Nvidia 8800 GT SLI: Budget Gamer's Dream Come True

The Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT was a tremendous success for both, Nvidia, and Gamers. It offered performance close to the high end 8800 GTX, but at a fraction of the cost. But what about two of them in SLI?
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[@pagb666]

The 8800gt I won in a contest was one of the best cards I had ever

[@DeckardGames]

I use two 8800 GTS on my Windows XP ultimate PC. Beautiful machine.

[@thusano2]

Me too back in the day! A perfect setup.

[@soltype]

Had a pair of these, same vendor , in the first PC I built. It was a XFX 780i, a q6600 with a Tuniq tower ,4 GB of OCZ RAM, and a centurion 5 case

[@mapesdhs597]

I used two 8800GT 512MB SLI for a long time (before switching to GTX 460 SLI), it worked extremely well for the games I played. Much scorn is heaped these days upon SLI, but it seems to come from those who either never used the technology or who merely repeat what they've read or heard elsewhere. People critique issues such as frame sync while forgetting this tech was used in an era when most gamers simply didn't care, just achieving a better frame rate was the goal. I observed good scaling with SLI back then, for games such as FC2, Crysis, Oblivion and Stalker. Note I used models with much better coolers, so noise wasn't an issue for me. I still have the cards and boxes in mint condition.

[@licksludgee]

Amazing. My final SLI was the 1gb 460, they promised 100% scaling for the first time and also faster than 480 performance. That was my last multi gpu set up, good memories!

[@TheBig451]

A lot of us cared. "Microstutter" as it was called back then, was discussed extensively as a major downside of both SLI and Crossfire. The whole thing was extremely hit or miss even at its peak. Looked really cool, though. Don't get me wrong, I loved my 8800 GTS 512 SLI rig, but it had a lot of weird performance and compatibility issues. That machine ended up being my last foray into multi GPU.

[@MrKillswitch88]

Back in the day for those of us who weren't properly middle class SLI/Crossfire was nice for that one bought what they could afford at the time then bought the second card later often for less than the first card.

[@mapesdhs597]

@@TheBig451The tech ended up becoming poorer over time because devs didn't bother putting in the work and NVIDIA cared less and less for various obvious reasons, but in reality for a time it did work very well, and I definitely remember there really wasn't that much irritation about screen tearing, etc. It certainly didn't bother me that much. Look back through old forum threads and comments like AT and Toms; nobody even used words like microstutter in the early days, not until it became possible to measure things like frame times with new tools such as FCAT. Originally the deisrable norm was just to run vsync at 60Hz locked, or 30 for those who were happy with that. This was long before the modern obsession with high refresh displays, but people write about it now as if such modern proclivities have always been the case, which they weren't. I was merely delighted to get my games up to around 40+fps if I could (running at 2048x1536 on a 22" CRT). To this day I'm still fine with 60. Yes there were compatibility issues with some games, indeed some didn't supprt SLI at all, but it was nowhere as bad as many today often claim it was. For all the games I played the scaling was really good, and it worked just as well with GTX 460 SLI. Some time after that though, it all went south, a driver updates broke SLI completely. I never got round to tabulating data for FC2, Oblivion or Crysis, but here's some numbers for Stalker COP: www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/stalkercopbench.txt I stopped testing due to family matters some years ago, but intend getting back to it as I'd still like to explore how the 1GB cards behave, and figure out exactly which driver release broke SLI. Note that SLI as a technique is pretty old. SGI used it for their MaxIMPACT gfx set in the mid 90s, years before the first GF256 card (which was based on SGI tech anyway). Strangely, SGI never mentioned it, nobody knew MaxIMPACT used SLI, not until the details became available in the Octane Technical Report many years later. The legacy is unsurprising given how many SGI people moved to NVIDIA.

[@Trick-Framed]

About 4 years ago, for fun, I crossfired a pair of RX 460s. If you stick to the official Crossfire list of games, you can't go wrong. Same with SLI. I have a pair of GTX 460s and a pair of GTX 570s as well. They pair and scale well in the games that implemented it well.

[@TheRealHeavyG]

I pair my 8800GT SLI with my Core2 Quad Extreme XQ9560. Its probably my favorite "retro" XP rig. Yeah, thr GPUs are a little noisy, but they perform great.

[@cesaru3619]

NICE HEATING SYSTEM!

[@MarcoGPUtuber]

Phil's Computer Lab is a retro gamer's dream come true.

[@fear416]

His website is invaluable if you want to build your own retro PC! Truly a legend!

[@junaidunar9148]

This is why I love to watch his channel, I like GPU technology and games from early 2000s to 2010s.

[@casualretrocollector]

Yes indeed. Thanks to our great man from Austria, I have been able to find new lease of life for a lot of old stuff!

