I am currently gearing up to build my own PC and I was wondering if anyone would offer suggestions and/or criticisms.
I have a budget that is a bit fluid but not excessive.
I am what I would consider a hardcore gamer, play mostly MMO's and FPS games.
Anyway, enough of the boring stuff, lets get down to brass tacks.
I already received my motherboard, the Abit AN9 32x.
I also have my CPU, the AMD 64 x2 6000
I will be adding an additional WD 150g Raptor to the one from my old system and configuring for raid 0 with an external SATA drive for backups and what nots.
I will be going to the local Fryes for the Patriot 2g ddr2 pc2-6400 low latency extreme memory. I assume that ordering memory online would be a bit silly since it would be hard to make a return if it was bad.
The one place I think I run into quicksand is on the video card. For my budget and with the mobo I have ordered it would look to me that running two nVidia 8800gts 320mb boards in sli would be the better, most cost effective idea. Spending more for the gts 640 or the monster gtx/gtx ultra would wipe out what I have set aside for a LCD monitor. This is under the assumption that I would order two cards.
Is 2 320mb 8800gts cards in sli viable or would I be better off running one monster video card?
To be honest, I really want to see what this sli is all about.
Thanks ahead and, please, be gentle!
Oh and for back reference, I am currently using an old AMD 64 3000 CPU on an old Abit AV8 with an ATi x1650. Yeah, I know, dinosauric.
P.S. How does one calculate what wattage of a power supply will be needed?
I have a budget that is a bit fluid but not excessive.
I am what I would consider a hardcore gamer, play mostly MMO's and FPS games.
Anyway, enough of the boring stuff, lets get down to brass tacks.
I already received my motherboard, the Abit AN9 32x.
I also have my CPU, the AMD 64 x2 6000
I will be adding an additional WD 150g Raptor to the one from my old system and configuring for raid 0 with an external SATA drive for backups and what nots.
I will be going to the local Fryes for the Patriot 2g ddr2 pc2-6400 low latency extreme memory. I assume that ordering memory online would be a bit silly since it would be hard to make a return if it was bad.
The one place I think I run into quicksand is on the video card. For my budget and with the mobo I have ordered it would look to me that running two nVidia 8800gts 320mb boards in sli would be the better, most cost effective idea. Spending more for the gts 640 or the monster gtx/gtx ultra would wipe out what I have set aside for a LCD monitor. This is under the assumption that I would order two cards.
Is 2 320mb 8800gts cards in sli viable or would I be better off running one monster video card?
To be honest, I really want to see what this sli is all about.
Thanks ahead and, please, be gentle!
Oh and for back reference, I am currently using an old AMD 64 3000 CPU on an old Abit AV8 with an ATi x1650. Yeah, I know, dinosauric.
P.S. How does one calculate what wattage of a power supply will be needed?
