Havent upgraded since 2000 , need hardware advice.

[Goodie]

Hey Everyone!!

Well I havent been here in a long while or even updated my computer since 2000 :bang head: So here I am today looking for advice on what I should do. I have most of it figured out but I have questions about SLI and Crossfire where mainboards are concerned.

Question #1
From what I understand from all the reading I been doing on the net, ATI has Crossfire and Nvidia has SLI to link two Vid cards together on your mainboard. I have noticed alot of mainboards on sites like tigerdirect and other estores that say SLI ready (Nvidia), but is there a Crossfire ready(ATI) mainboard ? Can i just slap two Radeon X1800GTO cards into any board or is there specific boards for this. I know it needs 2 PCI-E slots, but besides that does it really matter? Does it need to be specific for the card brand?

Question#2
I havent looked at hardware since 2000 :eek: what is the better way to go for a gamer? I like to run games like Oblivion & Guildwars and i play alot of First Person stuff. I'm not sure if I should get an AMD chip or a Intel Chip. I was thinking about getting a AMD Althon 64 X2 3800+ and put it on a Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe mainboard, but that would mean going with Nvidia for the SLI right? What I wanted was the AMD Althon 64 X2 3800+ on a mainboard that can do the two Sapphire X1800GTO cards and 1 GB of DDR Ram of somekind. am i on the right track with this setup? Or do you guys have other ideas? I have a budget of around $1100 U.S to make this machine.


Thanks to all who reply :beer:

[b1029384756]

Question #1
From what I understand from all the reading I been doing on the net, ATI has Crossfire and Nvidia has SLI to link two Vid cards together on your mainboard. I have noticed alot of mainboards on sites like tigerdirect and other estores that say SLI ready (Nvidia), but is there a Crossfire ready(ATI) mainboard ? Can i just slap two Radeon X1800GTO cards into any board or is there specific boards for this. I know it needs 2 PCI-E slots, but besides that does it really matter? Does it need to be specific for the card brand?

Whether or not the board supports SLI or Crossfire is dependant on the chipset used. If you look at the manufacturer's site for the board in question, it will tell you which, if any, it supports. You need two x8 PCIe slots, two x16 slots are better still.

Question#2
I havent looked at hardware since 2000 :eek: what is the better way to go for a gamer? I like to run games like Oblivion & Guildwars and i play alot of First Person stuff. I'm not sure if I should get an AMD chip or a Intel Chip. I was thinking about getting a AMD Althon 64 X2 3800+ and put it on a Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe mainboard, but that would mean going with Nvidia for the SLI right? What I wanted was the AMD Althon 64 X2 3800+ on a mainboard that can do the two Sapphire X1800GTO cards and 1 GB of DDR Ram of somekind. am i on the right track with this setup? Or do you guys have other ideas? I have a budget of around $1100 U.S to make this machine.

$1100 isn't a lot for a dual video card setup if you're starting from scratch. With Core 2 out now, Intel may be the way to go, though you'll have to wait a month or so for board manufacturers to develop decent products.

[Goodie]

Thanks for the reply. :beer:

Well I read ALOT of stuff today about hardware and the following is what I bought.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Dual Core Processor Socket AM2 Windsor 2.0GHZ 2000FSB 2X512KB 90NM Retail Box


ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe ATX AM2 Nforce 590 SLI 2PCI-E16 1PCI-E4 1PCI-E1 2PCI SATA2 1394 Motherboard


Thermaltake Toughpower 600W ATX12V 24PIN SLI/CROSSFIRE Ready ATX Power Supply 140MM Fan Active PFC


EVGA E-GEFORCE 7600 GT KO 580MHZ 256MB 128BIT 1.5GHZ GDDR3 Dual DVI-I HDTV Out Video Card (Bought two of these for the SLI feature)


OCZ Gold EL PC2-6400 2GB 2X1GB DDR2-800 CL5-5-5-12 240PIN DIMM Dual Channel Memory Kit W/ Ramsink


All this came out to around $1200, only $100 more then i had bugeted for :)


The rest of the stuff I already have, like a case and DVD burner, all that kind of stuff.

I think I did pretty good considering I have not looked at hardware for 6 years and only had one afternoon to read up and decide what to get.
I know the vid cards I got have Issues, but from what I have read there is a BIOS released to fix the issue, so im not worried about that.

Thanks for b1029384756 replying and Thanks to anyone who read this.

~Goodie~

[nvidiaOCmaster]

That looks great m8! Have fun with it!!!

[hUMANbEATbOX]

what a funny thread. ask for advice, then go out and buy all the gear before much advice can be given.

if i were you, i would not have gone with the x2, but hey, that's just me. too late now anyways ;)