I'm looking for a video card around $600, or should I go with the SLi route? And if I did go the SLi route, which video cards are there?
for 680 you can get two 6800GTs which are overclocked to ULTRA levels easily, i think thats the best offer, unless you want to get a single GT or Ultra and upgrade later to Sli Geforce 7s or buy another card, i don't recommend getting ati yet if you want the fastest available on the market now, unless you're getting a single card now then u might as well go with the non sli capable X850XT but hey, Ati is releasing their dual gpu chipset soon in a month or two, but still for gaming go with nvidia 6800GTs,GT,Ultras, or Ultra
I totally agree with zRock, with that budget a single card would be a waste, though I'd say wait till this summer till the prices drop on the current hardware and both companies revamp their line.
ATi's MVP setup looks promising, but we don't know how it'll actually play out, so for right now, nVidia all the way. I know for certain you won't be able to do SLI with your current rig. PCIe (PCI Express) is not backwards compatible with AGP or PCI slots. You'll also need to get a motherboard based on the nForce 4 SLI chipset, like the DFI LanParty NF4 SLI-DR or Asus AN8-SLI.
Yeah, I'm planning on getting a new computer for this. So basically, I buy 1 6800GT now and a SLi compatible mobo I can later get 1 more 6800GT? Also, does it have to be the same card to be put in, or Ultra now and maybe a GT later? "just an example"
Not quite. You'll have to have two 6800GT's or 2 6800 Ultras (6600GT's also work). You also need to make sure they have the same VGA BIOS version (the video card's BIOS)...in otherwords, you probably want to buy them at the same time. You could go with a 6600GT---which can definitely handle things pretty well---and then wait until the 6800GT's are available at a cheaper price. One thing about SLi: You'll need a fat PSU. Most people are using the PC Power & Cooling 510 SLI power supply, and that runs around $200 (or more). There's also the Enermax EG701AX, and one other one that's on nVidia's SLI okay power supply list. These things do take up a huge amount of power, so you want to be ready to go. You definitely can't go cheap in the PSU department (not that you'd want to).
Ok, I probably can't go the SLi route, is gonna cost way too much, $200+ for mobo, $200+ for power, $680 for vid. cards, just gonna run me too much. Since I've decided to go non-SLi, should I go AGP or PCI-E. I know the AGP is cheaper, but don't know if I should go with the newer technology like PCI-E.
Personally I've never had any problems with AGP cards at all so my motto has always been to stick with what works. :good:
Well actally you can get a nice SLI 'board for between $160 but I realize that's not going to help much, you could save up, and as it's been said, wait for prices to drop or buy the board, 1 6800GT, and a nice power supply and by the time you can afford the next the price will have fallen a good amount most likely.
If you think that later on you might want to do the SLI thing, yes, buy an SLI motherboard...the only exception to this is the DFI NF4 Lanparty Ultra-D. DFI found out how to make the NF4 Ultra chipset into an SLI chip. The end user simply has to connect two contact points on the NF4 Ultra chip to get the SLI part for free. However, nVidia found out and made it harder to do the mod. The other thing is that, if the mod works, you'll need to find a third party to sell you the SLI board.
i agree wit big b, and you don't have to give away 200 on a PSU a 130$ thermaltake on xoxide is sli approved 500W and modular
http://www.xoxide.com/slicertified.html Those are the only nVidia SLI certified PSU's out there, but the amps on that modular Thermaltake 500W PurePower has some nice amperages on the 12V rails.
