Building New Computer - Dual Monitor (SLi)

[Imperial]

Hey guys,

have been surfing the net abit for an ideal forum to make my home on where i chat IT to, well i've been away from the building schene for abit and just getting back into the home build ya pc thing again.

I've been out of it, so far people are saying PCi is now better than AGP, theres a thing called SATA for HDD and now SLi (yes it's been afew years) !

Well i have a new project on, building one that is so i've come for some help and advice

Idealy I want to run a Dual Core 64bit AMD CPU, I want two TFT 17" Monitors on board via this new SLi thing, now can i run two monitors with SLi graphics cards ? or will it just auto be put to one monitor ?

Im heavly into web design and server stuff, which is why i want two monitors to be used at the same time !


Does windows 64bit support dual montors?
Does SLi let you use both the monitors at the same time?
Whats the best motherboard to go for now?
Whats a good Dual Core CPU?
Whats a good graphics card (SLi) to go for, ideally id want to spend no more than £150 on each card !

I've been looking at buying on ebuyer.co.uk do you know any other PC places that are a good price, i'm looking at the £1300 region of price ! And yep im from the UK, explains the pounds sign hehe

Hope my description is in depth enough for you guys
All the best

Matt

 

[Nitestick]

SLI is a waste of money. it does not give anywhere near double performance. you do not need SLI for dual monitors, you can get a card with 2 vga outputs and use that. i reccomend a DFI NF4 LanParty Ultra-D or SLI-D motherboard. for the cpu get either a Athlon X2 3800+ or 4400+. if you plan to overclock go for an Opteron 165.

edit: by the way SLI isn't new. it been around since the 90's but since then it has been re-invented. back in the 90's though it was little known

 

[Imperial]

Cheerz for the information mate

Any places online to get the GCard at a good price, also what is the best motherboard on the market these days?

 

[Kadahaf]

actually it gives closer to 50% better performance, and if you have the money to blow it's worth it

here goes...

pci-e is better than agp, as it can give more power to the card and gives more bandwidth to be taken up

sata uses round cables as opposed to the ide ribbons, and can transfer faster

sli uses two cards and projects onto one or more monitors

a good sli card would be the 6800gs, and the best motherboard eepends on what you're going to do

I might have missed something so just tell me

 

[Nitestick]

it's really hard to say what the best motherboard is but i would say the LanParty SLI-DR Venus. if you missed it i already reccomended 2 motherboards

i reccomend a DFI NF4 LanParty Ultra-D or SLI-D motherboard

i forgot to mention that it is not "PCI" that is better than AGP it is "PCI-Express" or "PCI-E" for short. part of the difference is it runs on a 100mhz bus instead of the old 33mhz pci bus, basically they completely reinvented pci. i don't know of any UK sites you can buy things but for the video card you will want no less than a 6800gs. i would reccomend the new 7900gt though.

 

[Kadahaf]

a 7900gt would be great if it cost 150 pounds...a dfi is great if you over clock and want to pay 150+ for a mobo. I own two EpoX motherboards and neither have failed me, and I overclocked both. One is a 754 socket, and the other is a 939 socket and they are both very stable. since both were sub 100$ I went ahead and got them. I don't know if EpoX makes Sli motherboards.

 

[Imperial]

So far im looking at a

Graphics Card: 6800gs and above or 7900gt ideally
Mobo: DFI NF4 LanParty Ultra-D

I presume the 6800gs or 7900gt comes with the Dual VGA output ? and also the mobo comes with the PCI-E and SLi ?

any you see at www.ebuyer.co.uk regarding graphics cards?

Whats best then you think

2 x £150 Sli Graphics Cards

or

1 x £200 ish Graphics card

 

[Nitestick]

the Ultra-D just has PCI-E. the SLI-D has SLI. just get an upper range single card rather than two cards. unless you are going to run extremely high resolutions you will not see significant benefit from SLI. yes most 6800gs's and 7900gt's if not all should have dual video outputs

 

[john3]

a good website for the UK try,

kustompcs.co.uk, not sure wat the ending is......lemme check
yeah its kustompcs.co.uk

Do not get SLi if you not willing to spend more than 150 pounds per card. here are my suggestions.

7900 GT
http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/acatalog/info_5352.html

CPU
http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/acatalog/info_5611.html
or 3800+ if you wanna pay less, its still good enough for gaming and other **** as long as its Dual Core

DFI Lanparty UT Ultra-D
Kustom PCs doesnt have that.

PSU
i hear good things about TAGAN but see what others you can get
http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/acatalog/info_1729.html

HDD should be SATA, Case should have good Airflow. Monitors, if you can afford it, can be a Viewsonic or Samsung Syncmaster. make sure their response time is below 8ms. of if you want you can have the gaming monitor lower than 8ms and the other at 8ms i guess.

 

[aliasaid]

why is it if you choose sli its 150 per card and 200 for single card? you'd get better performance from 2 150 cards i'd say..so to be fair, you should allocate 300 for single card!! the card that john3 posted is definitely a good one. (one of the best performance / price)