Reactor now features GTX 260 & GTX 280

After quite a bit of benchmarking, the dust has settled, leaving five distinct video card options for the Reactor:

1. A single GTX 260
2. Two GTX 260's in SLI
3. A single GTX 280
4. Two GTX 280's in SLI
5. Three GTX 280's in SLI

The 9800 GX2 just doesn't make sense any more: you get more performance for about the same money from either a single GTX 280 (compared to one 9800 GX2) or a pair of GTX 260's (compared to a pair of 9800 GX2's). This holds true across multiple resolutions, especially 1920x1200 and above, and especially with antialiasing turned on.

This is interesting news, since we can now say that the 8800 GTX was the longest-reigning performance champion in memory, while the 9800 series was the shortest lived.

It's also a little sad to say that Quad-SLI was somewhat stillborn. We're not too big on TRI-SLI either, unless you're after bragging rights. We have yet to find a situation where Three-way SLI makes much of a difference in gameplay feel

It will be interesting to see what happens with the GTX-200 series. I suspect they'll last through Q1 2009 as the top dog...