[@slay3rsaber]

In 2008 I had 9800 GX2 which was basically 2x 8800gts sandwiched in one package. What a beast that one was.

[@JohnSmith-xq1pz]

"It's hot it consumes alot of power" so other words little has changed? 😉

[@blakegriplingph]

The 8800/9800 series is legendary even to this day. BTW, Juarez is pronounced as "wah-rezz" at least from what I know of.

[@everx7]

or who are s :)

[@wizardwithsmg]

Yeah sadly my 9800 GTX died so no more retro gaming for it. Was amazing when it was working though. I've always said Juarez wah-rezz but have also heard it war-ezz.

[@Koozwad]

True, like the Mexican(?) name Juan is pronounced basically like 'one' or 'ghhhhwan'(not sure how else to explain it).

[@Romess1]

I remember working at a computer store as a 17yo at the start of 2008 and these puppies were just release. With an MSRP of 349 usd and the euro being very strong we would sell it at 229 euro. A crazy pricepoint considering it was as fast as the 8800 GTX. We were the smallest store nationally but somehow we got 22 of them. I bought 4 of them with my best friend who was also working behind the counter (I was a technician) and within 2 days they were sold out in the entire country and made a bit of extra cash on the second hand market. Oh the irony now that scalpers and cryptominers have destroid the market in recent times.

[@ruxandy]

Between 2002 and 2008, I had lost interest in games (I was focusing on my career). However, it was actually my career that eventually brought me back to gaming... so, in early 2008, I finally upgraded my PC and also bought a BFG 8800GT (with the same puny reference design cooler). Immediately after purchasing it, I bought an Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 rev2 VGA cooler and strapped a very silent 120mm Noctua fan to it. I have many fond memories of this card, it ran extremely cool with the aftermarket/DYI cooler (below 60 degrees C). I kept it for about 5 years and finally sold it in 2013. What was amazing about it, was the fact that it came with a 10 year warranty (which was issued by the retailer, so it didn't matter that BFG Tech had died in 2010). When I sold it in 2013, it still had 5 years of warranty left, which was just insane (I still feel bad for selling it, but I do have 4 x 8800GTs in my current collection, so it's all good). 😁

[@philscomputerlab]

Awesome 😎

[@srpacific]

This and the Core2Duo E6600 was an amazing combo that finally stopped a lot of us from constantly upgrading just to keep up with the demands of games. 8800GT would play pretty much every FPS on decent settings at a great frame rate and i think i ran this setup from around 2007 until 2010 or so!

[@Saintbow]

Using the tape hack on the core2Duo to bump it's performance was awesome!

[@Witq87]

The TV-out on GeForce 8 series cards also carries a component signal. Almost every graphics card came with an special adapter in the box.

[@firenado4295]

yeah I still use an 8400gs for a media pc since its sat on top of an old CRT and thats all I can plug into it. Unfortunately the driver's ui is bugged and I cant set the right aspect ratio and pal format so it never looks that good.

[@NightMotorcyclist]

I only had one 8800GT by BFG Tech and I remember going to several different Best Buy stores on release day as it cost $200 flat. I got it on day 2 and I was able to play stuff like Crysis at a decent resolution and details. In those days I was focused on price/ performance ratio on my PC parts and the last card that gave me such great value was the AGP 6600 GT. I modded my 8800GT with the Zalman copper cooler and copper memory heatsinks.

[@dcarpenter85]

I would recommend repasting those 8800 GTs in order to get the temps a little more under control. The stock paste has probably turned to dust after 15 years! Great video as always Phil. Thanks!

[@Koozwad]

He probably can't do that though without also replacing the thermal pads. Maybe too expensive for cards you'd never use.

[@razorsz195]

@@Koozwad The type they used tends to split but its the mushy fibre one you can pretty much roll about like playdoh and use something flat to squish it back down to cover the memory again..if its a card you dont care much for/low temporary use, otherwise Gelid pads are real cheap and are pretty good for older cards, theyre like the arctic MX-2 of the pad world.

[@philscomputerlab]

Exactly the reasons! It's ok with a Geforce4 but these newer cards take more time and materials...

[@louistournas120]

​@@razorsz195 I have bought some cheap silver based paste. I think it is 30 mL. I used it on a couple of CPUs (my home machines) and it does a good job. It is probably not as good as Arctic silver. I think it is silver dust and some silicone oil.

[@jonesy3000]

At least on the 8800gt the die is exposed on the 8800gtx/gts you need to remove the IHS and change the paste there too which requires a heat gun razor blades luck and 🙏

[@peterilling1627]

Awesome Phil ,never used 8800gt in SLI interesting out come.I usually stick to Ati have crossfired alot of cards but my favorite and bet preformed was the Radeon 6850 or 6870 with a Amd 6300 had some great scores .Keep up the the Awesome work mate.Cheers from Turkey.

