Fastest Nvidia I can get?

What's the fastest Nvidia I can get for SL?

Jack, it would be something in the GeForce 6800 Ultra family (one of the new ones with 512 megs of video memory) -- there are a number of variants from different companies -- but keep in mind that in addition to overclocking, you have to see if your computer has any other bottlenecks. Having a fast video card paired with a slow processor will reduce performance effectiveness.

IMGO it seems to me that the 6800 Ultras cost twice as much as a 6600 GT and don't perform at double the level. The 6600 GT is far better for the price/performance ratio and should be plenty fast for SL. Of course, this is anecdotal, I'd like to see more benchmarks specifically with SL in mind because most of the ones I've seen are for Doom III and Half-Life 2 and other games.

Hard question to answer without knowing your system but duel 6800 ultras 512 in SLI on a PCIe bus would be the badest configuration right now (as in home PC). If that extra 5-10 FPS is worth the $1000 + mobo and CPU upgrades then rock on.

I had a lot of good advice from people on the new computer I ordered... the PCI-E cards are the "GT" series... 6600GT / 6800GT...

I checked out Tom's Hardware and saw that the 6800 really is a big jump from the 6600... but for $200 more?

Right now the 6600GT is more than you'll need from all I've seen, even in 1200 resolution. For upgradability, you might think the 6800 is worth it, but consider the alternative route I'm going:

I'm getting an SLI capable motherboard (Gigabyte's K8NXP-SLI ) which is reasonably priced, the 6600GT for $170ish, and in two or three years, when I need another kick up in graphics, I'll get another 6600GT. By then the 6600GT should be down to around $100 and it'll increase graphics 60-90%. Sounds like a great deal to me.

Of course if you have the money to spend, you can go 6800GT now and another 6800GT later ... but can your CPU keep up?

SLI? Is that two cards for one display like the old Voodoo cards I once had could do? Didn't know they were still making cards that could do that...

Edit:
BTW I'm on a pretty nice system with a 6800 GT, and while it's pretty good in general, it's still possible to get crappy framerates in cluttered areas. You'd probably have to spend so much money to eliminate lag entirely it wouldn't be worth it (if even possible). Wait a few years and then see if the lag can be destroyed completely...? For now I'd just get a "nice" setup and put up with the slowness in the really, really bad areas of SL. Unless you have like 5K burning a hole in your pocket.

How IS SLI for SL, anyway? Has anyone actually done it yet?

I thought applications had to be specifically optimized for it? Please fill in the details... thankies.

I got the 6800 Ultra by Asus on a Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe mother board with an AMD FX-55 and it running great, and have noticed a big decrease in the amount of lag that i experience also

Yeah... and in most cases you're squeezing almost a 100% upgrade in quality/speed.


Bad news:
I'm pretty sure that's a SIM server issue, not a video card issue.

(very) Good news:
SL 1.6 blows away this kind of lag.

TY for great info. Looks like I need to get a new dual PCIe mobo. The one I have now only has 8x AGP. Does SecondLife FPS improve a lot with a SLI setup?

I love my framerate now @ 128m draw distance but I want 512m!!!

Ok hypothetically speaking say if you won the lottery...

2 SLI'ed PCIe NVIDIA Quadro FX 4400's


Would that be the best setup for SL @ 512m draw distance?



Or Wildcat instead?

http://www.3dlabs.com/products/product.asp?prod=293&page=2


Lindens what's your opinion on FASTEST card (not best consumer option).

Actually, the key isn't so much in the video card as it is in the CPU and memory of the computer. The better the video card, the more eye candy you can apply without affecting frame rate but you likely aren't going to see huge differences with the same basic settings applied. The difference between a Ti 4200, ATI 9800pro and a 6600gt as far as performance is concerned wasn't all that much until turning on FSAA and other goodies like local lighting and shine.

You mean I'll get lower FPS with 2 Quadro's or a Wildcat at 512m draw distance (compared to 6800 ultra)?

Hey Kathmandu, you've used all three of those cards with SL? Do you have more comparative benchmarks or any other experiences you can recollect pertaining to differences in performance between them? I'm especially curious in the diff. between the Ti4200 and the two-generations-later 6600 GT.

Thanks!

I'm on a crappy 5200 that's slowly dying from heat death.
SL works great!
You should try being a hermit sometime. It will do wonders for your FPS.

No comparison. I started SL with a Ti4200, went to a 5600, then a 5700 Ultra and just recently upgraded to a 6600GT. The 6600GT lets me set my draw distance further. However, crowds will still drag down performance. The one real bonus I've enjoyed with the 6600GT is the ability to turn on FSAA with a minimal performance hit.

No, actually I'm pretty sure that what I'm talking about is on my end. I'm techie enough to be able to tell the difference.

BUT, I think I found my problem, hehe... I was messing around with settings before and had my card's settings on:

8s Anti aliasing
16x Anisotropic filtering

Kinda overkill, hehehe. Set them back to application controlled and now I'm getting 4-5 times more FPS. oops.

Thanks Teeny! What do you usually have your draw distance set to, and what kind of framerate do you get typically? Also, what FSAA settings do you prefer?

Keep in mind that the 6600 GT PCI-E card only had 8 pipe instead of the 16 pipes in the 6800 ...

But still runs things like Doom 3 and Halflife 2 at a framerate well above what you'll need. This card's nice because it's less than half the cost of the 6800 and if you have a SLI ready motherboard, you can pop in another in a year or two and double your performance, cheaply.

Definitely, plus two 6600GT cards are faster AND cheaper than a single 6800, even when you consider the more expensive SLI motherboard. It's the performance difference between the 6600 and 6800 that seals it for me. In terms of price-to-performance, the 6600 is an incredible deal compared to its bigger cousin.

Has anyone run SL on a SLI configuration with two 6600GTs yet? Any benchmarks, what's the performance ratio compared to running with a single 6600GT, etc.? I understand this is still new technology but of course, the phrase "incredible deal" gets my attention. I'm all for a good bargain, especially in a technological world where there is a heavy price premium on "top-of-the-line" stuff that will become obsolete yesterday anyway.

You are right about that. I have run a Ti4400 (96-128 draw distance, no eye candy), ATI 9800 pro (128-192 draw distance, local lighting and shiny) and a 6800GT (160-400+ draw distance, everything but real water). Everything looked good and I got an acceptable frame rate with each card. I actually saw more improvement adding a faster CPU and upgraded memory (2.8 p4 533 to a 3.2 p4 800mhz, 1 gb pc 2100 ram to 1 gb pc 3200)

If you have the means, I would certainly recommend the 6800 GT or Ultra. But if you cant afford $400 for a video card or think they are just plain overpriced, a new CPU/Motherboard combo in the 3ghz range and a gig of the fastest RAM will run you about the same money and give you much better bang for your buck.

I'm eager to hear about this too. SL isn't like Doom 3 or Half-Life, where the GPU is king. SL's CPU-bound, so the performance boost you'd see in SL from a P4 2.4Ghz with a GeForce 2 MX to a P4 2.4Ghz with a GeForce FX5900 isn't as great as one would see in a game like Half-Life 2. If SL's all you do, a single GeForce 6600GT is probably overkill, at least with the current renderer. It's still an excellent deal and if you get a PCI-express model, it's highly upgradable. Unfortunately, if you don't already have a PCIe motherboard, you'll need to take that into account. There ARE motherboards that have both an AGP and PCIe slot that one could purchase with future upgrades in mind, but they're pretty hacky, to be honest.

Yeah, you know me, Cat... SL's all I do. *smiles*

Thanks again for being such a wonderful explainer.