Tips on SLI build

marshbaboon

Morning guys,

Just after buying a new pc, got a bit of a bargain on it but the graphics cards need serious upgrading. Bearing in mind I haven't built or upgraded since the days of the voodoo cards I'll need some advice on what cards to go for.

PC is a quad core duo running at 9.8ghz total, 8gigs DDR2, 2 1gig 8500gts (dont ask), 1 terrabyte hard drive and a monstrous 750watt psu.

Im not REALLY limited by price or power requirements of the card, and its a nice big asus gaming rig so im not limited on space.

I want a card, or 2 cards that will match the rest of my setup for gaming, taking into consideration performance for price, noise and heat of the card. (used to have an xl1800 but it melted itself to death)

Ive been reccomended by someone to get 2 nvidia 260's and sli them, any other suggestions guys??

Sqaull20

Whats your motherboard?

Budget?

Screen Size?

Sli is good for 24"+, not so good on smaller monitors, one 4870/gtx 260 is perfect for 24" and below.

General rule is to go for the best single card you can afford, then take it from there.

marshbaboon

ASUS SKT-775

dont really have a budget, selling my old pc for 350 so whatever i want to put towards that aswell.

running a beautiful xerox XA7 19inch, might get a bigger screen next year.

would it be better going for a single high end card over an sli build with 2 260s then?

Sqaull20

Nice mobo.

Single card is best, honestly even a single gtx 260 is wasted on your 19".Those cards are designed for high res 22"+ monitors.

Best thing to do imo, is get a 24" monitor now and one gtx 260.

OcUK Value L2442WD-VA 24" Widescreen LCD Monitor €266

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MO-026-OK

Leadtek GeForce GTX 260 €235

Or keep your current monitor, get a good card and upgrade the lot later on.

8800gs €66 is a fantastic card for 1280 x 1024

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-099-OK&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1008&name=OcUK%20GeForce%208800%20GS%20384MB%20GDDR3%20HDTV/DVI/HDMI%20(PCI-Express)%20-%20Retail



http://en.expreview.com/2008/01/21/review-palit-8800gs-384mb-768mb/?page=21

marshbaboon

i think ill go for a single 260 and get a 32 inch and a second 260 later or something silly...

the rest of my pc is absolute top spec so i want my cards to match, i might eventually be hooking in a 32inch hd tv to the setup (have a nice 2.1 eax and xbox 360 hooked into the whole rig)

Sqaull20

marshbaboon wrote: »

i think ill go for a single 260 and get a 32 inch and a second 260 later or something silly...

the rest of my pc is absolute top spec so i want my cards to match, i might eventually be hooking in a 32inch hd tv to the setup (have a nice 2.1 eax and xbox 360 hooked into the whole rig)

I think thats best, though a 32" 720p needs even less graphics power than a 19".

Gtx 260 will go very well with that pc, wont be a game you cant max out.

marshbaboon

Excellent! just ordered one, tv will probably be a 1080p or 1080i tho (unless something better comes out next year) whole pc cost me 750 so i have a ridiculous beast of a computer now for under a grand.

cheers man

Sqaull20

Which one did you order?

One I linked?

Leadtek have some special deal with that site and can offer prices on leadtek cards that no one else can match.

PogMoThoin

I'm guessing you bought on ebay

marshbaboon wrote: »

PC is a quad core duo running at 9.8ghz total

No its not, its a 2.4Ghz quad core. No such thing as a 9.6Ghz cpu. I've seen adds like this on ebay alright.

marshbaboon wrote: »

8gigs DDR2

Unless you got 64bit windows 4.75GB of that ram is just sitting there doing nothing. A 32bit OS cannot use more than 4Gb of ram total including what it allocates for devices.

skuzzb

Id also be a bit worried about that 750watt PSU if its an ebay jobby....check out the brand and its specs, it might not be able to cope with a gtx280.

marshbaboon

PogMoThoin wrote: »

I'm guessing you bought on ebay



No its not, its a 2.4Ghz quad core. No such thing as a 9.6Ghz cpu. I've seen adds like this on ebay alright.



Unless you got 64bit windows 4.75GB of that ram is just sitting there doing nothing. A 32bit OS cannot use more than 4Gb of ram total including what it allocates for devices.

thats a technicality, the clocked speed of all cores running efficiently is 9.8ghz worth of power.