[@philscomputerlab]

Thanks for watching!

[@PabloB888]

The 8800GT was a fantastic product for the masses. The GPU chip itself was as cappable as 8800GTX/Ultra, but as I remember there were some few games where more VRAM and faster bandwidth were making bigger differene (8800GT 512MB 67GB/s vs 8800Ultra 768MB 103GB/s).

[@amdintelxsniperx]

i skipped the 8xxx and went with the 9xx series then flashed the cards to gts 250s

[@bojinglebells]

G80 also had 24 render output units vs G92's 16, but at the cost of 32 texture address units vs 64 (although both had 64 texture filter units). 8800 GT was better balanced for common resolutions and newer games of the era, but 8800GTX/Ultra was a pixel fill rate monster. Ultimately the 8800 GT being priced at less than half the original MSRP of the 8800 GTX is what made it insane value

[@KooYu]

Don't forget that the 8800GT was in fact a 9xxx series card (G92 GPU) where the GTS, GTX and Ultra models were G8x GPU. Mine lasted until 2012 and up til then I was pretty happy with the performance. Would have lasted more if it wasn't for a driver bug for a specific Blizzard game that broke them both. Temps were fine but I had repasted some Arctic silver on them. In your case the thermal materials have dried up. Lester from another world was a nice touch 😊

[@Javadamutt]

From memory the 9600GT was another card that showed great SLI scaling back in the day. One the ATI side the 4770 Crossfire also had great scaling and the reference cooler looked damn cool on them

[@tagesvaterpatrick8780]

If only they were less "power hungry and hot headed" ...

[@Trick-Framed]

I had a PNY 9600 GT 1GB and it was an awesome card that lasted longer than maybe it should have.

[@josephdias3968]

@@Trick-FramedI played battlefield 4 at 720p low settings at like 55-75 fps depending on the map on that card

[@gorjy9610]

Crossfire worked much better for me, less image problems. It's a pity that AMD didn't have the money back then to push developers and when nvidia stopped caring about SLI, everything was simply forgotten.

[@Trick-Framed]

@@gorjy9610Not exactly. mGPU is baked into DX12 and I would love to see this adopted in as many titles as possible.

[@ChannelSho]

I bought the 256MB edition because it was the only thing I could afford at the time as a poor college kid and boy howdy did it deliver. Even after all these years I still consider the video cards that came out of the G92 the GOATs because of how it shook up the entire industry.

[@jk-mm5to]

Watching your videos is like reliving my childhood. Thank you for the memories!

[@philscomputerlab]

Glad you like them!

[@Jtwizzle]

I was on a tight budget in 2007 so had to get the 256MB evga 8800gt. Still did great and never had major vram limitations until 2009/10 when replacing it with evga gtx 260 core 216. My first sli was with gtx 570 and it was great a lot of the time but could be a headache at times as well. Was my favorite era of pcs! Love these videos man

[@junaidunar9148]

Having a card capable of running games from the same year(2007-2008) was a dream for most gamers like myself, I dreamed to have a gpu and pc capable enough to run gta4, but it took me 2 years to build system like that. Great times.

[@petrkubena]

One thing that noone tested at that time, but is very much tested today is a frame pacing. I have 7950GX2 in my collection and it has serious frame pacing issues (in one of the Riddick games it actually backtracks every other frame). That seriously degraded usefulness of SLI. Did you noticed such problems or possibly could you look at it in some future video?

[@philscomputerlab]

Afaik crossfire was more affected? I believe a fast CPU helps out a bit to smoothen things out. Likely investigating frame pacing involves using some interesting tools, so yea, something I could look into!

[@thegeforce6625]

I also have a 7950 GX2 and it doesn’t have that problem, I’d presume your card had a pretty serious hardware problem for that to happen

[@xBruceLee88x]

I still have one I pulled out of a dell workstation i found in a dumpster back in 2010 lol. I baked it to reflow the solder and it worked for quite a while. Threw on an aftermarket 3 slot cooler. Probably needs another reflow but it's still laying around

[@Felix-ve9hs]

I once had a Nvidia 8800 GTS and I played a lot of Far Cry 2 on it, until it died a couple of sears ago. Even though is used a blower cooler, it was very quiet. :)

[@scherge]

I used the exact same 7800 GTX cards from Gainward that you showed in a video in 2016 for building a SLI system on an Asus A8N-SLI Premium, back in the days. That was awesome and I used that system for a really long time before getting something new.

[@gt1man931]

That was my set up, two evga 8800 GT cards, from 2008 to 2013 They served me well. I still have one of them here somewhere.

