Testing a pair of GeForce 8800GTX in SLI!

[@Aranimda]

Many 8800GTX cards suffered from bad solder connections causing many cards to fail over time. I saved mine two times by putting it in the oven to but it only fixed the problem for a short time. After that I upgraded to a GTX 570.

[@GrumpyWolfTech]

I was building and selling pcs back then, I personally had an 8800 ultra, but I got to test out the gtx while building pcs, and it really was a great card. Hell the whole 8800 line up was awesome back then.

[@Lurch-Bot]

Lol, there were '8800' GPUs ranging from 64 to 128 cores so, no, the whole lineup was not awesome. Would be like calling a 4060 the '4080GS'.

[@ErnestJay88]

8800 GTX is my dream GPU back then (With Core 2 Extreme QX 6800), i was playing Crysis on my 8600 GT with Core 2 Duo E6300, it's laggy as F, and i only able to play Crysis with "stable framerate" at 28-35 Fps at 1024x768 resolution. today i have RTX 3090 Ti but i didn't have a time to play games 😅, that's why i didn't even upgrade towards RTX 4090 since my PC just collecting dust all the time.

[@Lurch-Bot]

There is no 'QX6800". There is an X6800 which is a dual core. I have one in my vintage SLI rig. There was a QX6700 quad core.

[@OkiemElektroniki]

Introduction of GF 8800 was giant step for everyone. These brought insane performance gain for just one generation step up. Unfortunately their cooling design, albiet quite good in terms of radiator size, sufferes from awfully slow fan. It's not pushing enough air trough resulting in high temps. This is part of the reason why a lot of them are dead now.

[@razorsz195]

Yup, those early blower designs like the dustbuster FX5800 Ultra and reference X850XT/1800XT cards were a prime example of poor designs, much like the Geforce 6 series with fans blowing air against front intakes on cases, cooking memory chips etc. Its why i still refuse to run 0 RPM fan modes and go for a higher fan profile as even today companies still skimp on PCB cooling even if the core is adequate, meaning cards will eventually die like these old cards we love so much, those single slot 8800GTs..its why aftermarket cooling used to be so popular back then, though i miss when you could use scrap motherboards with big chipset heatsinks on some older cards and pop a fan on it and overclock some life into them, GF2 MX and Duron gaming..sneaking onto quake III while uncle wasn't on PC and doom 3 when dad got a new PC ;) good times..

[@OkiemElektroniki]

​@@razorsz195 I literally *always* set custom fan curve to anything newer than GF 6000 because I feel it's much better this way. Not only you can find perfect spot but also keep calm about your hardware not burning up in flames. Imo 0 RPM modes are stupid af, mainly because running fans at 20-30% does not make a loudness difference, and significantely decreases idle temps. About X1800/X1900 - imo approach was littlebit better, but what eventually killed it was very poor curve and small radiator die. Even worse was fan noise - if you wanted to keep your GPU cool enough, you needed to prepare for some leaf blower action in your rig.

[@razorsz195]

@@OkiemElektroniki I found a lot of wasted thermal potential on those reference ATi cards, the copper heatsink mates across the metal memory cooling spreader plate and if you just use some cheap TIM, considering the memory couldn't exactly make for the best utilisation of it, that the heat was able to just passively bleed into it for long duration loads, meaning i could lower fans purely to find the least annoying pitch and still shave 8C off temperatures. This was also a time when companies had moved away from those thermal expoxy bonds which were either poor or impossible to remove and a lot of cheap pastes were used..hence the boom of using MX silver or copper solutions, but boy..hitting almost 100C after a cheap TIM vs the pumped out stock stuff at 86C. It was only when i used a putty based compound that it didnt immediately pump out from pressure and now sits in the mid 70s. But the fan design is just..so poor that i was able to create a passive solution that ran cooler because it at least had the exposed surface area to radiate away. it was nice when both ATi and nvidia used the same hole spacing on the dies though, made for a lot of cross compatability amongst coolers back then..those iceQ/ Arctic Turbos..i can just imagine just about the worst thermally performant and loud system ...2 x1950xt ref cards in crossfire X, Windsor Athlon 64 X2..cooler master Jet cooler..old case fans..oh the sound of cheap motors whining and bearings rattling..and there are newcomers now complaining when their fans ramp a bit and disturb the silence in their room with dual bearing low rpm designs..how they never had to listen to a 5300RPM Socket 462 cooler and clapped bearing graphics cooling fan in 'unison' :p

