Good day OcUK Forums

xknight2000 · 11 Mar 2006 at 09:09

Good day all, may name is Mark and I am from good old Northern Ireland. I am just new here and look forward to joining in the chat.

I have a new PC on the way and I can wait to get my hands on it (spec below). I am currently using a Toshiba Sat Pro laptop but its time to return to the good old desktops.

PC Spec.

AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual-Core 4200+
Coolermaster Praetorian 732
ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe PCI-Express Mainboard - ATX
2048MB DDR400 Memory - PC3200 (1x2048)
300GB Serial ATA Hard Drive with 16MB Buffer
SONY 16x Dual Layer DVD-Re-Writable +R/-R/RW
16x DVD-ROM Drive (40x CD-ROM)
2x 256MB nVIDIA GeForce 6600 LE - DVI - SLI Configuration
19" Viewsonic VA1912W Digital & Multi Media Widescreen TFT Display
7.1 Channel Surround Sound Audio
Logitech S200 - 2.1 Speakers with Subwoofer
Logitech Cordless Keyboard & Rechargeable Cordless Mouse
ASUS WL 138G 802.11G/B Wi-Fi PCI Card
1.44MB - 3.5" Floppy Disk Drive
Internal 15-in-1 Memory Card Reader

lee87 · 11 Mar 2006 at 09:18

Hi, welcome to the forums.

Will you be using the pc for gaming?

If you can I would cancel your order and change the sli'd geforce 6600LE cards for a ATI X850XT. This would be much faster than a 6600LE in sli.
The geforce 6600LE cards are not that fast and you wouldn't get that much a better speed from running them in sli.

Apart from that it will be a pretty good pc.

ACESHIGH · 11 Mar 2006 at 09:22

lee87 said:
Hi, welcome to the forums.

Will you be using the pc for gaming?

If you can I would cancel your order and change the sli'd geforce 6600LE cards for a ATI X850XT. This would be much faster than a 6600LE in sli.
The geforce 6600LE cards are not that fast and you wouldn't get that much a better speed from running them in sli.

Apart from that it will be a pretty good pc.

Completely agree! Great spec with one exception the graphics.

I can only assume you wont be playing any recent games on that rig with those poorly performing 6600LE SLI cards.

Get either of the below for much more performance.

Sapphire ATI Radeon X1800 XT 256MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-121-SP)
£217.32*Including VAT
(better than a 7800GTX & the 7900GT)

or if on a more limited budget then...
PowerColor ATI Radeon X850 XT 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-037-PC) £152.69*

xknight2000 · 11 Mar 2006 at 09:25

I will be using the PC for gaming and also web design, but gaming will be its main use. Unfortunitly I cant cancel or change it because of 2 things, 1. The finiance is already through and 2. Its due here any day now. I do have a 2nd PC lying around that I plan to slowly upgrade so I may try and put the 2 6600LE's in that and upgrade to an ATI eventunitly. The 6600's where part of the deal anyway and cost hardly anything so at the moment they will have to do.

DELETED_36704 · 11 Mar 2006 at 09:25

Those 6600's will be letting the rest of the system down, not great cards.

Sell them on an auction site and with the money get yourself an X850 or 7800GT

xknight2000 · 11 Mar 2006 at 09:27

Just a quick pick of your brains but how much do you think I would get for them?

Remember they will be OEM and all.

xknight2000 · 11 Mar 2006 at 09:32

Just checked and some are going for £50 each so I take it I will be looking at roughtly £100 for both then.

Not to bad I guess so then I could maybe put a couple of pounds to it and get a 7800Gt.

But in the mean time the two 6600LE's wont slow it down that much, will it?

For example will I be able to run say.....FEAR at a decent enough resoultion?

pegasus1 · 11 Mar 2006 at 09:37

xknight2000 said:
Just checked and some are going for £50 each so I take it I will be looking at roughtly £100 for both then.

Not to bad I guess so then I could maybe put a couple of pounds to it and get a 7800Gt.

But in the mean time the two 6600LE's wont slow it down that much, will it?

For example will I be able to run say.....FEAR at a decent enough resoultion?

I can run FEAR with the below machine at 1600x1200 with 2xAA 2xAF and all the settings to max bar softshadows and it runs fine but i would say my OCed 7800GTX is a fair bit faster than 2 6600's in SLI.

xknight2000 · 11 Mar 2006 at 09:39

I so cant wait to get my hands on this system to try it out, been away from PC game for far to long now, the Xbox has been good in the mean time but nothing beats the PC.

Paul11 · 11 Mar 2006 at 09:42

hi and welcome,

imo, (like everyone says) if you can sell those cards and replace them. do

dont bother with sli for now, just get one good fast card...

xknight2000 · 11 Mar 2006 at 09:44

Has ATI got the edge on the nVidia cards at the moment and for £200 is the x1800 my best bet?

pegasus1 · 11 Mar 2006 at 09:52

xknight2000 said:
Has ATI got the edge on the nVidia cards at the moment and for £200 is the x1800 my best bet?

The 1800s are very good cards but if you get one then you cant go SLi at a later date, Befor this thread is hijacked by the 1800/1900 Vs 7800/7900 fan boys i would say the 1800 series is very good value for money but both groups of cards perform very well although some games run better on ATI, some on better on Nvidia. You could pick up 2 7800GTs fairly cheep now and clock then to GTX speed and you would have a pacey system or go for a single ATI card.
There are so many pros and cons for both single card and SLI and for ATI or NVidia thats its always a difficult choice.

xknight2000 · 11 Mar 2006 at 09:58

Thanks guys for all your advice, it really helps as I have been away from pc's for to long to keep in tune with all this.

One question I do have it what is the advantage of SLi and Crossfire (I asume they are both the same). Will they make my 6600LE or what ever card I change it to, run twice as fast?

pegasus1 · 11 Mar 2006 at 10:09

xknight2000 said:
One question I do have it what is the advantage of SLi and Crossfire (I asume they are both the same). Will they make my 6600LE or what ever card I change it to, run twice as fast?

SLI and Crossfire use 2 cards to carry out the graphics tasks, meaning theoretically twice the performance but in reality this depends on the game/software, some games show no performance gains at all whilst others are considerably faster. Some games have issues with dual cards setups, again it is a fairly deep subject but have a look in the graphics forums or have a google.

xknight2000 · 11 Mar 2006 at 10:16

Thanks mate, thats answered it spot on for me, dont fancy going to deap into it, to early in the morning for that, lol.

xknight2000 · 11 Mar 2006 at 10:20

Can you SLi two different cards? Like if I was to get a 7800 and SLi it with a 6600, i know thats silly but can you do it?

lee87 · 11 Mar 2006 at 10:24

No, they have to be the same card.
They even have to be the same manufacturer. You couldn't sli a XFX geforce 6600 with a Leadtek geforce 6600.

xknight2000 · 11 Mar 2006 at 10:26

Thanks guys. Now the big decision of a nVidia 7800GT or a x1800 XT. £200 is my limit because I still have an Xbox360 to get at some stage and I dont want to be too skint.

danswan · 11 Mar 2006 at 10:28

No, they need to be the same model and manufacturer too, IIRC.

Sorry, way too late

pegasus1 · 11 Mar 2006 at 10:31

danswan said:
No, they need to be the same model and manufacturer too, IIRC.

Sorry, way too late

Same model but not the same manufacturer, the latest drivers are less restrictive when it comes to SLI.