I have an idea....

[Da Viksta]

Right, my system specs are in my sig...

i was planning a massive upgrade, and i am going to get a Q9450 next month as well as new ram, but roundabout now, i am thinking of getting a new mobo for my system as well as a case since mine is falling to pieces...

I wanna spend about £300 in all this month, and i have gone for the Antec 900 case cos of the good airflow, and the price

i am however thinking of going SLI since i can get another GTS 320 for £140 inc VAT from overclockers.co.uk, and i was considering getting the Asus P5N-D motherboard because it supports yorkfield and dual X16 SLI...

I did consider moving stright to an 8800GT, however that would mean my GTS would sit around doing nothing, and to me that really isnt an option, and i think a dual GTS config would be able to kick the **** out of a single GT or a GTS 512 anyway...

my specs are below, and although getting another GTS would bottleneck my system now, it would help future proof it since this is the last upgrade i am making, before waiting about 3 years then getting a laptop for uni (im 15 now...and planning ahead xD)...

the other option for me is to opt for an X38 mobo and get a raid array of seagate 7200.11 drives (500GB) since they would fit in the same price category....

any suggestions?

PS i dont want to sell my GTS....
It served my loyally and i dont have the heart to get rid of it

 

[Vaanish]

A GT 512 would beat, or at least equal, SLi'd GTS 320, and it would be a much better solution (less heat, power consupmtion, no ****ing around with SLi profiles etc). SLi'd 320's is just not a viable option anymore.

Buy 512MB Inno3D GeForce 8800GT 8800GT-H5GTCDS from CCL - Online Retailer of the Year 2007

I would pair it to this very cheap mobo

Buy Abit IP35E Socket 775 IP35E from CCL - Online Retailer of the Year 2007

Good choice on the case.

And then you could go ahead with your raid array.

If you have an nVidia card, there is really no point in X38 unless you are an extreme overclcoker. P35 FTW.

You will have to get rid of the GTS, you can get £60-70 for it.

 

[Da Viksta]

i dunno....most of the websites i looked at seem to indicate SLI 320 would work quite well, but i will have a nice little ponder over the entire situation...

Edit: I've been doing a bit of digging on the internet, and prety much all my games scale with SLI (crysis, CoH, Bioshock, Hellgate, etc)

Also, my parents will get upset if they find out that the graphics card they bought me is worth half of what they payed for after only a few months....so thats the other reason i cant sell my GTS...

anyone have any other ideas on how i can improve my PC (mobo ideas)

also any ram suggestions that i will get for my birthday (along with the 9450) will be nice....

 

[zerodayATK]

When is your Birthday, This month? If its in a few months, Solution viable DDR3 might be to your question of ram

 

[boogey]

Might as well get a DDR3 Mobo too if you have money to spend. I read that you should expect DDR3 RAM to go down in price too, this year.

Here's the read.

bit-tech.net | DDR2 price increases while DDR3 price set to drop

 

[thirdshiftdj]

Goodluck w/ ddr3. Its really more for the extreme atm. Good ddr3 2gb kits are 4 bills. There are 1200mhz ddr2 ram out thats cheap.

 

[Da Viksta]

thanks for the DDR3 idea but to be honest i dont want to spend THAT much money, i was thinking more of some good DDR2-1066 ram...but i dont know which brand is the best....besides, my parents are the ones paying for this and they will impose a budget restriction sooner to when they want to buy it

Oh, and my birthday is 14th March

The main reason i am buying something now is that its my holidays, so i will actually have time to put everything together....on a normal school week, i have almost no free time...

now my really big question is "to SLI or not to SLI" since in SLI games, dual GTS can take on (and often beat the GTX), at the res i play at (1440x900), so that seemed a good reason to upgrade...and most of my games have been patched to work in SLI...and it would save the trouble of having to sell my old one.

As for noise/heat/power, i wont really have an issue with any of them, and the bottleneck will be gone if i get my Q9450

 

[boogey]

Oh. I thought I read you got money to spend. Must of been another user.

 

[Sora]

Well thats good you have parents willing to shell out that much money for you. Also SLI'd 8800GTS 320's will beat a single 512 yes however SLI'd 512's would wipe the floor with those though. it doesn't matter though it should serve you fine if you already have an 8800GTS and aren't planning to sell it.

 

[zerodayATK]

the SLI or NOT question is best answered by the budget question, If you have a gts already and then the budget gets smaller, you'll be fine , if you can get what you want and fit it in budget, then heck yes go SLI