New Computer, Suggestions?

[Silly Gooooose]

So I am looking to build a new computer soon, and I am still fairly confused with the new SLI stuff. I would like to try SLI on this computer, and I would like to use Nvidea products, I love my 6800GT.

My main question is this, Normally since i like to buy near the top of the line for video cards, I buy 512MB cards, With dual cards, would it be prudent to get 384MB cards, since I save quite a bit (because I am buying 2) or should I shell out the extra 50-100$ per card to have it 512 instead of 384?

Also, is it a bad idea to buy 2 different cards? I.e. a 8800gs 384MB, and a 9800 512MB, or should I stick with them both the same.

Also, from reading the Intel vs AMD post, it would seem Intel is the way to go. I run 2 monitors, different sizes, 1 LCD, 1 of the old nasties. Along with that, I should be going for Vista over XP correct? Esp since I plan on going with a dual core? 64 Bit Vista right? As far as processors, should I be looking at quad or dual core? I would like to buy high-mid range in quality. Dual core has been out for a little while, but quad is quite new, so I was just wondering what your thoughts were on the subject.

I read some where there was a restriction on ram, if you were useing vista or XP, I forget which though. Do you know the story behind that? Id like to run 4gigs of DDR2 ram



Sorry if this is off topic, I just figured quite a few of you know a bit about computers, and it's been a few years since I did some good research.

[Dezeral]

So I am looking to build a new computer soon, and I am still fairly confused with the new SLI stuff. I would like to try SLI on this computer, and I would like to use Nvidea products, I love my 6800GT.

My main question is this, Normally since i like to buy near the top of the line for video cards, I buy 512MB cards, With dual cards, would it be prudent to get 384MB cards, since I save quite a bit (because I am buying 2) or should I shell out the extra 50-100$ per card to have it 512 instead of 384?

Also, is it a bad idea to buy 2 different cards? I.e. a 8800gs 384MB, and a 9800 512MB, or should I stick with them both the same.

Also, from reading the Intel vs AMD post, it would seem Intel is the way to go. I run 2 monitors, different sizes, 1 LCD, 1 of the old nasties. Along with that, I should be going for Vista over XP correct? Esp since I plan on going with a dual core? 64 Bit Vista right?

I read some where there was a restriction on ram, if you were useing vista or XP, I forget which though. Do you know the story behind that? Id like to run 4gigs of DDR2 ram



Sorry if this is off topic, I just figured quite a few of you know a bit about computers, and it's been a few years since I did some good research.

What do you plan to do with the computer? If you're planning on multiple monitors, then SLI isn't even an option. You could turn it off to play COD4 and then back on to multi-box WoW. But if you spend 90% of your time in WoW mult-boxing, then SLI would be unused the majority of the time.

I have had SLI rigs from the time SLI was first introduced up until a year or so ago. It was pretty nice using SLI on that huge 24" 1920x1200 monitor when I was raiding MC/BWL. I was one of the few in our guild that didn't have to turn his video settings down as we cleared the suppressor room. Now that I'm multi-boxing full time, I can't use it and I don't really miss it. I rather enjoy having multiple monitors on one computer. For me, the convenience/necessity of multiple monitors > SLI.

So, again, what do you plan on doing with this computer?

[Silly Gooooose]

I think I will use it more for games, CoD4, Raiding WoW, and other shit, more than I will use it to Multi box.

So I will HAVE to turn SLI off every time I multi box?

I will have to do some research but can you explain why that is? Does it just not work well when you try and run 2 WoWs, 1 on each monitor? What about now, with me having browser on 1 monitor, and word doc on the other, would SLI be bad for that also?



And again with the questions, lol. What does the 5-5-5-15 or 6-6-6-16 for memory mean?

So I've ran into another question. This power supply I am looking at says "NVIDIA SLI Support - 8800GTX SLI" Does that mean it would not work with my 9900GT?



Sorry, Please tell me if I am asking too many question :P

[Chorizotarian]

SLI can't do multimonitor on Vista. There is a workaround to do it on XP, but it's a bit of a hack involving cards from 2 different manufacturers.

My machine is SLI ready. If I want to play a game that will benefit from SLI I just go into the nVidia CPL and turn it on. No reboot required. It's a pain but not really too bad. I'd probably get it again if I was building a new computer, though with 2 8800 GTs now instead of GTXs. (Lower power / heat, almost the same throughput.)

My 2 cents.

[Silly Gooooose]

So if I had vista and 2 monitors, SLI would be useless, untill I decide to play a game like Call of Duty 4? Then Id have to turn off 1 monitor, and turn on the SLI? Which would be annoying, but not require a reboot?