[@tagesvaterpatrick8780]

Imagine the heat those cards produced with core temps around 100°C and now you are paring them up in SLI in the old case... no wonder those cards rarely survived and are now some of the most precious around the bay... 😂

[@junaidunar9148]

I never did any SLI, but my first SLI capable gpu back in the day was i believe GTS 450 1gb ddr5, a good budget gaming gpu from 2010, i still have one.

[@Jivemaster2005]

Glad you made this video on this subject. Brings back sweet computer build and gaming memories. I had two MSI 8800GT OC in SLi och an Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe motherboard for a while back in the day, it was a good bang for the buck like you say. Then switched the 8800GT's out briefly for a Geforce GTX280 which was really power hungry and toasty! I wish I had kept the 8800GT's so I could have had them in my "newer" graphic card collection now I'm currently building.

[@razorsz195]

What CPU did you happen to run? I have a build with that exact board and 2 asus 8800GT golds that isnt far off completion, just curious what sort of AMD CPUs people ran as i know core2 was so popular with the 8000 series cards

[@Jivemaster2005]

@@razorsz195 If I remember correctly at first it for a brief period it was an Athlon X2 6000+ from my previous mobo. Then I upgraded to a Phenom X4 9850

[@razorsz195]

@@Jivemaster2005 seems to be the general trend, exactly what ive put in! Though based on the success of my overclocking with the am3 sargas C3 semprons im thinking the athlon ii X2 chips like the 240 may overclock pretty well as ive seen high 3s out of them despite being a C2 stepping which are usually meh, and since it takes a lot of juice and watercooling for my windsor 6000+ to get just shy of 3.6, while its pretty good, itll just degrade the chip, need to feed those 8800gts' anyway :p

[@Jivemaster2005]

@@razorsz195 ah, cool. Are you into overclocking on that motherboard now or back then? I upgraded to an Asus M4N82 Deluxe and ditched the M2N32 Deluxe (sold it) and later on I upgraded the CPU to an Phenom X4 955 BE. A couple of years ago I got me an Asus M4N82 Deluxe mobo again and built me a rig with the Antec 900 case I bought back in 2007. Also threw in the Phenom II X4 970. Think I had one of my best PC gaming experiences with hardware from this era

[@razorsz195]

@@Jivemaster2005 Well back then i was about 6 years old so that golden age was something i drooled over in PC magazines at that age, my pc at the time was a S754 based Sempron 2800+ and Geforce 5 5200, first upgrade was ram and that was the spark that got me into computers, used it all the way until 2014..what a pain it was. the asus M2N board i got from a friend for free, 2 of them and a bunch of cpus including in my eyes, the 'golden windsor' chip. I got that on my crosshair I, the asus board can with an overvoltage setting push past 1.55v but the scaling offset is super weird, 1 tick will be 1.62v, next almost 1.8v..any chip that needs more than 1.55v isnt worth it anyway as an overclocked daily, ive been a fan of taking slower hardware and overclocking the pants off of it or bios flashing cards to unlock extra features (my favourite era has to be early am3 with the unlocking cores/cache..sargas to regor, Heka to deneb, Zozma to thuban..soo fun! Now that ive got a job i have been buying gear for XOC and building up those dream pcs, sleepers, retro builds and funky combinations.like a 690 in a Dimension 9200, my first computer has lived through the upgrades i wanted..XpertVision 6600GT, Athlon 64 S939, Ati 2600XT, but recently after waiting and waiting, i finally got a Foxconn destroyer am2+ and overclocked the pants off a Sempron 150 to 4ghz, super tight ram after binning a box of ddr2 for D9s and a UV Reactive cooler on an Ati HD 4870, finally that sluggish NFS Carbon performance at 480p low is now 1024p cranked, all the bells and whistles, a perfect 60-75 region, and would you believe the Sempron still has headroom for a stronger graphics card..It now performs just past a K8 Athlon 64 X2 4200+ at 2.4Ghz overclocked, now beating the sandy bridge Celeron single core..got the fastest pre-multi core chip in the pc that used to have the slowest, with the headroom it had the 4870 over doubled the framerate vs the 2600XT :)

[@rodhester2166]

great video.. so cool to see this generation get some review

[@MasterHan]

Yeah. 8800GT was an absolute monster back then. Even I didn't use SLI, it performed so good. Elder Scrolls Oblivion, Starcraft 2, Call Of Duty... So many games performed well with 8800GT and Yorkfield 9550. Great video Phil!

[@nalinux]

Funny you speak about Voodoo 2. Some 8800 have a huge dissipator, and I used one of them on a Voodoo2, after a few modifications :)

[@colsaber]

still rocking my sparkle 8800gt in my core 2 duo E6600 Windows XP retro build! nice vid mate

[@Vfl666]

You are very lucky my 8800gts 512 died in 2012 thanks to bump gate.

