SLI Question, Que es mas macho?

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netbrad

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 26, 2005
Messages
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I am building a new system which will be used for moderate gaming, Half-Life2, Dawn of War, CS, BF2, and Supreme Commander when it comes out.

I'm still selecting parts and will be getting an SLI compatible motherboard, at least 2 gigs of ram and at least a 2.4 gig Athlon X2 or possibly a mid-range Conroe depending on price.

For the video card, would it be better to get 2 x 7600GTs or a single 7900GT. Brand-wise I'm looking at EVGA. I do not plan on running dual monitors or overclocking.

If anyone is running a similar setup I'd like to hear your thoughts.
 
yet another reason why I don't see the need to go SLI unless you're going to spend $800+ on video hardware :rolleyes:
 
Spending $800+ on video hardware to get great performance isn't necessary what so ever.

A little less than 2 years ago I got 2 6600GT's for $100 each and they ran great. Then the massive price drops with the 7800GT's occured and I bought 2 of those for under $500 total. Sold the 6600GT's on eBay and got almost all of my $200 back. This made my total price for dual 7800GT CO SE's = under $300. No plans, desires, or need to upgrade until next-gen DX10 become more of a necessity because two 7800GT's running games at 1280x960 with all the eye candy cranked is still plenty of power for my monitor's capability and my level of desired results.

I look at SLI this way: It's a usable, friendly, affordable, and stable technology. Even if a person were to start off with an SLI motherboard and has only 1 video card with no plans to even utilize SLI, at least the capability is there to give the user a future upgrade path if a new gpu is intoduced but is either not yet affordable (cutting edge = $$$) or contains new tech that isn't going to be widely utilized for some time afterwards. This generally makes upgrading to SLI'd gpus a more cost effective interim solution if the user desires a performance boost over a single card.
 
Adionik said:
Single 7900gt will own an SLI 7600gt. Less power too.
Click to expand...

Show me numbers that demonstrate a 7900GT owning SLI'd 7600GTs.

Everything I've seen says that they're roughly equal in performance.

If the OP can afford the 7900GT right now, it's definately the better choice as that way he can add another for SLI down the road and gain even more performance. But in the exact case that he asked about, there's not really a performance winner.
 
Thanks for the info so far.

This will be probably the last "gaming" computer I build, and I finally have a budget to get nice components. I just wanted to get the best video performance I could for under $400. I thought about dual 7800GTs as well but they're too close in price to the 7900GT.
 
Adionik said:
Single 7900gt will own an SLI 7600gt. Less power too.
Click to expand...

Say what?
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm05=2129043
This is my STOCKscore.. wait till I overclock. if you cant see it, the project name is "SLi_CK 76".. I scored 8727

7900gt's that run the same processor range ~2.0 are scoring mid 7000s... dont believe me? Check for yourself.

Keep in mind too that my Amd 64+3000 is running at a stock 1800mhz.. not like these that are running <2000mhz. They are scoring mid 7000's..


7600gt sli ftw.
 
yeah, but they are probably using single GPU for that 7000......disable SLI and see what happens. Not saying ur wrong, but 7000 seems like a single gpu score.

Heck, I got a 7232 with a P4 (i know i know) and a single 7800GTX and a crappy PSU, so a high 7000 with a better system doesnt sound too unreasonable
 
Incase you are interested on the XFX 7900GT... here's its 3DMark05 score in my brother's AM2 machine I built for him. It will give you an idea what to expect. This is the 520/1500 version of the XFX 7900GT. Its around $300 on newegg. The machine is running complete stock, no overclocking on anything. Incase you can't see the link, the 3DMark05 score is 8670.

http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a1/wiretap25/Scotts Rig/Completed/3dmark-ScottAM2.jpg
 
netbrad said:
For the video card, would it be better to get 2 x 7600GTs or a single 7900GT. Brand-wise I'm looking at EVGA. I do not plan on running dual monitors or overclocking.
Click to expand...

If you are considering an Evga 7900 GT you should know that there are old models with "bad"
memory chips and newer models released to fix the problem.

This post will break it down for you.
 
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