So SLI = lose if you run 2 monitors it seems? If I do plan to stick with 2 monitors, would I be better spending the ~400$ I was looking to spend on the 2 cards, for 1 beast of a card? Would it be less or more preformance when I do play Call of Duty?

[BobGnarly]

Speaking to your RAM question, keep this in mind. Video card RAM becomes more important as resolution scales up. This is because the framebuffer (multiple copies, really, when you consider Z,W,etc buffering that is omnipresent in today's games) is stored there also, and the bigger the monitor, the bigger these buffers.

This is why you'll notice most enthusiasts recommend a gtx over the new gt/gts cards (768M) for say a dell 30" monitor.

[Silly Gooooose]

hmm, but what about a 19" and a 21" widescreen, think this would work fine? I think I will go with 1 for now, untill I find out more about SLI.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130329

[Trowabarton756]

Also, is it a bad idea to buy 2 different cards? I.e. a 8800gs 384MB, and a 9800 512MB, or should I stick with them both the same.

Also, from reading the Intel vs AMD post, it would seem Intel is the way to go. I run 2 monitors, different sizes, 1 LCD, 1 of the old nasties. Along with that, I should be going for Vista over XP correct? Esp since I plan on going with a dual core? 64 Bit Vista right? As far as processors, should I be looking at quad or dual core? I would like to buy high-mid range in quality. Dual core has been out for a little while, but quad is quite new, so I was just wondering what your thoughts were on the subject.

I read some where there was a restriction on ram, if you were useing vista or XP, I forget which though. Do you know the story behind that? Id like to run 4gigs of DDR2 ram
Ok I've high lighted some things that I know the answer too. As far as the 384 vs 512 get the 512 more gfx memory never hurts, unless its a money issue.

Now for the other one, i found out either is good just choose which ever one you want, I personally choose AMD and I've only been using them for a year or so. And about the 64 bit, it really doesn't improve games, as 99% (I think there may be 1 or 2 coming out in the spring that are 64 bit but I could be wrong) are written in 32-bit format. 64 bit is more a business OS, as you run servers, etc. off them.

And the restriction on ram is in XP, regardless of the version that you have, it'll only recognize 3.25 gigs AT THE MOST. Mine currently only recognizes 3gigs of my 4 gigs. Its kind of hard to explain, its there, but XP just ignores it. So every time I run stuff that looks at my system, like CPU-Z or DXDIAG it says I have 4 gigs but only say 2.5 available(thats just running XP and what ever diag program. unless of course you're running WoW or what ever game at the same time haha) Vista from what I read(I personally don't use it because I hate UAC and lack of good driver support although its getting better.), doesn't get REALLY good unless you add 8 gigs of ram. So you basically have to order a server mother board to actually get the full effect of 64 bit vista.

[Chorizotarian]

So if I had vista and 2 monitors, SLI would be useless, untill I decide to play a game like Call of Duty 4? Then Id have to turn off 1 monitor, and turn on the SLI? Which would be annoying, but not require a reboot?

Exactly.

[Dezeral]

Also, is it a bad idea to buy 2 different cards? I.e. a 8800gs 384MB, and a 9800 512MB, or should I stick with them both the same.

Also, from reading the Intel vs AMD post, it would seem Intel is the way to go. I run 2 monitors, different sizes, 1 LCD, 1 of the old nasties. Along with that, I should be going for Vista over XP correct? Esp since I plan on going with a dual core? 64 Bit Vista right? As far as processors, should I be looking at quad or dual core? I would like to buy high-mid range in quality. Dual core has been out for a little while, but quad is quite new, so I was just wondering what your thoughts were on the subject.

I read some where there was a restriction on ram, if you were useing vista or XP, I forget which though. Do you know the story behind that? Id like to run 4gigs of DDR2 ram
Ok I've high lighted some things that I know the answer too. As far as the 384 vs 512 get the 512 more gfx memory never hurts, unless its a money issue.

Now for the other one, i found out either is good just choose which ever one you want, I personally choose AMD and I've only been using them for a year or so. And about the 64 bit, it really doesn't improve games, as 99% (I think there may be 1 or 2 coming out in the spring that are 64 bit but I could be wrong) are written in 32-bit format. 64 bit is more a business OS, as you run servers, etc. off them.

And the restriction on ram is in XP, regardless of the version that you have, it'll only recognize 3.25 gigs AT THE MOST. Mine currently only recognizes 3gigs of my 4 gigs. Its kind of hard to explain, its there, but XP just ignores it. So every time I run stuff that looks at my system, like CPU-Z or DXDIAG it says I have 4 gigs but only say 2.5 available(thats just running XP and what ever diag program. unless of course you're running WoW or what ever game at the same time haha) Vista from what I read(I personally don't use it because I hate UAC and lack of good driver support although its getting better.), doesn't get REALLY good unless you add 8 gigs of ram. So you basically have to order a server mother board to actually get the full effect of 64 bit vista.

