dual 6800 GS w/256MB ram vs. (1) GeForce GTS 450?

[bit]

Older mobo.
I have (1) 6800 GS w/256 ram, and someone is offering to give me two of their older vid cards, a 6800 w/256 ram, and a GeForce GTS 450.

If they are the same maker and general specs, I propose to run the two 6800GS/256MB video cards in dual-mode using the bus bar, that jumper link thingie, and see what happens.
Or if they are slightly dissimilar specs somehow, what will that do? or not do?

Or, should I just pop in the GeForce GTS 450?

Assuming the dual mode 6800 option works, which would be faster, that or the GTS 450?

[mouser]

I'm not sure exactly what you are asking, but my experience with running 2 different GEforce-family Nvidia cards to drive 4 monitors is that the Nvidia drivers handle this situation with aplomb -- that is, they run without any trouble.

(I wouldn't want to try to combine an Nvidia and an ATI card in the same pc at the same time, but if they are both Nvidia Geforce family, it should be fine).

[bit]

^wow. I only have 1 monitor.
Okay, I misread the specs on the 6800; mine is a GS, his is a GT, so that's a mismatch and a no-go.

So the way to go would be with the GeForce GTS 450, as advised below in the next post. Thanks!

[4wd]

I'd go with the GT 450, it's 5 years younger than the 6800 series, handles DX11, faster GDDR5 RAM, at least twice the RAM of a single 6800 GS, and you won't need to screw around trying to get two 6800 GS' running in SLI.

You'd most likely be able to run the drivers in quality mode and not even notice the difference in play speed compared to performance on the 6800.

[bit]

Okay, immediately on pressing the power button to start the computer with the GTS 450 installed, I got 3 or 4 beeps and a prerecorded message, "System failure VGA patch" with a black screen and never even got to BIOS.

I tried it a few more times, and double-checked everything, and still no soap.
I do need to mention, my monitor uses an older three row plug, an analogue 15-pin D-Sub VGA, whereas the GTS vid card only has two DVI ports, but I used a certified video adapter to match it up to the GTS video card port, so I am not sure if that jinxed it.
It's too bad, as the GTS has 1GB of ram vs. 256MB for my 6800 GS.

I know where to get my hands on an nVidia 6800 GT, so I searched for a comparison, and the GS and GT are already very close to each other in performance as shown here which gives a thorough comparison;
http://www.trustedre...00-gs-reference-card

Here are more comparisons between the 6800 GS vs. GT, and they are quite close;
http://www.bit-tech..../07/nvidia_6800_gs/1

At this forum...
http://www.bit-tech....a_6800_gs/comments/2

...user Tim_S says he tried to run a 6800 GS paired with a 6800 GT in SLI mode, and 'tried several driver revisions with no luck'.

So the 6800 GS is back in place and everything is working fine again.

[bit]

I finally got my machine to work with the newer NVIDIA GTS 450.
It was an old installation procedure that did the trick.
My machine wanted to 'see' the old 6800 VGA card.

So to 'fix' it, one first tries to boot with no VGA card.
That makes the pc stop looking for the old one.
Then one reboots with the new VGA card, and now the pc can see it.
I thought that 'trick' went out with plug and play, but apparently not.