Hardware guru's: See anything wrong?

[Alynn]

Hey all,
I think I've finally decided on my newest computer build. If I keep looking I'll probably decide to change things again...

However, I'd like some feedback on what I have here, just to make sure I'm not missing anything. The last thing I need to decide is if I want to Vista or not, if I do, I will get another 2 gb of RAM. But to be honest, I'd probably be better off with an OEM XP copy for another 80 bucks.

Anyway I'd appreciate comments.

Here's the link.
http://secure.newegg.com/NewVersion/wishlist/PublicWishDetail.asp?WishListNumber=4359946

[LGM]

There's absolutely no reason for 4GB of ram unless you do heavy video editing or 3D rendering. Vista is a good choice, I think... If it comes free with something. If not, sure, go with XP. Vista really isn't that bad. Especially when your system is more than capable of running it.

[Ishmael]

If you are going to play games (as I would assume solely over the graphics card you chose) don't get Vista. XP SP2 messed things up enough. Besides, AGS games probably don't work on Vista, do they?

[TheYak]

Driver support for Vista's still pretty iffy, but nVidia's been concentrating on both Vista and it's 8800-series drivers for all of '07 so far, so things should smooth out soon.

Yeah, Vista gaming performance is shit, but since you're going for an SLI 8800 rig, the performance should more than make up for it.  Although, SLI was never 100% reliable in XP so I'd expect occasional incompatibilities in Vista for the near future. 

The one change I'd make (aside from motherboard/case + adding a dedicated sound card.. personal preferences, really) is to drop the 8800 GTSes in favor of a single GTX.  It would be cheaper, more reliable, keep your temperatures lower, noise lower, consume less power, and provide nearly the average performance benefit of SLI once games actually make real use of the DX10 features. 

Vista/DX10 require more video resources be shared with the OS and applications.  To compensate, a portion of system RAM is attributed to the video card.  In my setup, for example, my 256MB card is reported as 520MB w/ nearly half that being temporary swap with system RAM. 

So, the largest bottleneck is going to be the RAM architecture as well as reliance upon slower DDR2 versus GDDR3.  You're not just talking clock-speed difference with the GTS versus GTX either.  You're talking reduced memory bus bandwidth, smaller memory size, reduced processing streams, along with the reduce clock and memory speeds.  The GTS is very much a budget card, with even more castration versus the higher-end models than the 7900-series had. 

The caveat is the size of the card - I'd choose the GTX knowing that it would fit in my current case, but I'm not sure about the one in your list (mine's a little bigger longer I think).

[Da_Elf]

vista pre-loads alot of stuff which means your wasitng about 800mb with vista freshly booted up and waiting, which in my oppinion is a waste of ram and as a 3d animator ram is super important to me. i personally see absolutely no reason to goto vista.

lol. this was halarious http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/100reasons.mspx
can someone else read through it and tell me if they notice that in their list of 100 reasons to use vista they repeat some reasons as many as 5 times using up about 20-30 reasons on repeats alone. then there are the reasons to use it which honestly they are reasons i WOULDNT use it. then there are reasons listed which to me sound like features already found in windows XP. Vista. WoW it looks like crap

[Alynn]

Sound isn't an issue, my current sound card (X-Fi) will come out of my current computer and move into the new one. The Motherboard was chosen for it's capability to handle quadcore, which I will be upgrading in probably 2-3 years, this is actually a newer model Mobo because the one I had before (an ASUS) wasn't on the list to have a BIOS flash for Quad Core support. And I have a Big Typhoon for the CPU, although I may just keep it in the package as much of the stuff I'm looking at really points that the stock cooler does the job because of the relitively coolness of the CPU itself.

The case unfortunately is the best one out of all the full towers I was looking at. After building my wife's mid tower I realize that I really like the elbow room of a full tower case.

Generally when I build, I don't just build for now, I build to easy upgrading in 2-3 years to keep the machine somewhat up to speed for another 2-3 years.

Honestly, I did look at the GTX, but I decided that running the GTS in SLI is what I want to go with, since running the GTX in SLI is well, a bit over what I want to spend (I set a personal limit of 2500 dollars, for no other reason then to keep me from going really crazy, I tend to overbuild)

Finally, I didn't find alot of DDR3 compatable Mobo's, but I figured the FSB upgrade would help in many respects (currently running a 533FSB so I effectively doubled my FSB).

I'll consider the GTX though, it'd save me about 200 dollars, and I can always SLI the bad boy in a year or two. but looking at where the heat pipes are located it may be a tight/impossible fit. Then again, the cards I'm getting might be tight anyway.

Ok, that werks for me, and yeah XP SP2 it is, I was doing my best to keep my compulsions to a minimum on buying it, since I really don't need it. Also, if this helps you any, I don't overclock and tweak, I find it's just easier, less of a hassle, and if you are running them at what they are rated for, they last longer (a poofing CPU and loss of 500 bucks just isn't my cup of tea).

[Alynn]

Hey, double post I know, but it's been 2 days with no reply.

Has anyone seen any comparisons between the GTS in SLI v. single GTX? I've been searching, but nothing for these two configurations. The reason I'm asking is because if the difference isn't huge, I'll probably go with just the GTX and SLI them in a year or two when I upgrade.

Most comparisons are the 320MB GTS in SLI with single GTX's. If you see one or know of a URL with one, could you let me know...

Thanks.

[TheYak]

Haven't seen too many comparisons, but there is this one showing both GTX and the 640MB GTS benched both in single and SLI modes: Link

It varies with the title, but the trend seems to be that the GTX performs about halfway between the single and SLI speeds of the GTS.  Additionally, SLI in most games yields far less than the 40-50% performance increase you might hope for. 

On a pragmatic note, the variance in costs (2 GTS v. 1 GTX) seems to coincide neatly with the performance.  For myself, that amount of extra performance isn't worth the extra troubleshooting, noise, heat, and power consumption. 

[Alynn]

Noise never bothered me, between where it sits in my desk (closable drawer muffles alot of the noise), the television, and the kids, you don't notice it anyway. Hell my wife's computer sits out in the open and you don't notice it. And power, well who cares . All in my opinion of course

Thanks for that Yak. With only an average of about 18% loss of performace between all those tests, it probably won't be enough that I'll notice, and it will still be a massive improvement over what I currently have so I'll go ahead and save myself 200 dollars now, and SLI in a year or three. The only thing now is I'll have to look up a new PSU that has 4 PCIE power leads, since the GTX takes 2 of them.

Anyway my wish list is updated, click the link at the top again to see the new specs. All that is really left is to add the OS to the list and then buy it... oooooh, I'm giddy