Sorry Trowa, but most of this information is inaccurate.

In the Pentium 4 generation of computers where Intel decided that higher and higher clock speeds were the way to achieve performance superiority, AMD came along and said uh-huh. We're going to do more work per cycle and beat the pants of of your 3ghz heaters. So after the early generation K6 or K7 processors, but before Intel's Core2Duo, AMD was the way to go. Now however, Intel's design just smokes AMD. The Core2Duo processors run rings around AMD's best processors. If you buy any of the Athlon/Phenom AMD processors, you won't face the problems of the early AMD K4,5,6 processors that would sometimes just not be able to run certain applications, but if you're after performance, then for right now, the Intel is superior.

64bit OS are an evolution from 32bit OS. Just like the 32bit OS was an evolution from the 16bit OS. Usually the first applications to take advantage of a newer OS are applications that have outgrown the capabilities of the old OS. Naturally, high end business applications are some of the first to migrate to a newer OS. Most businesses are still using 32bit OS. 64bit is still pretty relegated to very specific applications. I do agree that 64bit is mostly for businesses though.

All 32bit OS (whether it is XP or Vista) have a limitation of 4gig of available RAM. This is because of the way memory is addressed by the OS. You can visualize this by thinking of a huge grid (kid of like tic-tac-toe only much much larger). If you number the grid down the top and down the left hand side, you'll get a set of coordinates or addresses. Using 32 bits worth of information to number your grid, you get a maximum of 4 gigabytes of addresses. There is a certain amount of lost space due to overhead as well and a certain amount of space that is used for addressing the hardware components in your computer. XP did a fairly good job of leaving a fair amount of the system memory available for applications. Vista on the other hand reserves more of your system memory for the OS to use. There is a thread here on the forum somewhere that has a link to an article on Tom's Hardware. This goes into a lot more detail on how this works.

You can utilize more than 4gb of memory with the 64bit version of Windows XP. My brother has an 8gb XP64 rig that he plays LoTRO on. He read the article on Tom's Hardware and played around with his settings. With 8gb of real memory, he was able to completely disable the Windows paging file. The first time he zones, there is a bit of a delay as all of the new area is loaded into memory (no more than you would notice on any good performing system). But, after that, the next time he zones into that same area, its almost instantaneous.

A 64bit processor is required if you want to run a 64bit OS. The way a 64bit processor processes 32bit code is by using a translator or emulator. In a lot of cases, the user will not notice the additional overhead created by having to translate or emulate 32bit execution on a 64bit system. But gaming is to the computing world as racing is to the automotive world. Games and gamers want all of the available horsepower of their computer to be used to make the game run fast which translates to frames per second (FPS). Any overhead is bad. Now if the game you are playing isn't on the bleeding edge (think Crysis), then you will probably not have to worry too much about the additional overhead of translating/emulating 32bit code on a 64bit computer. WoW falls into this older game category.

So, just to recap, if you're going to need more than 4gigs of memory, then you need a 64bit OS which will require a 64bit processor (I can't think of a modern processor today that is not a 64bit processor). Each instance of WoW that you want to run will need between 300mb and 500mb on average. So you can quickly do the math and see that if you want to run 4 or more instances of WoW, you're going to be hitting the wall on that 4gb memory limit. You can run more than 4 instances of WoW using XP32 or Vista32, but you may see some performance issues as most people are aware of.

[Trowabarton756]

Sorry Trowa, but most of this information is inaccurate.

In the Pentium 4 generation of computers where Intel decided that higher and higher clock speeds were the way to achieve performance superiority, AMD came along and said uh-huh. We're going to do more work per cycle and beat the pants of of your 3ghz heaters. So after the early generation K6 or K7 processors, but before Intel's Core2Duo, AMD was the way to go. Now however, Intel's design just smokes AMD. The Core2Duo processors run rings around AMD's best processors. If you buy any of the Athlon/Phenom AMD processors, you won't face the problems of the early AMD K4,5,6 processors that would sometimes just not be able to run certain applications, but if you're after performance, then for right now, the Intel is superior.

64bit OS are an evolution from 32bit OS. Just like the 32bit OS was an evolution from the 16bit OS. Usually the first applications to take advantage of a newer OS are applications that have outgrown the capabilities of the old OS. Naturally, high end business applications are some of the first to migrate to a newer OS. Most businesses are still using 32bit OS. 64bit is still pretty relegated to very specific applications. I do agree that 64bit is mostly for businesses though.

