I'm thinking of upgrading my current system and have been looking at these options. Option 1 keep current mobo and either get a E8500cpu or Q6600 then upgrade video cards to the 8800Gt. Option 2 buy 780I mobo, get the Q9450cpu and upgrade cards to 8800gt. Option 3 buy a P35 or X38 board , the Q9450 cpu and one good video card if SLI or Crossfire is not really worth the money.Please feel free to tell me what you think and why. Thanks to all who help and I wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
It depends on what you plan on using your computer for. Sounds like it's basically for gaming, in which case I'd go with option 1 or 2. But the price difference between the two are huge. What's your currrent mobo? Because the 780i chip board is probably going to cost a bundle. It's not even out yet.. And why get a 780i chip board instead of 680i? 680i is mounds cheaper and still supports the full SLI. 780i simply supports three card configurations which obviously will bring alot of technical difficulties. Other than the extra pci-ex bandwidth the difference is minimal. Luckily for most, right now it looks like the 780i and 780a will both still support DDR2. Personally I think the chipset is just a marketing scheme. 780a is a completely worthless chipset that Nvidia is putting out to try to get into ATI's market, and 780i support is going to be horrible due to drivers, ect. Another issue is the actual SLI'ing of the card. AMD Spyder configurations are possible because each card has two bridge ports. Most Nvidia cards have only got one.. So I don't know if they are going to make the SLI bridge cover all three, but that would have to come with the mobo as the PCI-ex slot locations may differ between boards.. It just seems like alot of trouble for Nvidia to make more money, lol. Picture of single SLI port: Newegg.com - Computer Parts, PC Components, Laptop Computers, Digital Cameras and more!
i'd offer you to wait because the brand new geforce 9 series in on their way and will be in stores about the end of 2008 Feb. so there will be a discount on 8 series high end cards no need to limit yourself to a 8800gt and coming to the other case, wait for the new cpu's again because phenom's price range will seriously drop intel's range too so the best choice is option 4 : wait for a while
