welp, it's upgrade time again... the main home pc is hosed :(
i KNOW we've got to have our share of pc upgrade nerds - myself included heh

i definitely wanted to go SLI. so my questions:

-i was wondering if i should wait for the nforce4 SLI x16 mobos to become available (dude, i'm not getting the dell) or if the regular nforce4 sli setup will be fine

-more importantly though, i read conflicting posts on whether or not the geforce 6xxx and 7xxx series still have crash issues with eq2 - is anyone running them?

-any thoughts on the future ati sli setup?

-in the past i've usually gone with asus, but i'm thinking about going msi or gigabyte, does anyone have opinions/experience regarding them?

I believe there are some now 16x. But you know what, there will prob be no big difference.

As for Geforce cards, I think it comes down to how the computer is set up. I have a 6800 GT and have no problems with it at all. Now as for SLI with EQ, may come with some issues here.

Personaly I would get the 7800 GTX as one card is faster than 2 6800 GT and sometimes Ultras in SLI. I would get a board that is SLI but get one card for the time being. Don't mess with SLI at this time if you can help it, still new and progressing.

My self, can't stand ATI, never have and they are having issues right now with EQ and VPU Errors. Their SLI config right now seems to be all talk, but untill more testing come out we wil lhave to see. The numbers on paper and real time apps show different results.

Motherboards, Asus is king as they tend to be the most stable boards out there. I also like Abit. But I don't it really doeesn't matter to much as long as it is a known brand. The difference will be the features on the board.

In the end what will give you the best performance is the type of Memory you get, the CPU (AMD chips are faster with games big time than Intel), and Video card. New SATA II Drives are starting to hit the market so this will affect speed also some.

i was thinking of going with 2 6600GTs, i can get em for $140 each and DirectX 9 performance seems better than 1 7800GT.
but you make a good argument for getting one better card. because the 2 6600GT setup would mean a) upgrading would involve throwing away both cards instead of just popping in a second one and b)current sli issues on eq2 may not have been completely fixed yet... so i'm kinda liking a single 6800GT or 7800GT atm.

btw, since eq2 is basically the only game i play, which benchmark do you think would be most applicable? farcry? 3dmark 2005?

I find this a crock! I can't see how 2 6600GT is better than one 7800GT. Have any reviws on this and what they tested?

The 6600 has only 8 pipes where the 7800 GT has 20 pipes. I go with the 7800GT my self. If I had the cash to spend I get the 7800 GTX.

Have to look at ALL benchies and many testers. Have to look over the many teche sites that do testing. SOme even include EQ as far as performance, such as HardOCP.

I don't put anything on my EQ pc if I can. The less stuff on it, the better. In fact I am going to soon do a new install with XP totaly chopped! will be removing everything and anything I can that isn't needed by XP. Remove all the drivers, remove Messenger, Paint, Printers, all that good stuff. THe less, the better it can perform.

As translated through Cyco's eyes:

thanks cyco, very helpful! :rolleyes: thread hijackers... pffft

jem,
i usually stick to anandtech and tomshardware for benches. here's a link comparing the 6600 gt sli to 6800 using 3dmark:
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/2...ml#3d_mark_2005

and here's the 6800 to 7800:
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/2...800_gtx-13.html

i'll usually run 1280 x 1024 w/o aa/af

so it seems i'm still leaning towards the 6800gt...

i was also thinking of skimping on the proc atm and upgrading later. have no fear, i'll be going 2gb on memory ;) but since i won't be multi-tasking while EQing, i figure it may be a waste going dual-cores on the cpu. thoughts?

Nice attempt to disarm my hijack!

Now really, wtf is all that?