Nvidia SLI

Leonaerd · Post by **Leonaerd** » January 10, 2005, 10:44 am

I've been browsing the Veeshan boards for a while, but have never felt the need to post. By way of introduction, I play a Necromancer on the Quellious server.

Having said that, I have a few thousand dollars burning a hole in my pocket, and I'm long overdue for a new PC. I've been looking at PCI-e, of course, and stumbled upon SLI, specifically: Gamer-SLI.

Any thoughts?

Fash · Post by **Fash** » January 10, 2005, 11:01 am

Hey, if you want or need the power for that, by all means, enjoy.

I run all the high end games, at 1280x1024 or higher resolutions, good graphic settings, and everything runs great... on an ATI Radeon 9700 Pro.

helps to have 3ghz and a gig of ram.

Sumdaor · Post by **Sumdaor** » January 10, 2005, 11:22 am

you could build al machine and get more bang for your buck, the processor and video card(s) is the only impressive thing about that machine. I guess thats why its in red.

Leonaerd · Post by **Leonaerd** » January 10, 2005, 11:59 am

I noticed that too, Sumdaor. Zipzoomfly has a severely good deal on a wicked motherboard + AMD processor. I could halve the price, I suppose, though I've never built a computer before.

Deward · Post by **Deward** » January 10, 2005, 12:21 pm

I would spend teh extra money on a wicked monitor. Go for a giant LCD if you cna afford it. I would love a 30+ inch monitor for gaming, especially now that my eyes are going.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » January 10, 2005, 1:14 pm

Fash wrote:Hey, if you want or need the power for that, by all means, enjoy.

I run all the high end games, at 1280x1024 or higher resolutions, good graphic settings, and everything runs great... on an ATI Radeon 9700 Pro.

helps to have 3ghz and a gig of ram.

9700Pro will go down in history as one of the all time great cards. It reigned as the #1 card for longer than most cards do and totally blew away the competition when first released. I agree that with 1gb ram and ~3GHz CPU, you will do fine using a 9700Pro. I replaced my 9700Pro finally with a 6800GT and it did make a difference on the highest end games like EQ2 that has endless graphics options to push your card and system.

There's no need for SLI and spending a bunch of money. A 6800GT probably runs about 250.00-280.00 now and is a great workhorse and value for the money (over something like the X800XT which is slightly faster but much more expensive and the x800 Pro which runs about 20.00 more but underperforms the 6800GT.)

Sumdaor · Post by **Sumdaor** » January 10, 2005, 3:13 pm

Winnow,

I have a question, I assume your still gaming with that kind of setup. Do you experience a "stutter" issue with 6800? On the EQ2 boards ppl are experience a issue with EQ2 and some other games such as Halo2. I am thinking about purchasing a 6800 GT, but this performance issue some ppl are experiencing has made me reconsider.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » January 10, 2005, 3:51 pm

Sumdaor wrote:Winnow,

I have a question, I assume your still gaming with that kind of setup. Do you experience a "stutter" issue with 6800? On the EQ2 boards ppl are experience a issue with EQ2 and some other games such as Halo2. I am thinking about purchasing a 6800 GT, but this performance issue some ppl are experiencing has made me reconsider.

Are people experienceing stutter issues specifically with the 6800GT or with all cards while playing EQ2?

There are a lot of factors that come into play regarding a stutter problem. Depending on the graphics setttings in EQ2 that I was using, I could get EQ2 to stutter in the most graphics intensive situations. The rest of your system needs to be up to date along with your graphics card for best performance (1gb ram, ~3Ghz CPU, decent HD)

You mentioned Halo2. Is that out already for the PC?

noel · Post by **noel** » January 10, 2005, 4:10 pm

For the record, even the 6600GT is a spectacular card, which is easily overclocked. I get zero graphical lag in HL2 with max detail. At this point, the only bottleneck in my system that causes graphical lag is my CPU which is only a 2.8Ghz. I would agree with the people on this board saying buy a nice flatscreen if you've got money burning a hole in your pocket. Generally speaking, in todays games, the graphical bottleneck, assuming a high-end GPU is your CPU.

