Posted: 5/20/2008 4:54:38 PM EDT
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Looking at getting a new computer, I've had my current model since 2001 and it is showing its age. Anyway I've been reading and researching but still am confused. To much info for a simple minded person like myself. Anyway $$ does have a say in this, would like to stay under $1500 if possible. I'm not against building from stratch just leery. I've been looking at this site and put this together. My questions are: Do I need a second video card, is this going to make a big difference, same with HD. Otherwise somebody pls square me away. www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/Gamer_Infinity_8800_Pro/#configurator_top Thanks, |
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The second video card is nice, but it's better to have a single high end card, than two ok ones. The SLI or Crossfire can do a lot in some games to let you run all the eye candy and still have decent frame rates, but it's not the glorious thing they claim. You'd be better off getting the 8800 or 9800 GTX instead of a second 8800GT. The 8800 and 9800s are almost the same card, just some minor additions to the 9800. A second hard drive is also nice just so that you have more room for storage. Nothing too special there. And notice that two 500gb drives are cheaper than a single Terrabyte drive. You can get some incredible read/write speeds by using two identical drives and RAID, or you can get automatic backups (for a hard drive failure, if you mess up the software on the drive, it will be messed up on the mirror) with the second, or you can get 4 drives and have both, but for most people, it's just not worth the cost. Only two things I'd really suggest. Get a cheaper case, and use the savings for a high quality powersupply. The corsair 650 watt would be a good choice for a decent amount of money. Also a third gig or RAM wouldn't hurt anything, and is also pretty inexpensive. You'll want to take an hour or two to review the power supply, and your water cooling (I'm assuming you want this to be a very quiet machine) on various review sites to get a consensus on which ones work the best. Anandtech, Tom's Hardware, extreme overclocking, guru3d. |
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SLI/Crossfire is supported by less than half a dozen games. Honestly, build your own...this build cost me about $1200 a year ago: Xion Solaris ATX case ($60) Aspire Dark Power 600W PSU ($150) ASUS P5N-SLI mobo Socket 775 (~$75) Intel Core 2 duo E6400 2.13Ghz ($120) 4Gb Patriot DDR2 SDRAM 667Mhz ($230) SeaGate Barracuda 500Gb SATA drive ($100) eVGA GeForce 8800GTS 320mb Superclocked ($320) Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio (Gift) 2x Sony DVD-RW drives (Leftovers) Microsoft Windows Vista 64-bit OEM Edition ($120) If I was building today, I'd go with the 512mb GeForce 9600GT, a Quad Core Intel CPU and some other sound card because the X-Fi has major problems with Vista. |