Running 32bit vista atm but will be upgrading to 64bit hopefully, am totally ignorant of vista to be honest and ive been out of the loop on hardware since i built my last pc 5 years ago.

picked up the pc dirt cheap on ebay, the whole rig is awesome apart that the cards are COMPLETE junk 8500s and the ram is just dirt cheap ddr2

Sqaull20

Looks like this one

http://cgi.ebay.ie/QUAD-CORE-Q6600-8GB-500GB-2-8500GT-1GB-2GB-VIDEO-GFX_W0QQitemZ230271740754QQihZ013QQcategoryZ179QQtcZphotoQQcmdZViewItemQQ_trksidZp1742.m153.l1262

Doesnt say anything about psu, but he's selling same 750watt one with 9800gtx, i'd say it will be alright.If it dies its not the end of the world.

Pc is ok for the price only €728 shipped with 3 year warranty.

Q6600 €150
8gb ddr2 800 ram €130
1tb hard drive €110
mobo €70
dvdrw €20
psu + case €70 ( probably )
8500gt €50

Seller with 128,149 feedback with 3 year warranty, he could have done alot worse fellas.

He could have went to pc world

Praetorian

After years of SLI problems, I'd also highly rec a single card solution. You just don't get good value for money / power / fps with two cards IMO. Not to mention the fact that so many games are glitchy with two cards.

Praetorian

Should have mentioned, I have a 4700 on the way to replace my ancient 8800gtx

Not gone ATI in a while, so it better not disappoint (I'm running a 24 inch)

marshbaboon

Sqaull20 wrote: »

Looks like this one

http://cgi.ebay.ie/QUAD-CORE-Q6600-8GB-500GB-2-8500GT-1GB-2GB-VIDEO-GFX_W0QQitemZ230271740754QQihZ013QQcategoryZ179QQtcZphotoQQcmdZViewItemQQ_trksidZp1742.m153.l1262

Doesnt say anything about psu, but he's selling same 750watt one with 9800gtx, i'd say it will be alright.If it dies its not the end of the world.

Pc is ok for the price only €728 shipped with 3 year warranty.

Q6600 €150
8gb ddr2 800 ram €130
1tb hard drive €110
mobo €70
dvdrw €20
psu + case €70 ( probably )
8500gt €50

Seller with 128,149 feedback with 3 year warranty, he could have done alot worse fellas.

He could have went to pc world

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-145-LT

I REFUSE to set foot in a pc world store. only had a conversation today with a guy in work and ended up selling him a pc after he tried going in there ( i have a tower sitting gathering dust thats better than what they're selling off the shelf for 400) basically when i was picking up that pc on ebay I set myself a budget of 1500 total. Knew id have to upgrade the cards, presumed the rest of it would be A ok and it is... luckily

Sqaull20

The psu should handle that card just about, I had a €20 550watt dabs value psu with no pci express 6 pin cables powering an 8800gtx and overclocked duo before and had no problems.

You can forget about sli'ing the gtx 260, unless that kind fella put a corsair or thermaltake psu in there

One card is best anyway.

PogMoThoin

marshbaboon wrote: »

thats a technicality, the clocked speed of all cores running efficiently is 9.8ghz worth of power.

Nope, its still a 2.4Ghz quad core chip. A game will only use one core as will most programs.

marshbaboon

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Nope, its still a 2.4Ghz quad core chip. A game will only use one core as will most programs.

whats the advantage of having a quad core 2.4 say over a dual core 2.8 then for gaming?

DanGerMus

marshbaboon wrote: »

whats the advantage of having a quad core 2.4 say over a dual core 2.8 then for gaming?

None, higher dual core would be better for all games.
Except for FSX it's optompised for multicore IIRC.

Would you mind linking us the pc or telling us the full spec including model of the mobo.

PogMoThoin

marshbaboon wrote: »

whats the advantage of having a quad core 2.4 say over a dual core 2.8 then for gaming?

You can have other applications running on the other cores, I often game with windows media player, antivirus scans etc running in the background and never feel a slowdown. I once even ran a game while encoding a dvd. The game will only run on 1 core, leaving the other 3 to do whatever.

Edit, I honestly cant see the point of buying a dual core with quads being the same price at the moment. Games don't support multi-cores yet, but they will, very soon.

marshbaboon

http://cgi.ebay.ie/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=230262470899&ssPageName=STRK:MEWN:IT&ih=013

that link should work. Cheers for feedback by the way, really need to rebuild my pc hardware knowledge. things have changed since the days of my good old celeron 1.2 512mb ddr voodoo 2.... lol

windows 98... what a kick in the face

marshbaboon

got the gtx 260, installed it, played through crysis in one sitting... max details... short game but the quality.......... its like sex... but for your eyes!

WellyJ

You got shafted tbh, some really bad parts in that deal

Blazer

As long as he's happy..best of luck with the pc mate.