Sumdaor · Post by **Sumdaor** » January 10, 2005, 4:48 pm

pffftt, I meant Half life 2!! The thread is on the eq2 messageboards, after reading all 9 pages. The stuttering issue is happening to other cards not just the 6800GT, but it does seem to be more prevalent in 6800GT's. I am going to get a 6800 GT, and take my chances. Though a new CPU maybe a better upgrade, 2.4GHz currently.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » January 10, 2005, 5:35 pm

Sumdaor wrote:pffftt, I meant Half life 2!! The thread is on the eq2 messageboards, after reading all 9 pages. The stuttering issue is happening to other cards not just the 6800GT, but it does seem to be more prevalent in 6800GT's. I am going to get a 6800 GT, and take my chances. Though a new CPU maybe a better upgrade, 2.4GHz currently.

Nay, a 2.4GHz CPU is fine. You'll get a much bigger boost in performance upgrading your video card to a 6800GT. (if you have a card equal to or less than the performance of a ATi 9700pro)

2.4-->3.0 would be minimal gain. Be sure you have 1GB of memory. 512-->1GB would be more help than upgrading the CPU.

Leonaerd · Post by **Leonaerd** » January 10, 2005, 5:36 pm

I would spend teh extra money on a wicked monitor. Go for a giant LCD if you cna afford it. I would love a 30+ inch monitor for gaming, especially now that my eyes are going

I have what I consider to be a fairly good monitor. It's a ViewSonic P95f+b, which, if you're not up to date on monitors, is ViewSonic's best 19" CRT contraption.

It has up to ~2000x~1500 at 68hz, and runs 1600x1200 at a flattering 87 hz, which is why I bought it.

Normally, it's $300 + shipping, but I managed to steal it for $220 and free shipping from Amazon. From the countless reviews I read before I purchased it, there seemed to be the same general feedback: "Best CRT for color". I love color.

Why didn't I get an LCD? I didn't feel like dumping a few million dollars into a screen that didn't perform as well (F ghosting), especially considering the fact that size / portability isn't an issue for me.

Of course, one could argue that the top of the line LCDs have "better color" and "don't ghost". That may be true, but I'm somewhere around $2000 better off than where I would have been, had I purchased one.

Fash · Post by **Fash** » January 10, 2005, 6:01 pm

Nice to see people still like CRT's... I h8 teh flatness.

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » January 10, 2005, 6:08 pm

CRT still looks nice. I wouldn't mind a flat LCD if they were reasonably priced just because they are nice space savers. Good for a second PC.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » January 10, 2005, 7:26 pm

The 19" LCD's are getting within range. You can get a good one for around 700.00. It's hard to switch from something that has a superior picture (any quality CRT) to an LCD.

So far, LCD has been a step backwards in that respect for gamers while being excellent for business applications with its bright, flicker free image.

A problem I have run into is that most video cards have two monitor outputs but only one of them is a DVI out unless it's the highest end cards (6800 Ultra or X800 XT) which have two DVI outs. I'd have to buy a top end card for 500.00+ on top of the cost of the already expensive LCD in order to use it together with my DVI projector. (the answer is no to the question of whether hooking an LCD to analog provides an acceptable image)

Don't bother with the 21 and 24" LCDs yet. I'm dying to get a 24" one that rotates into portrate view so I can read my comics in style when I'm watching movies or other videos sources on the projector, but not for almost 2K.

Give it one more year for prices and quality to hit the sweet spot unless you really need a new monitor right away.

noel · Post by **noel** » January 10, 2005, 8:19 pm

Winnow wrote:So far, LCD has been a step backwards in that respect for gamers...

Got this for Christmas and I have to say that for a gamer, the only drawback is a slightly lower resolution. No flickering, no problems with brightness, etc. even in games like CS-Source, Half-Life 2, and of course WoW. I personally didn't want to get a LCD until I could get 12ms and 16x12, but my parents got it for me, so I tried it out and fell in love with it. Especially with the DVI connection, it looks and works great.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » January 10, 2005, 9:03 pm

noel wrote:
Winnow wrote:So far, LCD has been a step backwards in that respect for gamers...
Got this for Christmas and I have to say that for a gamer, the only drawback is a slightly lower resolution. No flickering, no problems with brightness, etc. even in games like CS-Source, Half-Life 2, and of course WoW. I personally didn't want to get a LCD until I could get 12ms and 16x12, but my parents got it for me, so I tried it out and fell in love with it. Especially with the DVI connection, it looks and works great.

The Samsung 21" and 24" are the best in their class (ms is higher on Samsung than some others in those sizes but in real life use, ghosting was less noticible on them than Sony and some other brand) Samsung makes good LCDs so I bet the one you got is good as well.