enlighten me

[Slash27]

Are the dual video card set ups worth getting for AH?( I play a few other games but 90% of gaming is in here) Im sure this has been covered in here but I couldnt find it.  Im looking at getting a AMD 64 3200-4000 range with a Gf 6800GT or a 7800GT and was curious if dual 6600s would be a better choice or if they are even supported in most games out now. Im also curious if the 4000 is worth getting when from what Ive read, the 3200 'Venice' is easily OC'd. I'd like to save a few bucks but I dont want to cut to many corners and have or want to upgrade to soon.

  Im also curious about the dual hard drive RAID set ups. Do they really make that much of a difference in game play or is this just the latest cool thing to do?

[SkyChimp]

I'd go with a 3800 with 7800gtx =) just one!

[Kev367th]

A single 7800 will outperform a dual 6600 setup.

CPU is a little more complex now -
AMD released the Opteron as a socket 939 version (full 1mb cache), people are getting really good overclocks with them, they also don't require ECC memory like their socket 940 bigger brothers.

Cheapest Venice 3800 (2.4ghz) is around $289 - 512k cache.
Cheapest Opteron 150 (2.4ghz) is around $316 - 1mb cache.
Cheapest San Diego 4000 (2.4ghz) is around $324 - 1mb cache.

Seen screenies of 2.4ghz Opteron 150's overclocked up to as high as 3.4ghz!!!!!

http://www.amdzone.com/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&t=7733&sid=d4a0d1c63fce6e3cd485ec2dc14e371c

Aside - Largest supplier of CPU's expects multicore sales to increase by 500% next year!!!

[Delirium]

I used both the 6800 and the 7800, and the 7800 completely blows the 6800 out of the water for frame rates in AH with everything turned on and with full view setting. You need 2 gig  system ram to really enjoy the 1024 high res textures however, with a single gig you'll still have screen stutters.

The only issue I have with my BFG 7800 is that for some reason AH crashes when I alt tab out of AH when I fly in XP64, in regular XP Pro it operates without any problems.

[Kev367th]

Re Raid:
Just been on the phone for quite sometime with a tech from one of the major drive manufacturers.

IHO RAID 0 on home machines is actually slower than using a standard setup.
Two reasons -
a) SATA : One single controller is still the bottleneck, even with the usual dual channels.
b) File sizes : We dont transfer big enough files to see the benefit from RAID 0.

For gaming/general use machines he recommended just setting them as JBOD's.
Unless you do a lot of video editing, or are regularly moving/reading very large files.

[Slash27]

Thank you very much guys.

[Krusty]

My take on dual graphics cards: If you can afford a card that supports SLI, your system and your vid card are more than adequate as-is. Any more is simply wasteful.

[Delirium]

What I figured was when I really need to enable SLI because my computer starts having trouble keeping up with the new games, the second matching card will be alot cheaper than what I paid for it originally and SLI will be in play on my system.

It just isn't worth buying two 6800 SLI instead of a single 7800, there is a lot more potential for the future with the single 7800.

[Krusty]

Here's the thing... Even with only 1 card, be it AGP8x or PCIe (16x) no CPU/mobo out there can run into a bottleneck with either AGP8x or PCIe (16x). The CPU is the bottleneck, not the GPU. People are clammoring for PCIe because it has more bandwidth than AGP  -- big whoop, AGPs not even close be being bottlenecked either.

So what good are 2 cards in SLI form? Does nothing except for 1600+ resolutions with 8x FSAA and 8x Aniso, etc etc. It's only for the ridiculous "Why would I bother" level of detail.

If you got 1 card and a CPU that runs at 100%, you're better off (and with more money in the pocket) than with 2 cards doing only 105% overall, see what I mean?

[Kev367th]

Exactly Krusty, and the new nForce chipset has just doubled SLI bandwidth,,,WHY, it's not needed, LOL.

No current CPU can push the latest graphics cards anywhere close to their limits, current CPU's would have to nearly double in speed to do it.

So - if you have a late model graphics card you are going to be CPU limited, NO matter which CPU you get.