[@owen75]

My first graphics card! It was definitely a trooper. I went SLI and thought I was invincible lol.

[@hartsickdisciple]

I had this exact SLI setup back in 2008. It was beastly.

[@RetroScorp]

The main problem with SLI and especially Crossfire and why both died out in the end was the fundamental problem of AFR and therefore high dependence on support from the drivers and the game (engine) and techniques like frame pacing etc. to even out the frametimes. So the user had often to play around with the driver profiles or tools and the game settings to eliminate the microstuttering, efficiency and so on. If you played AAA Titles or liked to fiddle around with driver and game settings or were only after the longest benchmark bar then it was fine. The hope was that as the VR hype took off that the developers from Nvidia/AMD or the game industry would find a way to eliminate these problems. But today we know that wasn't the case.

[@halofreak1990]

Yet, this wasn't an issue for 3dfx, where SLI was handled entirely by Glide and every game therefore supported it out of the box

[@RetroScorp]

@@halofreak1990 it wasn't because of Glide but because of the different way to render. 3dfx SLI was Scanline Interleave so every card (Voodoo 2) / chip (Voodoo 5) rendered an other line of the same frame. But sooner or later even 3dfx would have had to switch over to something like alternate frame rendering too.

[@LorisPeretto]

Another interesting retro hardware video! I rememeber when they were launched, all people was really interested and amazed. Great step up from Nvidia 7xxx serie to the 8xxx

[@supabass4003]

badass setup phil.

[@Kundalini12]

I bought a pair of BFG 8800 GTX from eBay a couple of years ago which both had water blocks installed, I intended to use them in my Dell XPS 720 H2C after I modified Dell’s AIO liquid cooler to include the two graphics cards only to find one of the water blocks had a leak. During testing of the loop everything was fine but when I booted up the system with the loop running I noticed some dripping coming from one of the cards so I ended up replacing them with a pair of Walter cooled GTX 580s. Which was a shame, I might revisit them again one day.

[@stevejolly8231]

Literally had exactly those cards. Still got one of them on my shelf

[@mocasinuldomnuluipablo2237]

got this on launch day, this brings so much nostalgia i wish i kept it as a demo

[@DuneRunnerEnterprises]

Great video!!!

[@Koozwad]

I tried SLI once, around ~17 years ago, with two 8600 GT cards. Played Crysis with them too way back in the day.

[@SlyNine]

*laughs nervously* it was not 17 years ago. Right?

[@TheSlyMouse]

Love gog, great video too!

[@philscomputerlab]

Thanks!

[@pc-sound-legacy]

Another great video, thanks! I've never had SLI because I prefere silent and efficient systems but I have to admit that such a combo is very interesting just for the retro fun:-) Especially today when early pci-e cards are very cheap and available.

[@philscomputerlab]

Yes this is anything BUT silent 😶

[@spacecy]

Awesome video :)

[@vbstein]

I bought 5 of these in the last year and only 2 worked without issue. Removing the metal cover over the heatsink is almost impossible. I really like the BFG ones.

[@nunofernandes4501]

Way back then I could only afford a HD 3870 and I did play through Crysis on it @1280x1024 with a Core2duo E8200@3.6GHz. Still, how I lusted for the GT. Last month I finished building my 2008 dream rig with a C2D E8600@4.0GHz, 4GB DDR2 1066 and I got a 512MB 8800 GTS for 12€!!!!! I've been having so much fun dual booting XP/7 on this machine and playing all the stuff I did back then but on High instead of Medium settings! And I have an X-Fi platinum for EAX on XP. Pure bliss, mate!

[@dlbutters7164]

Damn, i still remember when the gaming magazines talked about this card back in the day, it was a dream card.

[@joetoney184]

I had two in my first custom computer, except it was 1 8800GT from PNY and a 9800GT from XFX with a flower cooler on it.

[@candidosilva7755]

My sli expireience was 2 asus 8800gt i updated couse of Crysis but i was runing a 1440.900 Samsung monitor it was around 40 fps and it was fine. Next i bought 2 gtx 260 for that i already had a acer 23 inch monitor and at 1080p high setings Crysis runed from 40 to 70 fps it was all over the place. But i was happy on my xfx 780i board with my old Q6600 overclocked to 3.2 GHz fun times.

[@Storm_.]

I had an 8800GT back in the day, with a Quad Core Q6600. Great system :)

[@charleswp71]

EVGA offered a cooler upgrade for their card, the Akimbo cooler, dual slot design and did wonders to lower the temps and noise, ran SLi for a few years on a EVGA NF780i board with a core 2 quad 8400, was a solid system.

