I'm trying to pick a sound card and a graphics card for my current build in progress and was hoping for some advice from your collective grey matter For the graphics cards I can't choose between 2 * Sapphire OC 4890 @ 390.48 from Scan or 2 * Asus 275 @ 375.76 from Scan (don't fancy the Pallit exhausting into my case) I definitely want 2 smaller cards linked after this months buyers guide claiming "dual GPU cards like the Radeon HD 4870 X2 and the GeForce GTX 295 couldn't hold a candle to a pair of Nvidia's mid range cards in SLI" Now in my head the pros and cons of each are that the 4890 can't fold, is quite hot and noisy, but I'll be honest I wear the red colors when it comes to picking a graphics card, plus its only very slightly slower. As for the 275, I get folding, peace and quiet, and is it worth the extra money? I don't know the how well SLi and CrossFire scale comparatively, anyone who does? Also how hot is "quite hot" from for the 4890, I don't want mass heat dumped into my case particularly. For the sound card it's between Asus Xonar D2X @ 93.15 from Scan or Creative X-Fi Titanium Pro @ 100.15 from Scan Now I know there general consensus is creative equals poor driver support, but I plan to run Win7 on my new build, and in this case the X-Fi does have 7 drivers out where as the Xonar doesn't. I don't fancy waiting till mid October to have proper quality audio coming out of my computer even if that means settling for a 'slightly' worse card. My audio collection is 6,000 FLAC's + 12,000 V0's playing through Logitech Z-2300's so quality is everything here, oh and the PC does have a blu-ray drive so hi-def audio is required there too. Can anyone pick out of those? Oh and if anyone wants to dream up something entirely different, my gfx budget is 400 and my audio budget is 100, give or take a wee bit if somethings amazing. Cheers in advance guys.
ASUS Xonar will give you superior sound quality over the X-Fi. Maybe Creative has Win7 drivers... but banning people and deleting forum post for "making stuff up" when you post legit problems that Creative doesn't like, is no go for me (ie: the crackle and pop X-Fi's did with about any new motherboard chipsets release after the first X-Fi) Beside, the drivers sucks. On my desktop computer (see signature), Vista boots in 5 bars, but the millisecond you install X-Fi drivers, make that 18 bars at best, and you can any tweaks in the world and it won't help, unless you uninstall the drivers. Beside, Win7 and Vista drivers architecture are nearly identical. Vista drivers should work under Win7. It sure does for me on my desktop and Dell latitude E6400 laptop.
What resolution will you be gaming at? Anything less than 2560x1600, and these cards are overkill. If you feel that you really need the graphical horsepower, the GTX 275 SLI setup is definitely the way to go over the pair of 4890s. +1 on the Xonar.
Gaming @ 1920, and I appreciate its overkill, but my last few computers have all been a bit half arsed and lasted only a 9 months to a year before the performance has dropped off. This one I want to last me 2 years until the end of uni As for the 275's would it be worth the extra little bit of money to get the BFG OC one's from Novatech?
I plan to watercool it and I just want to build it and leave it really, so adding a second one later and re-doing the water cooling to match I'm just not up for. Plus I want it to beat the crap out of assassins creed II in November
Dual 275's will Do 1920x1200 Now, but no way in hell in 2 years. I've found the 275's Perfect Res on its own is 1680x1050, just starts to struggle with FC2 and Crysis.
Blah >.< Well I'm off gambling tonight and if all goes to plan I'll come back with enough for dual 295's, if it doesn't I might have to seriously consider a Gefore 3 Ti
