dhw200 said:
But is SLi really worth the investment? an SLi system is $800 at least by itself, not to mention the motherboard and RAM needed to back it up. the 6800GT 256MB is prolly the best bang for the buck out there. it can easily be overclocked to Ultra speeds (should u want to).
Oi. No.
An SLi "system" is $200 for the Asus A8N-SLi motherboardboard, and $250 each for MSI 6600GT 128MB cards. That's $700 total, INCLUDING the motherboard, and this is in Canadian dollars. So for an extra $150 you cuold get 1GB of ram and at $850 you basically have the entire PC, in Canadian dollars.
You don't need ram to "back it up" simply because that's the point of having memory on the graphics cards. For games, perhaps, but it has nothing to do with video cards.
Also, getting a 256MB 6600GT is no better than getting a 6600GT 128MB, infact the 256MB card can sometimes hinder performance.
I'd suggest giving SLi a try, it's no different than any other board and if you only want to use one video card, you have that option. However instead of buying a $650 GeForce 6800 Ultra, you can get 2 6600GTs for $500 and get the same, if not better, results.