Getting ready for a PC build, need some advice!

Maybe he charges by the hour, and downloads the driver via dial-up !

LOL, sound about right!

Nah, I'm not charging him real money, I just wanted him to feel like he was getting something more out of the deal. And video card installs really don't take me an hour, normally when I do a house call, it only take my just under 30 minutes, install card, install driver, verify, check Windows stability, check for any quick updates, give the client about a 5 minute little "let's going over it" talk and get the money and go home! I think $55.00 is reasonable, I know other company's that charge double in my area for the same type of house call.

I am now super curious about something, if both the Zotac 680 GTX and my ordered eVGA 680 GTX are only 2GB's cards, and by adding the two card together it won't give me a total of 4GB's due to the math, then what will two 680 GTX's do for me? If I'm still going to be stuck at 2GB's as I would with just using one card, what will the other card add to my computing experience? If running two cards doesn't do all that much, than why do people SLi in the first place?

VRAM is only part of the card, the GPU chip is what predominantly determines the speed of the card, that's why a 2GB GTX 560 isn't nearly as fast as a 680.

Think of it like CPU/RAM, a quad core processor with 2GB RAM is going to be generally much quicker than a dual core with 2GB RAM, however there may be some situations where the 2GB RAM becomes a bottleneck and starts dragging down the system. Having 2x 680's means you have theoretically double the graphics horsepower but there may be some situations where the 2GB VRAM runs out and your performance will suffer. Some specific examples will be using lots of MSAA at high resolutions or lots of texture packs (Skyrim).

Well I understand the whole "doubling my horsepower" which is nice, just a little disturbed by the rest! So even with all the money I've dumped into this thing, and the fact that I now have two matching video cards that will run SLi and with everything else, games such as Crysis and from what slh28 is saying Skyrim won't really work maxed out!

Now I'm kind of regretting buying that extra video card last night. Seeing that it won't provide me the "wow factor" with much. I know I can scale down, dumb down and water down my video settings when it comes to things like Crysis, which will work, and probably quite well, but part of this situation has taken the wind out of my sails! For I was told a long time ago that what defines a person truly owning a monster of a computer, is if a computer can handle everything that is thrown at it, without altering anything, downgrading settings or upgrading the hardware, if it can right "out of the box" handle everything that comes it's way, than that defines what a true monster of a computer is!

But at least throw me a bone here folks, my ego is already slightly bruised, rather than something like Crysis which I will have to water down a bit, how about something like Call of Duty 4 "Modern Warfare"? From the side of the box it says it's recommended requirements for the video card is 512MB's of video RAM, how about that game, can I max it out and get my desired "wow factor" with that one?

This really shouldn't be a shock/revelation. Some games are going to be frame buffer limited (Battlefield 3 can get uncomfortably close to 100% vRAM usage with a 2GB frame buffer), some are going to limited by architecture (high levels of full screen antialiasing for example), some are going to choke on memory bus width, and more than a few are going to be CPU limited. Many games rely on the ability of the CPU to execute the instructions in a timely manner- essentially the graphics cards are sitting around twiddling their metaphorical thumbs while the CPU completes its part of the instruction for frame rendering. You mentioned Skyrim- check out the second graph of Steve's gameplay review.

CoD4 is not that graphics intensive a game. Demanding graphics are usually associated with DirectX 10 and 11 titles, where ambient occlusion, enhanced dynamic lighting and the like make more intensive use of the graphics card(s) shaders/cores

Hey Zen,

Good luck on the build, I'm doing one myself in a few week (saving the pennies right now). I noticed you're getting the H100...I was checking this out myself as it's a nice little cooler, but I decided against it after watching a few video reviews on it's noise levels and the awkward position of the fan button....I'll be really interested to hear your feedback on what it's like for you.

Anyways, can't wait for those pics

Woops, didn't mean to put a damper on things, don't worry your GTX 680 SLI rig will handle almost every game out there even at 5760x1080. But there are some specific examples of where 2GB of VRAM might start to limit the system. Have a look at some triple monitor reviews from HardOCP and Hardwareheaven, you're looking at 60fps+ average in most games, however with 4x MSAA in BF3 you'll see the benefit of 3GB VRAM on the 7970 CF against the 2GB on the 680 SLI.

But seriously you should stop worrying about your rig because it might get to the point where you're so obsessed about having the flawless system that it starts to take away your enjoyment of the game. If you play BF3 then play with 2x MSAA and just enjoy the triple monitor goodness. If you play Skyrim then don't go installing every single texture mod. For any other game (CoD 4 for example) you can just crank the settings to the max and play.

