Buying a new crazy sick PC, opinion required?

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Right - and the motherboard he chose was the ASUS Striker II Formula 780i SLI. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that a tri-sli board? =P

Also, SLI boards are not all expensive, my current one cost about US$60-70 ($150AU) - for an SLI system, I'd hardly consider that expensive. I can get another model up for about an extra $50 US, so they're not all "quite expensive".

Depends how much you wanna spend.
 
I think it's a good idea that he got an SLI mboard, even though he's not using SLI now, next year when he may need a little boost he can just buy another v-card and have that SLI enabled, and more games will prolly be supporting it too.. my 2cents ;] the 9800gx2 is SLI right? hehe
 
mikeaaron33 said:
I think it's a good idea that he got an SLI mboard, even though he's not using SLI now, next year when he may need a little boost he can just buy another v-card and have that SLI enabled, and more games will prolly be supporting it too.. my 2cents ;]

Meh, or, when he starts maxing out his VPU he can eBay it and buy a new top of the line VPU. That'd probably bring more performance for around the same price in cards, and, they'll potentially save a lot now on the motherboard.

mikeaaron33 said:
the 9800gx2 is SLI right? hehe

A single 9800GX2 does not require a motherboard to support SLI, no.
 
fullmetalvegan said:
I also don't understand why you're so set on the 9800 GX2.

Here in Australia, they cost about $800+. For around $600 you can get two 8800 GTS for SLI; and two 8800 GTS are equal/better than a 9800 GX2 in different games. So it's paying extra money for almost no performance gain at all.

Why waste the money?

e.g.
http://bp2.blogger.com/_veswGS4uNJQ/R--I0yCG8PI/AAAAAAAACWA/AubI68HuKBA/s1600-h/compile.gif

Well the good reasons are 1: No it doesnt cost 800$ here it costs 619$. 2: 2 8800GTS's would be roughly the same price. 3: the 9800GX2 doesnt require sli and you just have 1 graphic card. 4: In 6 months i could still sell the 9800GX2 for like 400-500$ on ebay and get whatever new tech is out at that time.

It's just much simpler with the 9800GX2 and even if its 25-50$ more expensive than 2 8800GTS's i find the new features and technology worth it.
 
Thats basicly what zenosincks said.

I think that the 9800GX2 is probably not worth the money and neither is SLI'ing but it is the most powerfull single card solution so... i gues you could go with it.

I think its only $550
 
1. No **** it doesn't cost $800 there, I never said it'd cost that much for you. I said that's how much it costs here, and US$ is also in equivalent value. $620 = $700 AU etc. So the price comparison is the same.

2. Two 8800 GTS are not the same price, I just checked newegg. You can get two 8800 GTS for $460US. Seems much cheaper than your $620 GX2.

3. No it doesn't require SLI mobo, but that point is irrelevant, because the motherboard you picked is an SLI motherboard. So you've chosen a SLI board, so your point is redundant in this circumstance.

4. I doubt it'd sell for that much in 6 months time second hand when better technology is out, but yes you can do that.

I don't see what new features it offers that you're so impressed with? It doesn't bring anything new to the table. Technology benchmarks arent impressed with it, I'd say you're just interseted in having one for prestige rather than performance.

Buuut it doesn't matter. For price:performance the GX2 is terrible, but it's not my money, so go for it.
 
SLI performance scaling isn't that great due to driver issues with some games and apps. The 9800GX2 doesn't have any such issues. Also, the Hybrid Power mode on the aforementioned card puts the GPUs in a low-power state when watching a video or transferring files etc. This is not possible on an SLI setup.
 
What games do you speak of? I run SLI, no gaming problems at all. Scales in literally double the FPS rate in CoH, F.E.A.R. etc, I'd say you're speaking from theory/rumours rather than any tengible results. All benchmarks show the SLI configuration doubling FPS soo SLI runs fine. CrossFire has driver issues, NVIDIA SLI is very decent.

Those extra featues, meh big deal, hardly warrants the extra money.
 
Scaling is going to be dependent on application. Some applications are more limited by pixel fillrate than others. Using higher levels of AA can dramatically increase the pixel fillrate requirement which will increase quality significantly and not affect performance much on CPU limited titles. Look here for how much drivers can boost SLI performance scaling significantly.
 
I really dont care much for 100$ more, the good thing is that i have 1 Card with some new features and not 2 of them. Either way it's the same thing but i just feel better with the 9800GX2 for some reason.
 
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