ati or nvidia

[slow coach]

Are you going to be using that Samsung SyncMaster 940bf monitor? Doesn't it have a max res on 1280x1024? Either card by themselves are going to be overkill let alone if you go for crossfire.

My 2900XT lets me game 1600x1200 4xAA 8aAF no problems on BF2142 on the biggest titan servers. So to narrow it down, I would look for a single card solution rather than crossfire/SLI

This is quite true i may well be delving into the world of widescreen soon, other point to consider are the specs versus price

Intel Core 2 DUO E6600 [email protected], Antec P900+850W PSU, 2GB 1100MHz DDR2, 500GB SATA2 HDD, DVD-Writer, 2 x ATI HD2900 XT in Crossfire, Onboard 7.1 Audio, Gigabit LAN, Vista Operating System. £1643.83

Intel Core 2 DUO E6600 [email protected], Antec P900+800W PSU, 2GB 900MHz DDR2, 500GB SATA2 HDD, DVD-Writer, GeForce 8800GTX 768MB, Onboard 7.1 Audio, Gigabit LAN, Keyb+Mouse, Vista Operating System. £1467

Basically whichever pc I buy will have to serve me for several years after purchase so i want to make the best buy now, i can upgrade small components as and when to keep afoot of developments which i should have done sooner with my current rig but it was working ok then one day it just wasnt cutting it anymore the whole system that is.

 

[Final8y]

dual card solutions can be pretty flaky driver/compatibility wise.

There is very little compatibility problems with dual card setups now, well i can only speak for crossfire in that regards. & its only a tick away to disable it.
I have only one game that does not run in crossfire out of the 30 or so that i have & thats TDU.

 

[Boogle]

There is very little compatibility problems with dual card setups now, well i can only speak for crossfire in that regards. & its only a tick away to disable it.
I have only one game that does not run in crossfire out of the 30 or so that i have & that TDU.

What he said I'm amazed by CrossFire after coming from SLI. It scales incredibly well, and thats with a 16/4 *spits* board.

Also like killer_uk, I play at 1600x1200 4xAA 16x AF with BF2142 and have had no issues. If the interface pops up while artilery is falling all around then the fps drops, but without the interface its fine. That's with a single card.

 

[SS-89]

This is quite true i may well be delving into the world of widescreen soon, other point to consider are the specs versus price

Intel Core 2 DUO E6600 [email protected], Antec P900+850W PSU, 2GB 1100MHz DDR2, 500GB SATA2 HDD, DVD-Writer, 2 x ATI HD2900 XT in Crossfire, Onboard 7.1 Audio, Gigabit LAN, Vista Operating System. £1643.83

Intel Core 2 DUO E6600 [email protected], Antec P900+800W PSU, 2GB 900MHz DDR2, 500GB SATA2 HDD, DVD-Writer, GeForce 8800GTX 768MB, Onboard 7.1 Audio, Gigabit LAN, Keyb+Mouse, Vista Operating System. £1467

Basically whichever pc I buy will have to serve me for several years after purchase so i want to make the best buy now, i can upgrade small components as and when to keep afoot of developments which i should have done sooner with my current rig but it was working ok then one day it just wasnt cutting it anymore the whole system that is.

The extra £180 gets you crossfire, which may be what you want and will easily outperform the single gtx...the gtx system is a bit overpriced imo but to be fair so is the crossfire one.

 

[slow coach]

how will the extra ram speed on the P35 board help compared to the older board types and will this not help out with gaming also? im thinking yes but proper info is priceless

 

[Boogle]

how will the extra ram speed on the P35 board help compared to the older board types and will this not help out with gaming also? im thinking yes but proper info is priceless

DDR3 doesn't help becomes the timings are rubbish Beyond 800Mhz DDR2 isn't significantly more effective. Would get a much bigger jump by OCing the CPU or GPU.

Essentially once the memory speed is beyond the FSB speed the extra bandwidth is mostly wasted.