AngelAce

So allright, my system is a little old (not that i am complaining on the specs or anything) and i thought up of an upgrade which i hopefully will arrange to buy in the next month or so. Less cost the better.. So here is the set up
- DFI LANPARTY UT nF4 Ultra-D (got 2 PCIe 16x slots, a possibilty to convert the mobo to an SLI, which many people did, and its easy)
- MSI NX6600GT-TD128E Geforce 6600GT 128MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI-Express. Probably the best PCIe with SLI support video card under a 200 dollar range. So, what do you people think of it?

p.s. I also read that for the dfi mobo you need a 24pin power supply, i dont want to waste another 100$ on it, so my question is will it work with a 20-24 pin converter? (without me clocking anything and not changing mobo voltages)

Wolf2000me

It depends what you are upgrading from. Just by upgrading to a much better videocard can get you a very good performance boost and you might be off cheaper. If your system isn't too outdated...

Converting an nforce4 Ultra to a SLI is indeed a fairly simple procedure though nvidia has already tried and will keep trying to counter this by rigging their chipset drivers. I'm not an expert on the subject though i think you should know this.

About the atx connectors i'm not sure, i think it has to do with power phasing. Of course regardless of this you should check your PSU whether it's capable of pulling your new hardware. Also a good PSU is never a waste of money unless the ATX standards change or get booted.

AngelAce

I am upgrading from
- Gigabyte GA-K8VT800
- GeForce FX5700 256mb

I wouldnt say my system is outdated that badly, but i have this urge to run all the latest games at highest settings possible. Ofcourse i can solve that by buying some $400-500 video card. But judging by current industry progression it would be a smarter buy to go with SLI and at the same time change my mobo to something better. As i see it, 2 midranged video cards in SLI ( referring to the one i choose) will be approximately $400, but outperforming most of todays top cards, and still be good in a year, or maybe even 2 or 3. All i am concerned mainly about is, do i need to throw out some money on a new powersupply. The one i have right now came with my chieftec case, its a Turbolink 420ww. (and i dont beliave it would be powerfull enough) I think that for my mobo, the first video card(MSI NX6600GT) will run of the motherboad powersupply, and the second one (when attached) will require power, which connects to the mobo throth a 4pin molex. Correct me if i am wrong please.

Wolf2000me

Likely you have to connect an extra molex to the side of each card.

Your current setup is an A64 socket 754 which is still pretty okay in my humble opinion. Though you are right to say the 2x6600 SLI setup will outperform any single high end card for the PC i would advise you to wait a little while. Both ATI and nvidia are starting the production of their nextgen cores. Which may have a serious effect on the price of the current cards within a few months. Perhaps those high end cards will outperform 2x6600 SLI setups. The midrange nextgen SLI will be performing better than 2 6600 cards of course. Also the next generation will support PS 3.0 as the 6600 cards do so that's a reason to buy the 6600 cards. Though perhaps within one year the cores with support for the successor of directx 9 may be released. In that case you might not be able to restrain yourself to buy one of those. In that case you will have 2 cards to get rid of.

edit: When upgrading to socket 939 you will have to get yourself a new cpu of course, which will cost you quite some money as well. That is if you want to get one that will get you a much better clockfrequency, otherwise the only performance gain you get will be from the dual channel memory controller on the 939 and perhaps some extra cache. So the new 939 processor and mobo will get you perhaps 5 to 10% performance increase for a substantial amount of money, while a new videocard may in fact double your performance at least. You can get an agp 6800 GT for the price of the new motherboard+cpu.

AngelAce

Hmm....thanx for filling me in on the fact that they (nVidia, ATI) will soon be selling out their next generation video cards, i did not know that Which does usually mean, price drop for most of their latest cards. IF those cards will outperform an 2x6600(midrange video car) SLI setup, than they are a good choice to go. So yeah, i think ill wait now
Whats concerning me now, is that do i have to switch to pci-e express setups, seeing those are more dominant and offer lots of performance. Right now i am thinking about buying some cheap pci-e motherboard and supplying it with cheap, but well performing PCI-E video card, that swap should be sufficient for me, for the next year or so and should cost in reasonable 300$ price range. Later on though, i hopefully will be able to afford one of the latest video cards. Any comments on this thinking? And one more question, what would be a good choice video card (PCI-E, 256mb [if that makes a huge difference in pcie as to 128mb] with some good overclocking features) under 200$ rag?

Wolf2000me

Actually if you take 2 of the same cards, one with a PCI-X interface and the other AGP 3.0, you will not notice the difference. That's because the bandwidth used by AGP 3.0 is still not completely used by todays modern PC graphics cards. Unless you're in some serious video editing and such.

I'd say if you want to buy a card now you could either choose a 6800 GT or an X800XL. Both are 256mb cards.
The GT supports pixel shader 3.0 while the XL only supports 2.0 but it's cheaper. You can find a GT for around 320 € and up and you can find an XL for less than 300€. Also the XL has some pipelines disabled which you can enable yourself by flashing the firmware. I heard you have a good chance of successfully enabling the pipelines though it is not certain.
What i'm saying is if you want some hardware to get you through the next year with all graphics features enabled in games and such you don't have to go PCI-X yet. Of course you could get yourself a pci-x card with a cheap mobo and later buy a SLI mobo with an extra pci-x card of the same type and set it in SLI. Though it is not said to fill your performance hunger. By then better cheaper cards will have been released that may outperform that SLI setup.
Bottom line, if you're not going for SLI i don't see any real reason to go for a PCI-X mobo and graphics card.

I hope i've been some help
Cheers

AngelAce

Thanks a lot mate, you helped me out a lot I am going to go with buying one of the more high-end AGP video cards and sticking with it for a while. Thanx again for your help.

Wolf2000me

No problem m8, ppl here kick on this kind of thing