ATI crossfire

[titanwolf]

Need some input good or bad!

Want to build a machine with dual core CPU and two vid cards but it seems I can just build a machine with lots of ram and a single Vid card and be set for quite sometime.

I would like to have a AMD 4400+ 2x CPU
Abit Mb
4gigs of ram
256mb video card X850xt (AGp or PCI-E?)

 

[Nitestick]

definitely go for a PCI-E system. don't bother with crossfire or SLI unless you have seriously deep pockets and a desire to squeeze every little bit of performance out of your pc no matter the cost. dual card setups do not greatly improve performance except in specific uses

 

[GrimReaper23]

get pci-e better in the long rin because it won't phase out as quick

 

[titanwolf]

Ok
dual core and Pci-E it is

 

[turtile]

DON'T get 4GB of RAM. Windows 32-bit only supports 2GB of ram and you must modify it to support 3GB. AMD system also go slower with all 4 slots installed. A 7600GT would be a good deal ($175 OCed w/ rebate).

I would get an Asus, DFI, or MSI board but you can't beat the deal on the Abit boards w/ $30 rebate.

 

[titanwolf]

forget to mention Windows 64 bit OS

I want to wait about 5 months to a year after the release of vista

 

[Apokalipse]

DON'T get 4GB of RAM. Windows 32-bit only supports 2GB of ram and you must modify it to support 3GB

no, I think XP 32-bit supports 4GB, it just runs slower if you have too much, unless you are running programs which eat up that much RAM.

I think the AMD K8 CPUs' have 48-bit memory controllers, so they can theoretically support up to 2^48 = 281474976710656 bytes (262144 GB) RAM
however most current motherboards (single socket) restrict them to a maximum of 4GB

 

[Nitestick]

yeah the restriction is via BIOS. 3gb is the maximum for 32 bit Win XP and 3GB+ for Server or 64 bit. 64 bit edition is a steaming pile of dung, aside from 4gb being excessive on its own not to mention slowing down performance, it is definitely a waste of time and money buying x64 edition just to get more ram. i am serious. i used x64 edition for about 3 days before i figured i hated it. really anything over 2gb in windows is not utilised properly (unless you hack some system files i think)