Can I/Should I get a second graphics card?

No, multi-GPU configs tend to cause problems, particularly with RO2.

Deffinately get a second card... so you can give me a better one.

Seriously though, I have no idea about crossifire stuff.

Meh, you might as well buy a new card. I'd imagine a 8800GTX would be hard to come by these days.

best bet is to get one top of the line card.

2 cards can cause issues with a lot of games.

I'm sure there are tons of write ups on the internet about the advantages and disadvantages and what to look for

A single high end card will do you far better in the majority of cases than two lower end cards running together.


Really the only time multiple cards are actually good is when you need to push the high end cards beyond what a single high end card allows. In the long run the extra cost in power, cooling, etc of dual cards makes simply buying a single (better) card a far nicer option.


Also, post up details on the rest of your rig. Graphics card upgrades alone may not be your best bet.

Depends on if you already found a second 8800GTX...

You also must have an Nvidia/SLI compatible chipset...


As everyone said, a single better card like a GTX560Ti or a Radeon 6870 will do a lot better.

But if you found an 88GTX for 50$ and your motherboard supports SLI AND you have a 750W PSU... Only then it's a good idea.

By the way, some older motherboards don't fully support 2 cards.

It would be like using the power of only 1 card and 1 half of the second card. Or a total of 1.5 times the power.

Whereas my motherboard fully supports it, so if I used 2 cards, I'd get 2 times the power.

I can't remember the exact details, but the crossfire/SLI thing needs to be x16 for the second card slot. The primary card slot is always x16.

On some motherboards with sli the card slots go x16 for the first, then x8 for the second. Hence 1.5* the power.

x16+x16 would be 2* the power.

I got an 8800GTX and it plays on medium settings, whats your specs?

Getting a second videocard would be a waste of your power and performance. An 8800GTX videocard is a pretty old one. You should invest in a newer videocard, which will easily double the performance anyways without costing you extra energy consumption, possibly a new motherboard and possibly a new PSU.

Just make sure that if you decide to go for an ATI card, you make sure you clean up the Nvidia drivers with a good program, otherwise it might cause conflicts.

Older video cards back in the days of the 8800 dident get the same scaling in SLI as modern ones do. I remember hearing a number around 30% increased performance some time in 2007 / 2008 ( around the time of the 8800).

A new card would be a much better fit.

Also, take the one single sledge hammer card advice with a grain of salt. Read some reviews on something like a pair of 6850's. The scaling these days is a lot better ( 1.9-2X in supported games ). So for a game that supports multi GPU you can get the performance of a 580 for half the cost. Thats perf/$ that even a fanboi of big thumper cards like myself cant ignore.

( Note, the XFX 6850's are on sale here in canada again now for 125$ from Ncix.com )

Also DT is not completely true, if the second PCI slot is only 4x or 8x, that limits the maximum bandwidth that card has access too. If your only grabbing medium range cards, they dont even use a full 8x. Some of the reviews I've read have done tests with a pair of 6850's, turning the PCI's from 16x16x to 8x8x and performance decreased by 5-10%.
If your going to go and ram some extremely powerfull cards in there and game on tripple monitors with 120FPS, then yes you definitely want the extra PCI lanes.

Here's a good test to do so you know the bottle neck.

Get GPU-Z and open your task browser, now open a game like RO2 and play for a bit. Make sure that GPU-Z in the background is on its sensors page and is set to update while in the background. Alt tab the game and see how high your GPU usage is and how high your CPU usage is.
It may be likely that your CPU is not powerfull enough to feed your card draw info, this will be apparent if the video useage is not 100% and the cpu usage is. If that happens to be the case then you would be better off upgrading the CPU. There are lots of socket 775 quadcores to be had on ebay now, and a good Q6600 will run you 75$, if your motherboard can handle OC'ing then you can clock that up to 3.3GHZ easily.

It would be better though to go with a completely new rig. Depending on your budget base it around a i5 2500K, or If you'r on a budget, look around for a socket AM3+ mobo with core unlocking, then get yourself a Phenom dual core, the mobo will be able to unlock the two unused cores giving you the equivalent of a Phenom 2 x4 965 ( ~110 $ cpu ).



edit: also get CPU-z , run it, go to the mainboard section, and tell us exactly what kind of Motherboard it says you have.

Generally speaking, I would not discourage anyone from setting up a SLI or Crossfire system. SLI has been the horsepower I needed to break out of the incredible demands of some 2011 software releases. Notably, RO2 and IL2 COD.

But I would not try to put it toether with an older species like the 8800.
It's never cheap, but get at least a pair of mid-range cards by today's standards. And make sure your motherbord will support dual GPU operation.

Beyond that, dual Gpu's along with multi-core cpu's are the future coming at us. Enjoy.