[@VikingDudee]

I use to run 9800GT's n SLI, I loved SLI then, and making it work on non SLI supported games made me learn more about how it works and I found that fun where others didn't want to go threw the hassle, I ran SLI and Crossfire up unitl around 2016 with 1070s, after that it just wasn't worth it, a lot of games you couldn't even get SLI to work.

[@jonesy3000]

Great video as always Phil. I used to love sli back in the day shame it's all but gone nowadays. I still prefer playing around with old dx8 cards. Have you played No one lives forever 2 it was a great game back in the day and one of the first to use dx8/8.1 it was my go-to game for testing new hardware.

[@ipoopmuffins]

ah yes the good old z77 sabertooth. the motherboard i bought for my very first full pc build. i still have it as a secondary computer, such a great looking and performing motherboard. also thats pretty amazing scaling with those cards in SLI.

[@brandonupchurch7628]

Crysis was so demanding (or perhaps inefficient is the better term) that I seem to recall that the game couldn't be played smoothly all maxed out until the first generation of core i CPUs with high end GTX 400 series cards in SLI.

[@ZeroHourProductions407]

Pretty much lusted for multi gpu even from the start. Never did have it while it was actively a thing, though. What irks me is that, I have a gtx 690, a build with two 780ti's in SLI finally, and a Radeon 7990, and I can't get any of them to run in multi gpu in Windows xp.

[@jakepatton3493]

A pencil eraser is also a great way to clean SLI / Crossfire connectors and PCI connectors too. Really good for more stubborn materials & light corrosion.

[@ezrafreemantle1824]

Your right. I do need a sli setup in my retro collection....

[@H31MU7]

Yep, had this setup with an E6600 clocked at 3.3ghz and then a phenom 9850. Good times, but amazing how those cost me 2/3 of an 8800 ultra and with inflation about a third of the price of the cheapest rtx4090

[@JeordieEH]

I really miss those cards. I had my 8800gt for a long time until it unfortunately died and I had to RMA it with it's lifetime warranty. I probably could have repasted it before, but it still ran decently, but i'm not exactly sure why it died. Since it had a lifetime warranty and I used to well out of it's normal 3 year warranty, I returned it for an nvidia gts 450. It was a decent upgrade to the 8800gt, but I remember wishing so much I had the 480 instead. I tend to use my hardware for a long time. My 1080ti is still holding strong for the games I play and considering I don't go play all the latest games, I tend to enjoy what I enjoy and that is often an mmo or an fps, but I love to play counter strike and world of warcraft and both still run well on it.

[@excess_wrx]

Actually playing around with Far Cry 2 right now on a q6600 at 3ghz and a few of these g80/g92 cards: A quadro fx 4600 768mb (a cool hybrid 8800 gts 640/8800 gtx) that I bought for only $10 CAD. It runs at around 50 fps medium settings 1080p Also a 9800 GTX 512 that I got for free, around 70 fps medium settings 1080. This era of computing is awesome! At the time I had a q6600 and radeon 3870 (which I later bought a second one for crossfire)

[@jared4670]

Back in the day i had triple gtx260 sli playing Grid. Such a heater paired with my x58 i7

[@ericsherman4181]

I have 2 EVGA 8800Gt Akimbo cards, they were awesome at the time. I still have them in storage and were still working when I retired them.

[@osgrov]

Sweet, that's almost one of my machines right there: a Sabertooth Z77 with a 3570K, currently running Windows 7 with a GTX 780. :) I never did try SLI on the 8800GT but I ran a single card for quite awhile and I really liked it. Very stable for me, I had literally no issues for years. That was on my Core 2 E8600 system. I played with SLI using two GTX 285 cards, and that was great fun when it worked, which wasn't all the time unfortunately. Later I also tried Crossfire with two Radeon 5870 cards and that was a terrible experience. So many driver problems, ack. Sold them both and got a single GTX 680 when that released, which was a massive upgrade. A real beast of a card, ran terribly hot though.

[@metallurgico]

Awesome intro.. Jensen Huang could hire you as marketing chief lol

[@philscomputerlab]

😂

[@50shadesofbeige88]

I'm convinced that early Core cpus are the best for Windows XP. They're cheap and many of the motherboards still have regular PCI alongside PCIE. It's that sweet spot from back when people were still clinging to XP.

[@philscomputerlab]

You are right! For SLI I found it easier getting something a little more modern. Seems NVIDIA SLI boards are somewhat hard to find...

