My $800 budget gaming pc.. please help!

m0nk3ys1ms

Active Member
SC7 said:
As of right now, SLI is only supported by nVidia chipsets. SLI has been out over a year, and is well supported on Pentium 4 and AMD boards. The problem is, the main nForce4 SLI chipsets aren't compatible with Conroe as of yet. nVidia will have to get some kind of new conroe compatible chipset out to the market with SLI support.

That new chipset is the nForce 500 series.
 

bball4life

New Member
monkeysims said:
That new chipset is the nForce 500 series.
Ya but it still isn't intel supporting it, like they are with crossfire, even though amd might merge with ati. IT MAKES NO SENSE!!!
 

SC7

New Member
monkeysims said:
That new chipset is the nForce 500 series.
Yea, I head about that, but how is support of technologies such as SLI coming along from nVidia with it.
 

SC7

New Member
bball4life said:
Well ya that is always an option, still isn't sli, but a great nvidia option for that chip.
Exactly, performance of the card will be limited by having only one PCI-E x16 bus.
 

JG30

New Member
Yea I realize all this but at least it's an option until they do release a SLi board. Also if yu look on TigerDirect at there bundles with the Duo 2 chips they actually list the ASUS SLi board (P5N32-SLI SE) as part of a few packages. Either they are jumping the gun or they know for a fact they will be released soon. I'd still want the DFI board.
 
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bball4life

New Member
JG30 said:
Yea I realize all this but at least it's an option until they do release a SLi board. Also if yu look on TigerDirect at there bundles with the Duo 2 chips they actually list the ASUS SLi board (P5N32-SLI SE) as part of a few packages. Either they are jumping the gun or they know for a fact they will be released soon. I'd still want the DFI board.
Well they aren't out yet but may be pretty soon. As for the gx2's they really aren't limited that much, in fact they perform just about 10fps worse then 7900 gtxs in sli in most cases, not bad, so its really is equal to 7900gt's in sli for the most part. It probably is limited some but not much by the bus, because even a 7900gt barely maxes out a pci-e 8x slot, thats why a lot of sli boards go to 8x 8x not 16x 16x when in sli mode. So it really isn't a bad option, especially for its price compared to an sli or crossfire board with 2 7900gt's or gtx's or x1900's in crossfire.
 

SC7

New Member
Well, as long as an SLI board is conroe approved, I'd say get it. Or, if you really want something, wait it out. Don't settle for going for something not as powerfuly (AMD), just to save a month's time. I did it once, you'll regret it.
 

Adam Murray

New Member
I have decided to go with the conroe system instead. Now the only decisions I have come down to is choosing the video card. I really do not need to max out the settings on the games, I just need at least medium to high quality.

My options for about $150 are the following... (prices are total+shipping)

HIS Hightech HX80XLQ256-3TOEN Radeon X800XL IceQ II 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail (Overclock to x850xt speeds as bball4life said) $138.12
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814161165

SAPPHIRE 100106-RD Radeon X850XT 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - OEM $151.63
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102483

eVGA 256-P2-N554-AX Geforce 7600GT KO 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail $141.63
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814130017

Also, something was said about not overclocking on an intel system.. Would it be hard to overclock the X800XL that bball4life suggested?

Please let me know what video card you think I should go for, Thanks!
 

bball4life

New Member
You have trouble overclocking on intel boards, but I would probably say that x850xt, then you don't have to worry about oc'ing.
 

Dr Studly

banned
the Sapphie X850XT...


damn, there used to be a x850xt iceq II on newegg about 3 months ago... but that video card seemed to have completely disappared... i can't find it anywhere, not even ebay...
 

Adam Murray

New Member
So you guys would choose the Sapphie X850XT over the 7600GT?
The 7600GT's normal price is $165.99, but right now its $135.99 after mail in rebate..
The X850XT's normal price is $145.99.

I know you can't always compare price to performance, but I thought you guys would lean more towards the 7600GT... Ceewi1 said that the 7600GT would be better and not as power hungry. Let me know what you think.
 

bball4life

New Member
Encore4More said:
damn, there used to be a x850xt iceq II on newegg about 3 months ago... but that video card seemed to have completely disappared... i can't find it anywhere, not even ebay...
That was a nice card, so are all HIS, I still say the x850xt unless you want to save the few bucks.

Woohoo 400th post
 

SC7

New Member
JG30 said:
the intel system seems to more overclockable then people think.
The Intel chip is way more overclockable than the AMD. The graphics card is very overclockable. The problem is you cannot overclock on an Intel board. Intel boards lock overclocking.
 

JG30

New Member
SC7 said:
The Intel chip is way more overclockable than the AMD. The graphics card is very overclockable. The problem is you cannot overclock on an Intel board. Intel boards lock overclocking.

Thus another reason to wait for the new boards.
 
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