I had a creeping feeling my old Nvidia 9800 GTX+ wouldn't be able to handle the game's ridiculous amounts of polygons and VRAM requirements, and it couldn't. I get a maximum of 7 FPS if I set my card to maximum performance settings and run on low for all settings with no headlights. So, I decided to start searching for a budgeted, but better-quality video card, and I stumbled across another, identical Nvidia 9800 GTX+. I was thinking I could run them in parallel with SLI, or I could just shell $70 for a new EVGA GT 640 from Newegg. Any thoughts?
If you go for the SLI option, check that your mother board can support it, as not all can, it should say in the manual or check online, also make sure that the mother board has the right band width, i.e my mother board has: 1 16X pcie slot, and 1 4x pcie slot, so I would not be able to support SLI as my second slot does not have enough band width (only 4x pcie). I think its ok if you have 8X pcie. Also take care for that fact that sometimes if other slots on your mother board are full it will lower the speed of the pcie slots, again with my mother board, the 4X pcie slot shares its bandwidth with 3 other pci slots. I think this is right, if not someone feel free to correct me.
and in reply to whether or not to go for a 640. my graphics card is a ATI 5750 with a high overclock and I get like 10 fps, and according to multiple benchmarks the 5750 is still faster than the 640. http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/612?vs=537 and that is a stock 5750, I have a high overclock as well. So I think getting the 640 would just be a waste of $70. It would be better to put that money in to saving up for a new graphics card to enjoy the game in all its glory when it comes out in December. After all why waste your money now, if you will only have to upgrade your graphics again to play the game?
Just an FYI SLI in Nvidia cards may not help the situation. I have two 560 TI's that I was running in SLI and they made my performance substantially worse while in SLI. When I turned it off I was "mostly" able to play zoomed out. Still had some lag with higher unit counts. I don't think they have the video drivers worked out for SLI yet.
Wait for the game to be more polished before wondering about performance issues: Pa is not yet optimized.