Well that's what I like to hear! COD4......maxed out! And trust me when I say slh28, you didn't put any sort of damper on things! All this is boiling down to, is that this is my first SLi styled computer system I've ever built. I've never used two video cards at once, I've always built system that uses only one GPU at a time. Yeah, I might have pieces of paper that say I'm someone in the computer field, but those pieces of paper never prepared me for an SLi system. So in essence, and being totally honest, I am very much the nooB when it comes to all this! Yeah, CPU's, no problem, motherboards.....please, RAM......in my sleep, hard drives......yawn, CD drives.......boring, power supply's.......did someone say something, but dual video cards..........running out of finger nails to bite off!

As some have said, I'll just try to relax a bit, I know for the most part this is going to all work out! I'm probably going to fire it up for the first time and be all smiles!

Also a nice side note, my three LG monitors, the RAM and the H100 CPU cooler arrived today! The motherboard and processor should be arriving tomorrow! And the Fry's.com customer account section threw out a shipping advisory. The power supply, the case, and the SSD drive and the 2TB hard drive and the blue-ray CD drive and the two blue light sticks have now been shipped.

Update:

Within the past 48 hours the remaining 4 items, such as web cam, USB hub, keyboard/mouse combo and speakers have shipped. I expect to get these items within the next two to three days. At such time, when everything is here, I'll bust out my trusty digital camera and start taking "pre" pic's of everything and some "build" pic's! I plan on this taking me the better part of a day, possibly two. Then of course after the "pre" and "build" pic's will come the "post" pic's!

Excited beyond words!

Excitement shared
make sure to keep us posted!

I can't believe that I overlooked one key and vital piece of hardware here! I'm stunned, speechless and very much in shock! I just did a quick "double check" of my on-line Fry's customer account and was dropped a huge bomb! With all the hardware going out and all those shipping advisory's, I overlooked the video card, it had not up to this point been shipped out yet. But Fry's dropped a bomb of information! It appears that upon trying to collect my video card for shipping, Fry's warehouse detected they were now "out of stock" of the eVGA card I ordered, and rather than providing me a "rain check" for the same card, someone there must had made a supervisory decision and substituted me to the next available card, which I guess was showing "in stock"! My account now shows a "substitution" I had orginally ordered the following..

EVGA SuperClocked GeForce GTX 680 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card ($509.99)

but now I'm shockingly being substituted to the following card...

EVGA 04G-P4-2686-KR GeForce GTX 680 w/ Backplate 4GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card ($529.99)

Holy crap, is this normal? Do big company's generally substitute like this? I would have at least thought that the Fry's warehouse would have at least offered me a video card in the class of cards I ordered. But it appears that Fry's won't be seriously be missing out on any of my money, the original card ran me $509.99, this new one is $529.99, Fry's I guess is willing to "eat" the $20.00 loss and fill my order as promised, and the new card as of a couple hours ago has now shipped.

I guess I'll save that Zotac GTX 680 2GB's that I had originally bought for myself from my friend, I guess I'll save it now for my Son's computer build that comes sometime in late October to early November. Not bad, for $375.00 on a used GTX 680, my Son should have no problems with it, I sure won't!

Now I just want to kick off my shoes and crank up the stereo and dance around in circles doing the dance of joy!

WOW

Now you can SLI the two and have 4GB memory, that is if I was following the comments correctly.

well. that sure was a stroke of luck now you get a sexy as HELL card with a backplate *drool* and 4GB VRAM.
That card would usually set you back around $700, so getting it for nearly $200 cheaper is a hell of a deal
seems like things are looking up for you

I don't think at this moment I need to worry myself about SLi-ing any video cards! Seeing that the new eVGA card already has 4GB's of RAM on it. The original card I ordered only had 2GB's, now I've got 4GB's on one card. Not unless SLI-ing the used Zotac GTX 680 2GB's card with the new eVGA GTX 680 4GB's card will do anything for me? I doubt it, plus adding the two card won't do anything as towards providing with a higher RAM count, I suspect the system will default to the 4GB card and only provide me that much. But some here have said something about when you SLi video cards it effectively "doubles your GPU's horsepower"! I'll think about it, plus I'm now rather happy with saving the used Zotac for my Son's up and coming build.

Well I don't know where the $700.00 price tag is coming from, seeing that after doing some digging I found the card they substituted me with on Fry's web site. It clearly has a crisp and cool $529.99 price tag.

Here it is..
http://www.frys.com/product/7234713?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

Don't worry about drooling, it looks like with Fry's right now this cheap price may be like hitting virtual "pay dirt"! Get it if you can!

well pricing in Australia may be different, for us all computer components are more expensive
and my good sir, I will continue to drool.That's a sexy card/build.

If you care so much about gpu memory go for
Sapphire Radeon 7970 Toxic Edition 6GB

This might have been something worth looking at during the "on paper" or "planning" part of the build! But the money has been spent, parts are on their way and the build will start sometime next week. But a 6GB's video card, that sounds twisted sick!

Google some benchmarks on it, it's really good!