Hi I am planning to upgrade from this: AMD Athlon XP 2500+ ASUS A7V8X-X 768Mb Crucial pc2700 RAM Zalman 7000B CPU Cooler Western Digital 40Gb IDE Hard Drive To something allong the lines of this: ASUS A8N-SLi AMD Athlon 64 3200+ OEM 1GB Corsair TWINX pc3200 160GB Maxtor Diamondmax 2 x 128M Asus PCI-E EN6600GT Zalman 7000B CPU Cooler This is past the idea stage and on to the planning stage. I am going to use the Coolermaster centurion 5 that I already have and modify it to meet my specifications. I am thinking of upgrading to water cooling later possibly using a Coolermaster ALC-U01. I hear they are awesome! Check this out! http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews/review.php?dXJsX3Jldmlld19JRD05NDUmdXJsX3BhZ2U9Mg== I think the costs will be as follows: ASUS A8N-SLi £100.76 AMD Athlon 64 3200+ OEM £123.75 1GB Corsair TWINX pc3200 £131.47 160GB Maxtor Diamondmax £58.57 128M Asus PCI-E EN6600GT £153.33 128M Asus PCI-E EN6600GT £153.33 If anyone has any suggestions, price updates or other info please let me know what you think.
until it gets to the modding stage with some concrete work and pictures, this thread will live in the modding forum a single 6800GT is a better option than a couple of 6600GTs imo, and at a later date you will be able to pick up another 6800GT for peanuts for a quick and easy video upgrade
2x 6600gt out performs the single 6800 for sure. But the idea of the second 6800 later on is a 50% thing. You need exactly identical cards for it and you definetly won't need to upgrade your 2x6600gt soon. So in the future you don't know what can come. That's because of the performans and that it's just more cool And the second thing is that when you will buy the next 6800 in the future they might be so out of date that the 2x6800 isn't worth anything anymore. Pc parts and systems upgrade so quickly right now that in 2-3 years there will probably be a single card that easily out performs the dual 6800. Maybe even sooner. Myself I would probably go for a single 6800 Ultra. Then maybe in the future upgrade to dual or just get a new single because by the time you will need to upgrade a 6800 Ultra there will be so many new and better cards out that.... But for this you will need much money and with low money the 6600gt would probably be a better choice because it has more bang for buck.
no dual 6600gts do not out perform a single 6800gt so a single 6800gt is better along the lines of future development unless your budget is tight then get a single 6600gt then get a second one later on.
i said 6800GT, which outperforms dual 6600GT in the majority of cases (and would be cheaper than the two cards) you really shouldnt get two seperate cards just for the sake of using SLI, especially if it means spending more money and sacrificing performance from a single, faster card, like a 6800GT. and anyway, when you have the need for more graphics oomph (thats a technical term) then 6800GTs will be a *lot* cheaper and you can simply drop another in
minimal, I am not sure that you are completely correct. Check out this review at Anandtech. Depending on your personal requirements, the 2x6600GT may be perfect. But even this article supports the get the 6800GT now and upgrade later instead of 2x6600GT's. http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2284 I agree and disagree with what is being said here. Agree, a single card now with the possibility of upgrading to SLI later is a great idea. Disagree, the availability of a matching card in the future may be questioned, cost of 2x6600GT is lower than Single 6800 GT with 256MB. The reason the 6800GT has to have 256 is because that is what you will have with 2x6600GT Just my .02 MatrixOps
Just what I was thinking. When you have 2x 6600GTs in SLI, you still only have 128MB of memory effectively - they both store the exact same information.
£280 is the cheapest ive seen a pair of 6600GTs go for and £276 is the cheapest ive seen a pci 6800GT, so theres really not an awful lot in it if you have 2x128MB 6600GTs you will actually only have 128MB of useable video memory as its contents are mirrored on each card edit: bloody hell, beaten down by an entire 5 mins on that tidbit of information, im such a n00b
pwn3d oh, if you want SLI for the sake of SLI then you're just falling victim to marketing. Dual 6600GTs are an upgrade path, not an improvement over a 6800GT, and dual 6800GT/Us are a way to get the best performance with a price.
Guys to put this argument to rest I have already decided that I will but a single ASUS EN6600GT and another within a mont due to my lack of budget. Incidentally if anyone wants to buy any of my current parts, that would help me get this done quicker. My prices are: -snip- Sorry mate, we have a for sale forum for selling things, and I'm afraid that you need 75+ posts and to have been here for at least a month to use it, you may think its sucks but its just the way things work - Mister_Tad
Mister_tad Where did you get the information that the memories will be mirrored? I find that to be interesting. I haven't seen that mentioned in the nVidia SLI articles I have read. Plus, to me, it really doesn't make much sense to mirror graphics memory between the two cards. confusing. MatrixOps
Must. Get. More. Oomph. Both of the cards have to be exactly the same don't they? Same drivers obviously, same bios, same colour. Is upgrading the bios on the gpu (assuming that the second card has some sort of bios revision) something that an idiot like me can do? I mostly try to avoid fiddling with bios stuff for fear of idiot related breakage. Pete
for two seperate cards to co-operatively render the same scene they must both have access to the same memory, since it is impractical to have one card gets bits from the others memory and vice-versa, the contents of memory are mirrored on each card so that each GPU has access.
You are correct, the cards must share a certain amount of information to render an image correctly. But, to say that all of the memory is used for mirroring would be incorrect. According to the nvidia site, both gpu's get the same geometry and texture information, but do not share frame buffers. Each gpu has its own frame buffer. Thus, it seems, we are both partially correct. Some of the data needed by the gpu's is mirrored, thus 2x128MB 6600GT's does not equate to 256MB of video memory. But, nor is it merely 128MB, due to the fact that geometry and texture info does not use all of the cards memory. Thanks for your input, it made me research the topic more and learn something new. MatrixOps
I have a minor problem in that I want a side window and the window for my current case (the coolermaster centurion 5(shown below)) is in short supply and is expensive where it can be found. So I plan to mod my current case by adding a sidewindow and possibly a 120mm fan at the top. If you use your imagination you will see that this picture refers roughly to what I want to do with my case, Let me know what you think about the window.
