Improved FPS
I recently upgraded my video cards (see signature) from two 7800 GTXs. Just to be safe (overkill really), I also upgraded to a Thermaltake 850W PS (30A on each SLi rail!).I am still testing with a variety of games to compare the difference, but so far it looks like I'm getting about 68% higher frames per second on state of the art games, and much, much higher rates on older games (some are indicating over 400 fps).About a year ago, the 7800 GTXs were the bomb. Now, they are being absolutely thrashed by cards that cost half as much. So far, I have been very impressed with the BFG OC2 cards. The core clock has been boosted just over 12%, and the shader clock has been OC'd just over 11%. I could bump these even higher, but I see no need to. When I first start the computer and it is going through POST, both 8800 GTs sound like dual leaf blowers until the fans settle down to 30% speed by default, at which point they are almost silent.Can't wait to get to Act III to see the difference. IMHO, the BFG 8800 GT OC2 is the best nVidia single slot PCI-e card on the market as of this post. If you are looking to improve your Witcher fps, and your mobo and CPU can handle it, I highly recommend one (or two) of these cards! As an added benefit, my system is now drawing less power at idle than when I had the 7800 GTXs installed!As an aside...I thought I could just take both old cards out, slap the two new ones in and boot up (they use the same drivers). Wrong! When running SLi, you have to uninstall the drivers, shut down, remove both old cards, install the new primary card, boot up, let XP recognize the first card, then shut down. Then you have to install the new second card, install the SLi bridge, and boot up, letting XP recognize the second card. Then you can re-install the old drivers (I installed Beta drivers instead), and the nVidia drivers will automatically detect both cards, ask you if you want to enable SLi, and configure your monitor for optimal resolution as well. No where in any of the instructions that came with the new video cards did it explain this procedure...it only showed how to install one card.
I recently upgraded my video cards (see signature) from two 7800 GTXs. Just to be safe (overkill really), I also upgraded to a Thermaltake 850W PS (30A on each SLi rail!).I am still testing with a variety of games to compare the difference, but so far it looks like I'm getting about 68% higher frames per second on state of the art games, and much, much higher rates on older games (some are indicating over 400 fps).About a year ago, the 7800 GTXs were the bomb. Now, they are being absolutely thrashed by cards that cost half as much. So far, I have been very impressed with the BFG OC2 cards. The core clock has been boosted just over 12%, and the shader clock has been OC'd just over 11%. I could bump these even higher, but I see no need to. When I first start the computer and it is going through POST, both 8800 GTs sound like dual leaf blowers until the fans settle down to 30% speed by default, at which point they are almost silent.Can't wait to get to Act III to see the difference. IMHO, the BFG 8800 GT OC2 is the best nVidia single slot PCI-e card on the market as of this post. If you are looking to improve your Witcher fps, and your mobo and CPU can handle it, I highly recommend one (or two) of these cards! As an added benefit, my system is now drawing less power at idle than when I had the 7800 GTXs installed!As an aside...I thought I could just take both old cards out, slap the two new ones in and boot up (they use the same drivers). Wrong! When running SLi, you have to uninstall the drivers, shut down, remove both old cards, install the new primary card, boot up, let XP recognize the first card, then shut down. Then you have to install the new second card, install the SLi bridge, and boot up, letting XP recognize the second card. Then you can re-install the old drivers (I installed Beta drivers instead), and the nVidia drivers will automatically detect both cards, ask you if you want to enable SLi, and configure your monitor for optimal resolution as well. No where in any of the instructions that came with the new video cards did it explain this procedure...it only showed how to install one card.