[@OkiemElektroniki]

​@@razorsz195 General concept of having hudge and heavy metal block (faceplate) on memory is great, because it was able to suck in that heat. Unfortunately as you said - fan design was poor, and size of copper block for GPU die, albiet very dense, could not handle it (while fan should be quiet). Additionally VRM cooling sollution could be desighned better, for example by extending the shroud to force more airflow directly trough them. Unfortunately nobody learned - looking at later high-end sollutions, situation with GTX 590 is again terrible - trying to keep fan as low as possible while keeping GPU temps at nearly critical point. Even worse is when you look at backplate "VRAM cooler", which can easly get over 100*C. When I run mine, I set agressive fan curve and put fans on top, just to keep it from burning. About that 462 - literally one of the most distict things about this platform that I always think of is noise. Most of these coolers were absurdly loud.. these days PC's run witch waaaay more manner than they did before.

[@JamesSmith-sw3nk]

Good video. Back in the day.. I had a tri-SLI 8800 gtx setup. I remember I had 14th on the 3D Mark leaderboard for about a week. 3 cards had way too much stutter for games so I went dual SLI and eventually used the 3rd card for PhysXs.

[@ChristianStout]

I'm working on a "retro" WinXP gaming build and considering SLI 8800GTXs for it, along with CF HD4870s and SLI GTX 285s.

[@DuneRunnerEnterprises]

Me - i'm leaning towards the pair of 4890's. But the PSU needed!

[@DraponDrako]

Quad SLI GTX295 😂

[@BurkeSchneider]

Can you also please change the thermal pads and let us know the thermal pad thickness? Sometimes that can be just as important as the thermal paste. Excellent video!

[@DanielCardei]

Awesome cover on this legendary 8800 GTX 👍

[@amhockeyclub9405]

the 8800 gtx in sli was so freaking great

[@ChezRG-YT]

It's been a while since i watched one of your videos. I liked watching this one. ❤

[@DarthKydo]

Another awesome video. I’ve been looking forward to more vids from you.

[@GarethFairclough]

I had a pair of 7600 GT's in SLI, back in the day. It was totally by chance, too. xD It was shockingly good, even if the performance uplift wasn't as amazing as one would think. Great fun to set it up and satisfying when it ran well.

[@razorsz195]

I have my AM2+ rig ready to go soon, it has had 2 Asus 8800GT Golds in SLi waiting as i repaired pins and binned a stack of Athlon II X2 chips and finally got one that crossed the 4Ghz mark, Athlon II X2 250, much more effecient than K8 64 X2 chips, i have 3 motherboards to bin northbridges and some more athlon II chips for DDR2 IMC stability vs AM3 DDR3 platform, cannot wait to see this setup sing! Was my dream setup back when i was still struggling on Sempron and FX5200. Still have sealed games that i haven't opened, ready to re-live gold games of the past. For the price of 1 new AAA title i built a whole PC with a games catalog built overtime, seems like the better way to spend my money :)

[@danal8246]

cool video. Neat seeing these GPUs of the past

[@BAgodmode]

Man this was the dream back into the day, having one, let alone TWO.

[@deagt3388]

Gainward GTX 260 (+) my first card but always wanted to have SLI setup... ;-)

[@drupiROM]

It's also crazy how 600$ back in 2007 are now 900$ due to inflation. I only had one 8800GTX back in 2009-2010, but it broke on me after a few weeks. Managed to resurrect it by a techno-necromancy ritual of "oven baking" :)) I have not used it since around 2010, but something tells me it would still run if i plugged it in to a retro machine.

[@billchildress9756]

I do have 2 8800 GTS 640's and 2 8800 GTX's all matching. 1 of the GTX cards has an artifacting issue that needs to fixed before I can use it. Amd and Nvidia have both put out some excellent cards in the past and I have 2 AMD 8990's in CF without any issue so far besides being Space heaters. Back in the day when these rivals were hawking their goods they were Un-Affordable for me and even the 8990's were not cheap used. I have collected a number of various GF cards over the years and I still don't get tired of playing around with them. When I get some systems up and running I might start selling them as complete packages.

[@blakegriplingph]

I always wanted to have one of those back in the day. Either that or the 9800GTX.