All 32bit OS (whether it is XP or Vista) have a limitation of 4gig of available RAM. This is because of the way memory is addressed by the OS. You can visualize this by thinking of a huge grid (kid of like tic-tac-toe only much much larger). If you number the grid down the top and down the left hand side, you'll get a set of coordinates or addresses. Using 32 bits worth of information to number your grid, you get a maximum of 4 gigabytes of addresses. There is a certain amount of lost space due to overhead as well and a certain amount of space that is used for addressing the hardware components in your computer. XP did a fairly good job of leaving a fair amount of the system memory available for applications. Vista on the other hand reserves more of your system memory for the OS to use. There is a thread here on the forum somewhere that has a link to an article on Tom's Hardware. This goes into a lot more detail on how this works.

You can utilize more than 4gb of memory with the 64bit version of Windows XP. My brother has an 8gb XP64 rig that he plays LoTRO on. He read the article on Tom's Hardware and played around with his settings. With 8gb of real memory, he was able to completely disable the Windows paging file. The first time he zones, there is a bit of a delay as all of the new area is loaded into memory (no more than you would notice on any good performing system). But, after that, the next time he zones into that same area, its almost instantaneous.

A 64bit processor is required if you want to run a 64bit OS. The way a 64bit processor processes 32bit code is by using a translator or emulator. In a lot of cases, the user will not notice the additional overhead created by having to translate or emulate 32bit execution on a 64bit system. But gaming is to the computing world as racing is to the automotive world. Games and gamers want all of the available horsepower of their computer to be used to make the game run fast which translates to frames per second (FPS). Any overhead is bad. Now if the game you are playing isn't on the bleeding edge (think Crysis), then you will probably not have to worry too much about the additional overhead of translating/emulating 32bit code on a 64bit computer. WoW falls into this older game category.

So, just to recap, if you're going to need more than 4gigs of memory, then you need a 64bit OS which will require a 64bit processor (I can't think of a modern processor today that is not a 64bit processor). Each instance of WoW that you want to run will need between 300mb and 500mb on average. So you can quickly do the math and see that if you want to run 4 or more instances of WoW, you're going to be hitting the wall on that 4gb memory limit. You can run more than 4 instances of WoW using XP32 or Vista32, but you may see some performance issues as most people are aware of.Eh the reasonings I gave were incorrect, but the other stuff we agree'd on =P and I was refering to WoW in the instance of my explanation on 32bit vs 64bit. I know I'm not a know it all when it comes to the differences between 64bit and 32bit but I do know that for WoW, there really is no need for 64bit.

[Silly Gooooose]

so if I wanted to try and run crysis on max a 64 bit processor on 32bit vista would hinder it, but not too much?

How do I know what bit a processor is, it doesn't really show it from the newegg specs I am looking at, it just says it's got 64 bit support.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115029

[Trowabarton756]

so if I wanted to try and run crysis on max a 64 bit processor on 32bit vista would hinder it, but not too much?

How do I know what bit a processor is, it doesn't really show it from the newegg specs I am looking at, it just says it's got 64 bit support.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115029That means it can run 64-bit Operating Systems.

And I suppose according to Dezeral, not so much, I personally am going to borrow my friends install discs and see would kind of performance I can get on Crysis using my computer.

[Silly Gooooose]

so the real question is 64 bit or 32?

I plan on getting that processor, or something similar, but I hear so much about how 64 bit isn't really helpful, and how theres no support drives and so on. Should I just stick with 32 for now, or will it be a noticeable hit in performance?

[Bollwerk]

I have a dual boot machine with 32-bit XP Pro and 64-bit Vista Home Premium. I have 4GB of RAM.

If you are going to get XP, just get 32-bit. If you are going to get Vista, you may as well get the 64-bit version (if you don't get Ultimate, you can just mail away for the 64-bit DVD for a small cost if you buy the retail version - but you can't do that with OEM versions). 64-bit Vista doesn't give you any more benefit if you only have 4GB of RAM, vs using 32-bit XP. (yes I know XP will only see 3GB, but Vista uses more RAM, so it's a wash). However, getting 64-bit Vista (retail, NOT OEM) will at least ensure your OS will grow with you as you upgrade to more RAM, etc.

I will say though that my quad-boxing WoW runs a bit slower (maybe 10-20%) in my 64-bit Vista than it does in 32-bit WoW. I assume this is because Vista runs games a bit slower than XP in general for various reasons.

[BobGnarly]

hmm, but what about a 19" and a 21" widescreen, think this would work fine? I think I will go with 1 for now, untill I find out more about SLI.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130329Sorry, little late on the response, but yeah, for a 21" monitor (1650x1080 I assume?), 512 should be plenty.