The 8800GTX is the fastest single graphics card on the market today bar none. The performance with two of them just flat outperforms everything on the market and then some when it works. Two of these cards working together in SLI flat out allows gamers to play games at Ultra High Resolution gaming like 2048x1536 or 2560x1600 with little trouble as long as the rest of the system including the PSU matches up. If you have a Dell 30" 3007 monitor or larger, with the fastest Intel CPU or AMD CPU the 8800GTX SLI solution is bar none the way to go. Image quality with 16XQ AA and 16X AF is simply amazing, breathtaking and unmatched by the competition or any NVIDIA card today except for the 8800GTS. The advent of Microsoft Vista means that graphics performance is a necessary part of any new system. The Aeroglass GUI that the new Windows OS runs requires minimum Pixel Shader 2.0 hardware. To play any of the games upcoming with Shader Model 4 effects turned on, a card with DirectX 10 support is required. Older cards will be able to play these games as well, but not with the same visual fidelity and performance that an 8800 card or the upcoming R600 card will have.
So having said that, what are the negatives of a SLI 8800GTX gaming rig? The power requirements are a bit insane. NVIDIA has a list of 8800GTX SLI qualified PSUs on their website and none of them are less than 850W in power. They strongly recommend the use of a 750W PSU or higher for SLI operation. During testing, I found numerous inconsistent performance issues with using a 600W PSU that worked just fine with two 7900GTX. Two 8800GTX cards running in SLI mode require a lot of juice from the four power rails. The second negative of two cards working in SLI mode is the sheer length of two 8800GTX cards. Some motherboards are going to have issues with the placement of SATA ports, as the card is so long that the card will overhang the motherboard, blocking SATA ports on some boards. The future is now. Microsoft has released its Vista Operating System to big corporations and businesses. Vista also comes with DirectX 10, which is a major feature of the 8800GTX card. Unfortunately, NVIDIA has NOT released a Vista driver for the 8800GTX. For these reasons I cannot recommend two XFX 8800GTXs in SLI at this time for all but the most strident enthusiast wanting the highest resolution gaming possible and best image quality on the market today, as without Vista support in the drivers, the DirectX 10 features are useless.
I've spent nearly 100 hours on this review due to issues with NVIDIA's new 680i motherboard chipset with SLI and SATA RAID. It turns out that it was a BIOS issue with the 680i EVGA motherboard, as reported by Nathan Kirsch of Legit Reviews. I wanted to keep my initial thoughts in the review not due to any pressure placed upon me by anyone but because first impressions are important and this is a new architecture meaning that there are usually some kinks to work out. Having said all of that, I have updated my system to use the AMD FX-74 CPU and reran the benchmarks due to the fact that I was never able to get a consistent framerate comparison with the other tested system. EVGA has released a new BIOS which fixes two issues, SLI problems AND SATA HDD issues, which was another possible consideration but I've moved on and felt it was better to get this review done the best I could. I want to thank XFX and NVIDIA for being patient, and I hope that the expanded performance look at 8 different games and two 3Dmarks with the new AA modes will whet your appetite. It was a lot of work but worth it in the final analysis.