[@JamesSmith-sw3nk]

Good video, My only note of concern is 1080p gaming was rare when the 8800gtx's were released. 22" lcd monitors with 1680x1050 resolutions were the monitors to have then, most people had around 720p lcd displays, some people still had crt's with higher resolutions.

[@HerrAlien]

Did not own a pair of 8800 GTX-es; I did get a single 8800 GTX though recently, and I plan to get it warmed up in STALKER, just to see how it handles it.

[@prezeskodaty4637]

Intel Core i7 980x processor, Samsung DDR3 24 gigabytes RAM, Two NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 graphics cards, SLI cable connection to NVIDIA Quadro 6000, Fermi100, Windows Vista Ultimate, Samsung Syncmaster 226BW 64-bit monitor, Asus Xonar D2 audio sound card, Three Hitachi Ultrastar 7K2000 HDD drives, Two Lightscribe DVD-RW recorders, Seasonic Prime Ultra 1000 watts Titanium case, CoolerMaster Cosmos 1000 motherboard, Evga X58 4way SLI classified

[@frozenflame8319]

for all the tech noobs this is the best gpu made by ngreedia NOT the 1080ti

[@denikec]

I know it doesn't fit the era of the cards, but I wonder how GTA IV would run with DXVK.

[@KomradeMikhail]

Well since DXVK was originally designed by a guy who was trying to get his GTA IV to run better.....

[@GoWstingray]

Hi I actually have a pair of water blocks for 2 8800 GTX, not sure what to do with them, I'd like a replacement 680 sli NVIDIA motherboard as the one I have is faulty, was gonna do a water cooled tribute build but never seem to have the time, and I also have the 280 GTX which is newer.

[@SlingerMarshall]

I remember having a 7300gt and being so jealous of people who had 8800gts because they could play games on high

[@oldschooldude8370]

Still daily a 9800gtx+ 😊

[@zhayward3190]

I ended up going with the Winfast 8800GTS 320MB version back then it was a little bit cheaper then the 640MB version as i couldn't afford a GTX Card they were just way to expensive

[@crazyfurnaceguy1229]

GeForce 8 series are the first support CUDA platform, I wonder are they actually can run some small AI program, even with SLI?

[@KQ4JGS]

I have 2 8800 Ultras that I am going to put into a retro XP build.

[@rch5395]

Can u test some throw-away pro hardware?

[@ianhughes982]

Anyone in 2024 who wants to play gtaIV then use DXVK for windows

[@Ljosi]

So performance is on par with a 1030gt

[@Chasm9]

GTA 4 was such a horrendous port on release (and basically still is) that it didn't really matter what GPU you had. You had a crap experience 🤣 🤣

[@moravianlion3108]

It did matter a lot, but CPU mattered even more, probably also heavily due to Euphoria physics. Shame they cut it out for GTA V.

[@Lurch-Bot]

This is why I have the Xbox 360 version.

[@bluemarble4051]

Need revist of HD 5970 in 2024

[@tristanb.8561]

I have one in my collection *.*

[@wdowa94]

H150i pro RBG?

[@Lurch-Bot]

Will the real 8800 please stand up? There are like 6 or 7 '8800' models with a huge variation in performance. This would be like calling a 4060 '4080 SE' or some crap like that. I built my one (and likely only) SLI rig last year with a pair of 7800GTX cards I paid $5 apiece for. They're hot, noisy messes and a complete waste of time these days, even for retro gaming. Not sure why you're comparing with the HD 3870, which is a generation newer. Should be comparing this to a pair of X1950s in CrossFire, which is outclassed by a single 7800GTX from the year prior to its launch. Meanwhile, you have to run a pair of 7800GTX cards in SLI to match the performance of one 8800GTX. Hard to believe there was a time when Nvidia wasn't so stingy but that time is long passed. The 5080 will have a ridiculously low 16GB VRAM. For a 4k GPU🤦‍♂ Wolfenstein 3D is the most important game of all time. Crysis is third at best, after DOOM. And a lot of people would probably argue that Unreal was more important than Crysis. Looking forward to some Terrorscale vids.

[@zbigniew2628]

You should put hd630 next to them 🤣

[@KomradeMikhail]

Too new for Win98se retro gaming builds... Too old for respectable WinXP retro builds...

[@mordecaiepsilon]

The migraine man

[@michaelnugent8181]

fake video.