musab90

Hi everyone
I'm looking to build my own Gaming pc, but there are a few things that I'm curious about.


Firstly: What chipset shall I go for?
I'm impressed with nvidia's nForce chipsets as they provide SLI technology which sound really good as it gives room to add another Graphic Card in the future.
Is the SLI technology as good as it sound or is it over-hyped?
Is the concept of having two graphic cards working together as simple as it sounds or are there any negatives?
What can Intel Chipset offer that's better than nVidia's nForce?


Secondly: What graphics cards are better ATI or nVidia?
Naturally I started looking for nvidia cards as it looks to me that they are used more than ATI and the other thing is SLI technology with nVidia.
Shall I stick with nvidia or shall I change to ATI?
What can ATI offer me that nVidia can't offer?



Finally: What is the difference between Asus, XFX, EVGA, Leadtek and all these other different brands?
Do they affect any technical specifications? Or are they just different companies making same chips sets or GPU?

In advance, Thank you very much for you help.

FadeToBright

As for the chipset, it's a matter of preference. I'm more partial to nVidia over Intel. Have you decided you want to go Intel or AMD for processors?
The Intel E8400 and Q6600 chips are phenomenal. Although, some people do prefer AMD. (As I run a a64 4000+ in my system, until my Q6600 arrives in the mail this week. ;) )

Secondly, the 9600GT's are great cards. I have a 8800GT 512mb and it IS an awesome card. But, a friend of mine has a ATI 4850, and said it in incredible.

As for the different brands, I've had great luck with EVGA and BFG, as well as Visiontek.

I hope this helps!

musab90

thak you very much for you reply it really helps.
Btw, i was asking about Chipsets not proccesor, but since the proccesor issue has come up,what proccesor suites my need? I read on another thread that in order to have more than 3gb of ram recognized by windows, i need to have Vista 64-bit, are there any hardware requirement for having a 64-bit OS. i.e do i need a special proccesor or GPU?

wrench97

Any modern CPU will run 64 bit.
The Nforce chipsets are very picky about memory and add in cards and very difficult to set up.
For my money the best cost/performance set up is the P45/E8500.
If you don't plan on using a large screen SLI and Crossfire are both Hype the advantage doesn't start to show up until over 28" under a single card will out perform 2 or an x2 card.
Right now the the HD4850 is the best dual card configuration as it scales really well but again if your using a 22" or under monitor a single card is better.
64 bit windows is getting better all the time but I don't feel it's quite there yet for gaming there are still some driver issues, most of the time with 32 bit you'll see around 3.2 gig but windows can still address the upper memory area for system devices, have you ever seen your system use more then 2.5gig when gaming? I haven't.

wrench97

Double Post

Pauldo

ATI graphics cards have CrossFire whereas nVidia graphics cards have SLI.

From what I've read, the cheaper sli boards have a lot of problems running in sli mode. Also, the newer sli (and more expensive) boards can have a lot of driver issues that take time to iron out. CrossFire is also not without its issues.

Also, keep in mind that two cards in your computer is going to produce an awful lot of heat and noise. Not a problem if you have the right case and enough fans you just want to account for that.

As wrinch97 said ATI and Intel are the best bang for the buck right now. I also believe that a single card can do more for you than dealing with all the issues that come with sli or crossfire technologies.

Stick with 32bit windows for right now. You don't need that extra memory and there really isn't that much of a performance increase right now.

My two cents.

Pauldo

musab90

I'm not looking to have 2 cards right now but from what it looks like, investing in a SLI now can make future upgrades cheaper, so i can just add another card and not replace the one i have.
As for driver issues, what kind off problems would i face, is it just with add in cards, or even with simple plug and play usb devices.

Once again thank you for yuor help guys.

wrench97

SLI and Crossfire are basically the same ides SLI uses Nvidia Cards Crossfire uses ATI cards the problem with both is most often 2 lower ranked cards don't scale up to equal 1 higher card and a lot of games can use both cards so the game is actually slower with 2 then 1 card for example 2 8600GTS cards in SLI do not equal the performance of 1 8800GT, the exception seems to be with two HD4850 cards in crossfire scale up very well and work together.
The driver issues are across all drivers not just video card drivers, are very picky about memory.

musab90

Just found out that intel X48 chip supports dual card configuration.

PCI Express * 2.0 Interface PCI Express 2.0 delivers up to 16GB/s bandwidth per port, double that of PCIe* 1.0. It provides leading-edge graphics performance with dual X16 graphic card configuration.

so does it mean it supports SLI and Crossfire?


http://www.intel.com/cd/products/ser...ets/387228.htm

wrench97

No Nvidia boards support SLI, Intel boards support Crossfire

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalable_Link_Interface

The only exception is the Skulltrail motherboards for dual CPU's
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_SkullTrail

musab90

Ok as for graphic cards, what makes a graphic card good or bad.
How improtant is the Core Clock Speed, Memory Clock Speed and the Memory itself?
I was plannig to buy the 8800 ultra 768Mb DDR3 for around 150GBP
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...2BSI%26otn%3D4


Or is it better to go for the ATI Radeon 4850 1Gb DDR3 for around 140GBP
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/NEW-POWERCOLOR...d=p3286.c0.m14


And if the ATI is better, why is it cheaper?


Sorry for asking too many questions

wrench97

The 8800 Ultra is an old card the newer 8800's as well as the 9800 use the G92 chip which is better, I know this site won't do you any good except for specs, this card is actually better then the ultra and it's cheaper then the HD4850> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130327

HD4850> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814131118

wrench97

This is a link to video card benchmarks the key is look for the resolution that you plan on using because as you'll see the results vary widely according to the game and the resolution the higher the resolution or the larger the monitor is when the large cards shine.

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/g...v1-02,740.html

musab90

Thank you very much.

yodamage

hey man definatly go nvidia over ati i had an ati and got nothing but problems (plus tech support sucks) nvidia is the way to go. as far as what nvidia card: you should get the new 9800s they are rediculously good, the 8800s are out of date and will be obselete in under a year. and just incase you dont like my advice the most important thing for a graphics card (gaming) is clock speed and processes, digital memory comes next but as long as you have 524mb you will be fine.

P.S NEVER USE SLI IT IS POITNLESS!!!!

musab90

cheers mate, thank you for the advice