scratch build

[TRYP]

I am waiting on some new stuff i ordered....

Mo-Bo: Asus P5N32-SLI Deluxe NVIDIA Socket 775 ATX
CPU: P4 640 w/ HT 3.2GHz
RAM: Kingston 2x512Mb 667MHZ 512MB DDR2
HDD: Maxtor 7200 rpm 180 gig

My question is.. what type of grafix card(s) should i get?
Two 256Mb cards on the SLI or one 512 Mb card?

oh..any suggestions on a PC Case?
Thx
-tryp

 

[paparazi]

SLI graphics card implementation is primarily for gaming systems.
Perhaps you could explain what you want the PC to do?

Because you have an SLI motherboard you are best leaving yourself the option to fit the second card in the future so go Nvidia.
My personal favourates at the moment are:
For middle end performance the 256mb 7600GT and
the 7900GT 256mb(best price/performance) on higher end. These are both gaming cards but would be fine in a work station as well.
Don't get too hung up on the amount of memory a graphics card has, memory in basically a temporary place for the rendoured images to be stored, the GPU on the other hand is the engine that does the work, so the analogy that a card with 512mb is somehow twice as powerful as one with 256 is simply not true.
Both the cards I chose use the fastest DDRIII memory, both have 256mb which is plenty for all but the highest resolutions where the extra rendouring storage offered by a 512 version will have only a slight advantage.
Martin

We like members to GIVE and not just TAKE.
Participate and help others.

 

[TRYP]

i am considering utilizing the SLI configuration...
though buying 2 grafix cards is costly

would two cards literally double the GPU speed or will some processing power be lost?

confused,
-tryp

 

[paparazi]

TRYP
Well two cards don't mean double the power thats for sure.
Look at in game frame rates between single cards and the same but SLi

http://tomshardware.co.uk/2005/12/02/vga_charts_viiiuk/page16.html

And of course this is all relative as there is know advantage at all if the game isn't written to take advantage of SLi in the first place.
Much like dual core CPU's, the software application has to be written to utilize the processors capabilities otherwise the software only uses the one core.

Ultimately though, the very fastest gaming rigs use multiple GPU's, SLi or even Quad GPU systems

This is a nice explaination of SLi

http://www.slizone.com/page/slizone_learn.html

Martin


We like members to GIVE and not just TAKE.
Participate and help others.