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Post by AJFPain on Aug 4, 2008 1:03:00 GMT 1
i am thinking of doing a new pc. because i can not get a new graphics card to fit in my small asus barebones case 2no 9800GT 512MB GDDR3 PCI-E £105 each vs 1no GTX260 896MB DDR3 PCI-E £199.98 witch is better
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spO_on
pwning you since 1975
Posts: 1,220
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Post by spO_on on Aug 4, 2008 8:09:39 GMT 1
I think the price says it all man.
200 quid will get you a nice graphics card, plus the extra ram on the 260 will help when running Anti Aliasing at your monitors native resolution 1680x1050.
If you can afford it get the more expensive one.
Your build looks very nice apart from the power supply. 600watts might not be enough to run the more hungry graphics cards out there especially as you are buying an SLI motherboard so wish to double up graphics cards in the future. I know it says "SLI ready" but after reading all about power supplies when i bought my new grfx card (9800GTX and 630w power supply) i realised that my power supply was probably just powerful enough to cope with my system, running 2 grafix cards would cause lockups and crashes.
The power supply would probably cope with one card, but adding another in the future you may need to upgrade, especially as you arnt going to run a cheaper less powerful card.
Nice system though Pain.
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spO_on
pwning you since 1975
Posts: 1,220
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Post by spO_on on Aug 4, 2008 8:31:12 GMT 1
Just read up on your power supply, seems like it is quite powerful with 72amps on the 4 12v rails. It comes with 2 x 6pin connectors for the graphics cards, im not sure what either of those 2 graphics cards needs but i know mine needed 2 x 6pin connectors so running 2 of them you may need a splitter.
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spO_on
pwning you since 1975
Posts: 1,220
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Post by spO_on on Aug 4, 2008 10:03:27 GMT 1
The only advantage with SLI is at higher resolutions. Running games at 1280x1024 with a single card can outperform SLI in many games atm. You only see a speed increase with SLI when you start to go into 22inch 1680x1050 territory and above. As pain is running a 22inch monitor it would probably benefit him to have 2 cards, the problem being that SLI drivers are always far behind being optomised by NVIDEA and the game developer, sometimes turning off SLI and using just one card gives better results.
You have to decide whether spending 400quid on graphics is really worth it atm seeing as you may have to spend over 80 pounds on a power supply to run them, plus with graphics cards being developed so quickly nowadays, by the time you are ready to buy a second card, there are single cards that are faster and probably the same price if not cheaper than 2 of the ones you have.
PC gaming is such a minefield, but yet still better than the dark side.
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spO_on
pwning you since 1975
Posts: 1,220
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Post by spO_on on Aug 4, 2008 12:06:07 GMT 1
ATI drivers FOR ME have never worked properly. 1st ATI card i had X1650XT PRO 512MB was ok but i couldnt get the drivers to work without them crashing my system. Second card i had from ATI was the X1950PRO 512MB. The latest drivers wouldnt work at all, i got the blue screen of death every boot and had to eventually use the cd that it came with to get the card to work at all which isnt good, and it kept overheating so if your case is small and doesnt have much airflow the higher temps of ATI cards will cause it to overheat.
I agree that Nvidea is not king anymore, but far from being an Nvidea fanboy due to high prices, i have not had any problems from any of the 6 Nvidea cards i have had.
Go with what you know.
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Post by AJFPain on Aug 4, 2008 20:03:20 GMT 1
hi guys thanks for the info i only want to spend about £230 max on a graphics card ps can you use one graphics card in a sli motherboard will it work i will get the gtx 260 card i would like a small watt power supply wot size can i get away with in system below system = motherboard & cpu. 250 gb harddrive. 1 dvd rw. 1 graphics card. 2 fan in case
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Post by -=Magpie=- on Aug 4, 2008 23:06:53 GMT 1
To be honest ive never ran nvidia for about 6 years and the new ati cards are as good as anything out there just run a tad hotter .
Lu has just joined the dark side with a 4870 512mb when the x2 comes itll be the daddy well for a week . Like i said on ts any card around the 150 mark now is a good card as the markets flooded at moment witch is good for us bar the fact that you need a bigger case and on some cards more power (ur ur ur oos Tim Allen moment).
go with your gut all ways the best way ....
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spO_on
pwning you since 1975
Posts: 1,220
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Post by spO_on on Aug 4, 2008 23:16:35 GMT 1
I have a duel core cpu, a 9800GTX which needs a lot of juice, 4gb of ram, 2 hardrives, 2 DVD drives and around 6 case fans all running off a 600watt power supply. If i overclock either the cpu or the graphics card i get system crashes immediately so i know my power supply is right on its limit. My Power supplyYou can run 1 card on an SLI motherboard. Running 2 graphics cards requires a little more juice maybe a 750-850watt power supply, the more you spend the more stable it will be under load as spikes cause crashes and hard drive problems. The 260/280 range are huge Pain, make sure they fit in your case.
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Joe1965
Canaries Fan For 42 Years. OTBC
Posts: 97
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Post by Joe1965 on Aug 4, 2008 23:41:33 GMT 1
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Joe1965
Canaries Fan For 42 Years. OTBC
Posts: 97
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Post by Joe1965 on Aug 5, 2008 12:34:53 GMT 1
It's very stable and unlike many other PSU's when it says 620W thats what you get when it's under full stress. The last one I had was a 700W but when under any stress it was only pumping out 350W.
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Post by Ypnos on Aug 5, 2008 12:47:03 GMT 1
Just bear in mind that the graphics card will drop steeply in price when ATi's 4870x2 comes out. Also, I would have thought that your motherboard would support PC2-8500 (1066MHz) memory and if not then why not?
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spO_on
pwning you since 1975
Posts: 1,220
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Post by spO_on on Aug 5, 2008 18:10:04 GMT 1
Nope supports DDR2-800, but i know what you´re saying man. Prolly not cos they saved the chipset that supports DDR2-1066 for the more expensive boards in thier range. Thats not to say you couldnt overclock the ram close to that anyway.
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