m gt's (512mb each) in sli mode or 1 single 8800m gtx (512mb)?

[Magness]

Thats a tough one actually... SLI requires the specialized drivers to work properly and its still pretty flaky in Vista so... I'm going to say you should probably get the single GPU. You'll probably get better performance out of the SLI rig but, to be fair the single GPU will likely be more stable, generate less heat and have far fewer driver/compatibility issues - all a big plus on a laptop.

[GreenMonkey]

Thats a tough one actually... SLI requires the specialized drivers to work properly and its still pretty flaky in Vista so... I'm going to say you should probably get the single GPU. You'll probably get better performance out of the SLI rig but, to be fair the single GPU will likely be more stable, generate less heat and have far fewer driver/compatibility issues - all a big plus on a laptop.

 

And suck less power.

 

Aha, found an answer for you:

 

http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.aspx?i=3196&p=6

 

What the above clearly demonstrates is that 8700M SLI has essentially been made pointless in terms of performance. A single 8800M GTX should offer better performance than 8700M GT SLI in every situation. It has three times as many stream processors' date=' and while they may be clocked slightly slower (500MHz vs. 625MHz) there's still a net gain. Memory bandwidth is twice as large on the 8800M, since it uses a 256-bit interface. We would also expect 8700M SLI to use more power than a single 8800M GTX, though it might be a tie. Whether or not you can find an 8700M SLI notebook for less money than an 8800M GTX notebook is about the only point that might favor running two of the lesser GPUs, but we don't even expect that to be the case.

 

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[Derrik Draven]

Thanks for the info!! :tu This is why we come here for answers.

 

Thanks again: Single gpu it is!!!