SLI Under 400$

[Conano]

I wasnt sure where to put this, As it deals with hardware, i thought General hardware would be the right place.

Ok heres the deal folks. The Daughter LOVES battlefield 2, SO i tried to upgrade the processor in her old system which was using an asus a7a266 socket 462 with athalon 1800. Well lets jsut say that didnt work out well. One motherboard Dead. I looked at all the other motherboards i have but alas i dont have another oen that is agp 8x compatable. Cause she has a Gforce 4 Ti 4200 128 meg in there, and well, it's good enough to play, Although maby not the best.

Well now, the Serch is on. I intended to upgrade my system anyways soon. But i cannot afford 800+ bucks to to do this. I want this to remain under 400 to 500$ MAX. Although i want to upgrade to SLI, I will sit pretty with one video card temporarilly.

Ok heres what i want to do.

My system is a Gigabyte 8IPE1000 Pro. Pentium 4, 2.4Ghz, overclocked to 2.8ghz, 1 gig ddr duel channel ram, (512x2). BFG 7800GS OC.

I Want to Take the 7800GS OC ad add it to my wifes system, Which is almost identical to mine. exept her board is asus, and her processor is 2.8ghz. (should go Smoothly)

Then take my RAM, MotherBoard, and Processor, and combine it with my daughters gforce 4, ti 4200. (That should allow her to play BF2 with very little lag. as she mostly plays single player or on servers that dont have like 32 or 64 people on them)

Now to replace my system I want this system to be able to play battlefield 2 smoothly, Run windows XP and Run windows Vista when it comes out. But i want to do this Under 400 to 500$ Max.

What is my Query? Well Can you guys come up with decent system setup suggestions. With Reliable Parts. And if possible, Site links. I need the following.

MotherBoard (SLI):
Ram (Min 1 gig, in 512x2, or 1gig sticks):
Processor (either Intel or AMD):
Single Video Card (SLI supported):

Any help would be appriciated. Thanks.

 

[munkle]

any SLI in that range will be a waste because if you buy 2 very low end cards (very lowest sli cards in that price range) and use them for SLI, you could buy a higher end card for cheaper than the 2 cards and have it be faster.

Basically for you are looking at around
$80 for a mobo
$75 for a cpu (not duel core and very cheapest one)
$80 for 1gb of ram
$165 for an SLI ready video card (maybe 2 cheap ones for that if you go used)
thats at $400 max, even with $265 to spend on 2 Sli video cards you would be better off buying one good one instead of 2 crappy ones.

 

[Nuked Jello]

I thought BF2 wouldn't run on the Geforce4 Ti series, or did they fix that?

 

[GonzoP]

you would be better off buying one good one instead of 2 crappy ones.

Word to that. Just look at the numbers of 1 7900GT vs 2 7600GT's and then look at the $$. Slam dunk

 

[MrWizard6600]

k well your sorta at 2X2 here.

you spicify SLI but i think all you want is multi GPU technology. Im an Nvidia man, but ill throw in a word for all those ATI-ers out there.

System 1:
Green Team
Proc: AMD 3200+ Neweggs Offer [$86]
Mainboard: ASUS M2N-SLi Deluxe Neweggs Offer [$150 Note: open box $120]
Ram: Corsair DDR2 667 Neweggs Offer [$85]
Graphics Card: EVGA Nvidia 7600GT KO Neweggs Offer [$165]
Total: $486

System 2:
Blue and Red Team
Proc: Intel Pentium D 805 Neweggs Offer [$100]
Mainboard: ASUS P5LD2 Deluxe Neweggs Offer [$150]
Ram: Corsair DDR2 667 Neweggs Offer [$85]
Graphics Card: HIS ATI X1600XT IceQ Neweggs Offer [$140]
Total: $475

System 3:
Blue and Green Team
Proc: Intel Pentium D 805 Neweggs Offer [$100]
Mainboard: ASUS P5N57-SLI Currently Unavailable [Approx $150]
Ram: Corsair DDR2 667 Neweggs Offer [$85]
Graphics Card: EVGA Nvidia 7600GS Neweggs Offer [$110]
Total: $445

System 1 is single core, and should overclock nicly. The 7600GT with the KO cooler will overclock like mad. This system imho will give the best overall performance in BF2.

System 2 is more of an overclocker, and is dual core. The D 805's overclock like a dream, and reports are that small cool GPU core with that massive HS/F should overclock pretty high too. Good thing because the X1600 architecture is "wtf?" not nearly enough TMUs. it is also Crossfire ready, and (with its "wtf" X1600 architecture, breaks all the rules) does not need a crossfire master card. just another X1600XT.

System 3 has the same processer as System 2, so you can expect similar clocks. The Mainboard is currently un-available but was showcased at Computex and now has a slot on there website here

I would recomend an Nforce 5 chipset over an Nforce 4 chipset simply because its a whole lot more overclocker friendly, and has way better features.

if you can pump a few more bucks into your system you might be able to get an X1800GTO or 7600GT, both would be well worth the extra $30-80.