PCIe Graphics Cards

[anonymous-user]

I'm speccing up a machine to build for myself. Will probably be doing a bit of gaming, but mostly development and photoshop stuff.

Having decided on a Gigabyte K8NXP motherboard I'm going to go for the SLI version as it's only a couple of quid more.

So, as I was originally thinking of a GeForce 6600GT 128Mb PCIe card, but am now wondering, which would I be best going for?

One £200-250 card (6800GT or X800XT or similar), or 2 £100 ish cards running in SLI (6600GT or X600XT)?

Other than this question, what are regarded to be the better chipsets and board manufacturers these days?

[arcturus]

There was a review on this very issue in one of my magazines recently. I'll dig it out.....

[HarryW]

we've got the X600XT pci-e runnin on its own on a p4 3.2 running DDR2 ram

[squirrelz]

I believe 1x 6800GT is about the same performance as 2x 6600GT, but there's much less complication. The drivers have to specifically support each game for SLI (unless they've now fixed that), and certain things are broken in SLI mde.

I'd go for the 6800GT mate.

Edit to say - or the X800, both good cards.

>> Edited by squirrelz on Saturday 14th May 13:43

[viper_larry]

PC Pro did some tests a month or two back and concluded that 2 of the lesser cards is roughly equal to one of the more powerful.

I'm going the same route as you, but I'd suggest buying the 6800 and leave a slot spare. Then in 12 months time, you simply add another when they are cheap and double your graphics capability

[.Adam.]

If you want to utilise the SLI mode, you will have to go with the Nvidia card, the ATI doesn't do SLI. I've brought a 6800GT, which costs the same as 2x6600GT's, but also gives me the opportunity to upgrade with another 6800GT when the prices drop. I think that 1x6800GT performs better than 2x6600Gt as well.

[anonymous-user]

Excellent stuff. Thanks guys.

1x6800GT it is.

[shad_blade]

the sli solution works best i've done loads of benchmarks with the nvidia chipsets and i've been well impressed. some of the m/b's i've been trying them on have been holding 2x p4 3.4/1mb/800 with 2gb of pc 3700. i'm starting to play with a dual opteron system in the morning check out a company called boston.co.uk they do the bizz...