I want to buy a great and cheap Nvidia SLI graphics card for my PC. What should I look for more? ?

Question

Which one is better if I have more? MHz, Memory clock, or stream processors?

Also, how does having a 1GB card trump having a 512MB card?

Answer 1

The best bang for the buck currently is probably the Geforce 8800GT. I've seen two of my friends buy two of them for under 280$ and get the performance(or near that) of a Geforce 9800GX2.

I'd say the the GPU(MHz) speed, Memory speed, and stream processor count are all pretty important, BUT generally they wont make that much of a difference if you are using them to compare two of the same model video cards from different companies.

The best way to find a video card that is right for you is to first find your price range. Since you are going for 2 video cards, you will want  cut your price range in half for the price of each card. Then look at the Nvidia cards available within your price range. Once you've got 3 or 4, preferably different models, go to google and type in the company who made the card followed by the model number. Then add "review" at the end of the search line. Example:

eVGA Geforce 8600GTS Review  

Go through the results looking for actual reviews of the card. Most Good reviews will compare it to video cards of similiar price. All reviews will probably also have benchmarks which show the performance of the video card(s) in games and other benchmarking programs. Using that information, you should be able to narrow down your selection of cards to those that are the best.

As for having 1GB or 512MB of video memory... Once you get to the mid-range or higher video cards, memory really doesn't make much of a difference because even if you don't have say "1GB" and only "512MB" more often than not, the "512mb" video card will have faster memory than the "1GB" video card which will help make up for not having as much memory.  

Answer 2

Heres some benchmarks including Nvidia cards in SLI. Should help you make up your mind. 2 512MB cards in SLI or Crossfire still come across as 512MBs. I run Crysis maxed out in DX10 with 2 4870s so Im happy with 2 512 cards that Windows treats as 512MB anyway. Wouldn't worry about using 1GB cards unless you plan on running an LED panel over 32 inches at massive resolutions.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.a...