SLi or CrossFire?

_-J-_ · 25 Apr 2006 at 09:15

My old 5800 Ultra went bang the other week, so at the moment im running a old FX5500 which to be honest sucks!

Im going to get a whole new rig, so i ask you the people of overclockers if you can spec me up. I want it quite future-proof (not a good word i know!), just dont know if i should go SLi or CrossFire for the future.

I mainly use the rig for gaming and web browsing, i will have about £600 to spend soon.

So Spec Me Up OcUK

SiriusB · 25 Apr 2006 at 09:23

Whether you go SLi or Crossfire obviously depends on whether you go nVidia or ATi...

Basically youll be wanting to be looking for the best card you can afford with your current budget. If that card so happens to be nVidia, then its SLi you're after. If ATi - Crossfire.

There is, however, one thing you should consider. With only £600 it might not be that easy to make your spec future proof! But I reckon some of the lads around here should be able to knock up something beastly all the same

SiriusB

MeatLoaf · 25 Apr 2006 at 09:55

Ok, how about this, assuming you can reuse your optical drive, case, keyboard, nouse and monitor

MB-101-AS Asus A8N-SLi SE nForce4 SLi (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-101-AS)
£64.95 £64.95
GX-080-LT Leadtek GeForce 7600 GT 256MB GDDR3 VIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-080-LT)
£112.95 £112.95
CP-134-AM AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3800BVBOX) (CP-134-AM)
£183.95 £183.95
CA-025-EN Enermax Liberty 500W ELT500AWT ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU (CA-025-EN)
£61.95 £61.95
HD-054-SE Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 NCQ 120GB ST3120813AS SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-054-SE)
£41.95 £83.90
Subtotal £507.70
VAT £88.85
Total £596.55

So you got a decent SLi capable mobo, a nice future proof dual core CPU, and a decent 7600GT gfx card with the option to add another at a later date. Ive also specced 2 HDDs so you can set up a nice RAID array. And a new PSU as the one you have may not be suitable.

fenderbass86 · 25 Apr 2006 at 09:59

RAM? Case?

MeatLoaf · 25 Apr 2006 at 10:05

fenderbass86 said:
RAM? Case?

Well i assumed he was using his old case, but yes i did forget the RAM

Scrap one of the HDDs and add a 1GB kit of Geil value

_-J-_ · 25 Apr 2006 at 14:13

Cheers for the replies. I do not need a monitor or keyboard and mouse. Is a RAID really needed as we only use them in servers for redundency