Opinions wanted- help me choose!

[rbgerrish]

Hi Folks,

I'm looking to buy a new machine, and would love to hear peoples thoughts on the 2 machines I'm looking at, both are about $1900.

1)

-Xblade case w/ 450 watt PS
-Athlon 64 FX 55 CPU
-Asus A8V Deluxe Mobo
-Radeon X800XT Platinum edition

OR

2)

-Xblade case w/ 500watt see through PS
-Athlon 64 3500+
-Asus nforce4 SLI Mobo
-(2) Geforce 6800GT 256mb PCI express video cards

Both share these attributes:

-1gb DDR 400 (512 x 2)
- (2) Seagate 80gb ata 150 8mb cache in RAID 0
-16x DVDROM
-SB live 24bit 7.1 sound card

Machine will do equal parts Gaming and 3D modeling/Photoshopping/Digital Video editing. I'd love to hear thoughts on any or all of the components I've selected. I'm basically trying to choose between Current Fastest AMD bliss or the future with PCI-express + SLI...

Many thanks,
ryan

 

[Echo_]

what is a 6800 gt 156mb card?

 

[rbgerrish]

Oops, that was 256. I changed it. Thanks!

 

[FoxyLoxy]

can you get the FX-55 or a amd64 4000+ (which is about the same) and only one gfx card for now? And is that dvd-rom a burner or just a rom like you said? dvd burners are cheap you should spring one of those. PSU's arent too expensive either and maybe youd want a 550 or something. (especially if you get sli). but it would be nice to have sli and pci-ex capability for the future.

 

[gaara]

Here's what I would do if I were in your situation. I would buy a FX-55 for futureproof purposes, that proccesor will be a really, really good proccesor for at least another year, and depending on what you plan on doing, can provide good use for another 2 or 3 or even 4 years down the road.

Next, get the nforce4 SLI board, but only get one of the 6800GT's, you probably won't find any lag or poor performace in anything with even one of these cards. Then, when a later time comes, you can add another 6800GT in SLI, or even two newer cards if you desire. The SLI board once again provides futureproofing.

Go with at least a 500 watt power supply.

 

[rbgerrish]

Thanks for your thoughts so far folks! I will look into getting a faster AMD and just 1 geforce. I agree, it would be nice to have the PCI express and SLI tech for the future.

Ryan

 

[rbgerrish]

Alright, Here's an alternate setup:

-500watt PS
-Athlon 64 4000+
-Asus Nforce4 SLI mobo
(1) geforce 6800GT

The other 'shared' items are the same. Is Corsair XMS high performance memory a lot faster than Geil value ram?

I'd love to get the FX 55, but that's too far over budget..

thanks,
ryan