[@leetymcleet6490]

I ran 8800GT's in SLI back then too. Had a Core2 E6850 on an Asus P5N-32E-SLI. The cards I had were from Asus and the cooling was fine (in an Antec P200? case). Those blower cards were indeed turd. Phil, see if you can get some after market coolers for those bad boys! 👍

[@cardboardsnail]

I love my 8800GT. It's still powering my Windows XP machine. It's using a slightly newer revision of the stock cooler that has a 70mm fan instead of the 60mm one.

[@Trick-Framed]

YEAH!!!!! Breakfast with Phil's but not any ordinary Phil's! 8800GT SLI!!!! I have a 9800 and 8800 for just this type of fun so this will be an awesome video by default!

[@desultadox5900]

Man I had an 8800GT & i5-2500K. I loved that system and it lasted me forever! I upgraded the cooler on the 8800GT so it was cooler and quieter and never died on me

[@bloodreno]

that DVI to VGA adapter thoooooo! having flash backs lol

[@DigoR81]

My old 8800GT XFX died in 2010... showed artefacts!

[@Rangerscott69]

I loved this setup when I had it.

[@bacongl]

I loved this card. It served me quite well for several years. I remember playing Farcry 2, Bioshock and Fallout 3 on that card and being blown away. The cooler was a problem and just not capable of cooling the card once it was heat saturated. I went with the ARCTIC Accelero Twin Turbo and it dropped the temps by 20c which is massive. Those cards are filthy bro. I would strip them down and redo the thermal paste as well as clean those fans out.

[@brostenen]

Back from late 2003 to early 2006, I were building custom machines at a computer company. I had my hands on A8N-SLI boards a month before anyone else. And I really wanted a SLI setup when I saw that board first time. But then years have passed, and I have no urge for anything like that anymore. I kind if got all I wanted from SLI, when I build machines back then. Today I am happy with my low spec 2017'ish setup, using corporate HP Prodesk MT (7'th gen Intel Core CPU) and some kind of Radeon 550'ish card or something. I am using Ubuntu Mate anyway and the only game I use are Minecraft Java.

[@philscomputerlab]

Yes you're sensible and lines up with my expectations. Question: What's your take on the PC version of Turrican 2?

[@brostenen]

@@philscomputerlab If the question is between Amiga, Dos and C64 versions. Then Amiga only. However I never really liked the game as such. Great music and all that, but it is not my cup of tea. However if it was Syndicate, then the Dos version is for me. Civilization I choose the Amiga version, and there is only one way to play Doom, and that is on the 486dx2-80 to Pentium-166 span of hardware. Of course SB16 for digital and then eighter OPL2/3 for music or Dreamblaster for music.

[@RuruFIN]

The only negative thing about about 8800 GT was that it was out of stock almost everywhere. One of the best nvidia cards ever without any doubt :)

[@manaphylv100]

Yeah, and because of that, it became stupidly overpriced in some countries, like mine. I remember it selling for more than the average used 8800 GTX, or about twice as much as ATI's HD 3870, which meant it simply wasn't worth it.

[@JamesSmith-sw3nk]

Good video. They are not common but they made 9800gt's that didn't require any external power, only the power from the slot. I had one. I believe it was from MSI.

[@T3hBeowulf]

Having run SLI in the previous generation with a pair of 7900 GT cards, I remember the general sentiment at the time; SLI is great for benchmarking but big picture, falls flat in practice. It was never ~2x performance like a pair of Voodoo2 cards could do and the next generation of cards were generally faster with one card, less power, less heat and less headache. Still though, it is a neat tech... especially the "doubling down on SLI era" with 3-way SLI. 😵‍💫 Thank you for exploring the topic!

[@JPDuffy]

Voodoo 2, TNT 2 Ultra, 8800GT. Cards that were so epic that everyone you knew had one.

[@onogrirwin]

Love your stuff Phil! my 8800 gts have what seems to be connectivity problems between the GPU and the board. They'll boot if you have a cooler installed, but not if you have no cooler at all. The cooler presses the GPU against the PCB which helps any sketchy solder balls. Not worth reballing an 8800 gt unfortunately.

[@ShinyHelmet]

I still own an 8800GT. It's in a box on my wardrobe and is a two slot 1GB GDDR variant. Used to run it in an old Linux box until a couple of years ago.

[@julien2983]

I have no experience with SLI for the reasons you touched on, but I use an evga 8800GTS in my windows XP system and I love it

[@pw1169]

Low carb breakfast! Rocking a 6 pack underneath that jumper :D

[@philscomputerlab]

LOL It's more a 1 pack 😂

[@gtasomogyi]

Great video! Would try a few newer titles to see how it keeps up. :) My record was around 104°C, with a PowerColor Radeon HD 6850 SCS3 1GB, with passive cooling. It ran without any issues on those high temps, repasting didn't really helped. Oh, and it is CrossFire ready... ;)

[@tigerdefensesystems]

I remember when I purchased my first XFX 8800GT I still had an ASROCK Vista that had both AGP and single PCIE running an Core 2 Duo and 6800 Ultra carried over from my Athlon XP and Nforce days... Found out my MB wasn't compatible cause the PCIE was a Gen 1 not Gen 2 and BIOS wouldn't fix that... so I upgraded to a EVGA 750i SLI FTW board which later purchased another XFX 8800GT revision 2 to run SLI and upgraded with used Q9650 CPU O/C to 3800Mhz I believe... these EVGA MBs where great at their time.

