Hey everyone! The time has come for me to get a new computer. I need help picking out a mobo, cpu, and ram. I am new to the overclocking scene and my first instinct when I was picking my parts was to get the newest / fastest parts. But after reading around the internet I got the feeling that you get better performance from buying lesser hardware and overclocking it to the more expensive stuff. Basiaclly I am looking for the best out of the box performance with no modification to it, or very little overclocking (running on air) that I can get for my computer. The only things I want are for it to be an intel chip, 4gb of ram, and SLI capable mobo. Here is what I picked let me know if you would change anything. Keep in mind this is a gaming machine. CPU: Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 Kentsfield 3.0GHz Mobo: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130080 Ram: OCZ Platinum 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Dual Channel 7-7-7-20 I guess my biggest question is the ram. Out of the box will that DDR3 perform better then a low timing DDR2 stick? Anyways sorry for the noobness, thanks for the help.
It wouldn't matter anyway, because there is no SLI mobo that supports DDR3. Personally though, I think SLI is basically a bragging rights thing. It doesnt make sense to upgrade from single card to dual cards, only to build with dual cards in the first place, because by the time a single card system needs an upgrade, the next gen cards will already be performing as well as that SLI config would, for the same price or less. I experienced the phenomenon first hand when I built a system with a 6800GS and SLI mobo. At the end of the day, by the time could use SLI for a real world performance boost, I would have been better off just buying a 7 series card, which would have given me the same performance boost or better, have costed about the same as another 6800GS, and would have consumed less power and taken up less space in my system. So there you have it. GuitarBizarre's verdict: SLI is only worth a damn if you build with two cards in the first place.
Pretty much, SLI is really only worth bragging rights as said. Currently a single 8800GTX can handily play every game, and by the time you would benefit from 2 GTXs, there will be something better out to spend your money on. A good P35 motherboard would be a great choice for that system, but I would drop the QX6850 for something like a Q6600 and just overclock that. Saves you about $1200 on the CPU that could be put into savings for an upgrade later once new stuff comes out.
