GTX285 v GTX295 for single 2560 x 1600 monitor

[Noids99]

I am in the process of building a new system. My primary gaming activity on it will be multiboxing WoW. Understandably there is very little data available on the performance of these cards with WoW, let alone at higher resolutions or whilst multiboxing. I have keenly followed Sina's testing and noted that the GTX295 showed an insignificant improvement over the GTX285 for the monitor setup he utilised.

My question however is in respect to a higher resolution single monitor setup. I use IS to run 5 instances on one 2560x1600 screen. My system will be a core i7 920 with 12GB ram. I have heard conflicting evidence about SLI working with WoW, although there is a blue thread in which the Blue provides evidence of improvement with SLI using his own setup.

If there is anyone who currently uses a 30" monitor with one of the above cards I would be interested to know what your experience is and what your recommendation for a graphics setup would be. If Sina is still around and would be interested in testing the performance of such a setup, that would also be helpful as I like the systematic approach taken with the previous testing. If neither of these options are available, then I would be happy to resort to speculation by those people using parts of my proposed setup on how they may work with the other components. ie. anyone using a GTX285/295 and how it currently performs on a single monitor setup of a different resolution.

Thanks in advance for replies.

[Ozbert]

This may not be hugely useful, but I use a GTX285 to drive two 1920x1200 displays. That's a total of 4.6 Mpx it has to render, which it handled fine with main window fps uncapped and four clones capped to 15fps. Your single screen is about 4.1 Mpx, so in theory it should handle it better.

[Bollwerk]

I ended up getting an OC'd GTX 280 last month, rather than a 285 or 295. My reasoning was that the card is clocked faster than any 285 I had seen (at the time) and was cheaper. Also, since there seems to be more reports of SLI not working with WoW rather than working better, I decided the 295 was not a good choice, especially if I can't just buy both and test each of them. I figured if I need SLI, I can just get another OC'd 280 (until they are no longer in stock). But I really don't play much of anything on my PC other than WoW.

I am using a 30" monitor with a Core 2 Q6600 and 8MB of RAM. I think the 280 runs very nicely. However, I am still CPU bound when running 4 clients. (with all graphics options except draw distance turned down) I just can't afford an i7 setup yet.