SLi board or not?

[Koorah]

Hi guys,

Not sure if this is the right place for the post so forgive me if not - I'm a newbie.

Been planning a new PC for a while and will be buying all the componants for a self build in a month or two. However, beeing a n00b at this sort of thing I have been doing some research and now find myself in need of advice from the guru's

From what I've read, the Intel boards are generally considered better than the nVidia's and although I was going to buy the Q6600 CPU I know the new gen of Intel CPU's with the higher FSB speeds are around the corner, so I was thinking of a new p35 board to future proof a bit.

My problem is that when my monitor blew recently I bought a new Dell 24 inch with a 1920 x 1200 native and to game at that rez without turning stuff down I'm thinking that 8800GTX SLI may be the path to go (even if I have to get a second card a bit later) and this obviously means nvidia board. i've also heard that single 8800's are getting slammed for their DX10 performance in the Call of Juarez and Company of Heroes DX10 versions (realise this may be driver related but was a bit disappointed by what I've seen), further nudging me toward SLI.

I'm planning to experiment with Overclocking but its not top of my priorities right now. A stable system that kicks bottom is.

Which direction do you think I should go? Is SLI worth it or are there other options for gaming at this rez?

 

[Teaf]

I would not SLI, even at that resolution. I would just stick with 1 GTX, and you should be perfectly fine with that. Regarding CoH and CoJ, the problem with those benchmarks is that they were "fiddled with" and they perform better on Nvidia/ATI respectively due to some bias and intervention from the card development companies. They are also not native DX10 and only had DX10 put into them at a late stage of the game. True DX10 games will perform better than those 2 benchmarks do, and I wouldn't judge the card based on what results come from CoH/CoJ.

An 8800 GTX in something like Company of Heroes in DirectX 9 mode at 1920x1200 resolution will still achieve 80 FPS average that's with 4x to 8x AA, and 16x AF. That's very good, and although the game is getting on a bit you will still see near that level of performance in future games, although you may have to take the AF and AA down to something like 2x AA / 8x AF for newer games, I still don't think you'll have problems playing at the resolution you want with a single GTX.

 

[Koorah]

Ok Thanks Flibby, appreciate your help

 

[w3bbo]

I use a single gtx on a 3007 WFP-HC with everything at max and don't have any problems.

 

[Koorah]

Sold! Cheers!