[@Stealth86651]

My buddy had two 8800GT's, I remember being really jealous. Dude had *TWO* whole graphics cards in his computer, blew my mind. Always thought SLI was cool as a concept, shame it never really panned out.

[@PorscheRacer14]

I remember competing against this setup with my 2900XTs in Crossfire in the AMD Forums back in the day. Immortal Lobster, if you see this, cheers to you bud and RIP to those Raptor drives. Damn those were some good times. Respect to these cards and getting these going. I have two AMD HD4770's in Crossfire if you ever want to test out and try the first 40nm GPUs. Quite the budget setup and punched well above for their price back in the day. But like you said, old enough to not be relevant but new enough that a modern setup eclipses them. They do overclock like crazy though. Very beginner friendly.

[@ShippyJack]

"Too Young to be retro and too old to be useful" I feel personally attacked! :)

[@philscomputerlab]

😂

[@SianaGearz]

I used a single-card SLI setup with a GTX295 a few years ago. This is two cards, GTX260/275-like, glued together both sides of a large heatsink via an internal SLI bridge. Actually more like 10 years ago. I was not at all fond of it. You had to have the right patch state of the driver, and the game, when new driver or game patch came out they had to match, it was a chore, or you get visual bugs aplenty, and the experience was still not pleasant, just... jittery and with latency that you could feel and very very loud and hot. It was just better to run one of the cards, having the other just idle there. What i did like was running one of the cards as a rendering card, and another as a PhysX accelerator, this actually worked very very nicely, no complaints.

[@FatheredPuma81]

7:26 lol I'm going to call this Pahill's Computer Lab from now on.

[@ccleorina]

I was preorder Asus Stalker ATI HD 3870 but it never come and the shop just so happen have 8800GT and I just get 1. OMG it was Best idea of my life. Used it until I upgrade to GTX 260 216SP SLI then to AMD ATI HD 5870 in CF.

[@amicanadian2946]

I had a machine with 2 of these. Both cards died on me, unfortunately. But until that happened the performance was amazing!

[@JPDuffy]

Mine died too. It would only post every few tries. I tried repasting it but it was gone, probably from running so dang hot for so long.

[@bryantallen703]

Still got my eVGA 680i SLi Rev.2 board with 2 GTS 450's but still have the 2 original 512MB eVGA 8800GT's. The Q6600 GO still runs like gold but the QX9775 45nm chip.

[@sa230e]

I had that exact same setup back in the day. Dual eVGA 8800GTs in SLI. Turned my computer into a space heater. Both of them died, probably from the heat. I would highly suggest a card with a dual slot cooler.

[@JAP917]

This is a fun video to watch. The only two games I really would play from the Win7 era are Dirt2 and Crysis. Basically any decent PCIE card will play Dirt2 maxed out, whereas a more powerful card for Crysis is better. I found a Toms Hardware article this week from 2017 that compared every top card from each generation from the last ten years from the 8800s to 1080Ti on Crysis, and the 1080Tis (SLI for the best of the breed for pre-NVLink?) are definitely the way to go. Maybe my 960s in SLI could do it justice, but I'll have to play with it. Since both games work in Win10 (Dirt 2 with a hack, Crysis is fine), it really opens up the possibilities. I had an XFX 7950GT PCIE card from my stash that I tried to run in my old Z68 machine and it wouldn't work either. Artifacted all over the place until the screen went dead. Maybe it was old, or maybe incompatible, but the card is toast.

[@nemysisretrogaming3771]

When looking at the 8800 series of cards one more game to add to the list is F.E.A.R. It ran really well in SLI mode back in the day. I was wowing my mates with 200 FPS in SLI mode lol. PS juarez is pronounced war-rez or there abouts...

[@draganraxrax7497]

Again to say , GTX 460 1 GB is best card for win XP gaming :right amount of ram and good drivers,powerfull gpu for those era .Every game runs like a charm on it.

[@uludak8468]

? WinXP supports up to DX 9 while GTX 400 is the first Nvidia series with DX 11 which was introduced with Win 7

[@draganraxrax7497]

@@uludak8468 yes , also can run dx6, dx7,dx8, dx9 games without any compatibility issues