Whay type of mobo/graphics card do you use?

I'm gona make this a poll lol
SLi
SLi x2 or more
Crossfire
AGP or
PCI
Dont Know or other

Any what type of graphics card or motherboard do you plan to upgrade to?

O and if ya use 2 or more SLi have you noticed a big difference in adding the 2ed SLi card?

Slightly graying ASUS A8N32-SLI Delux with an FX-60 and a BFG 7800GT.. I'd SLI it but the dust bunnies have built a fortified castle on the other 16x PCI express slot.

Nvidia 9600 in a PCI-X16 slot -- Gigabyte card, whatever motherboard Alienware uses

Nvidia 8600 in a PCI-X16 slot -- I don't recall who made the card, Asus motherboard

Intel 945 mobile in a Dell D620 laptop

I just rebuilt with a Asus Striker II Extreme mb...I am a happy, happy girl.

Just running one 8800 768 mg in SLI slot; bought two but my hubby started to pout so I'm building him a new rig too.

I love being able to do overclocking from inside windows since I'm just not techy enough to do it the traditional way.

what about the ATI card? why is that missing?

I'm building a new system and I'm going to try the ATI HD4870 512 mb DDR5 Sapphire card. Anyone have experiences with it?

JulieAnne

4870's only got released this last week, doubt most retail stores even have any in stock. but form the Tests they are awesome cards for the price, and two in crossfire should blow away the top single nvidia cards and still be a couple of hundred cheaper.

Im running a 8800GT on a Asus P35 board that has slots for cross fire and am seriously thinking of getting a couple of 4850's or 4870's

Also there's a rumor that ATI will be releasing a Duel GPU 4800 with 1 gig of DDR5 ram on each board... now two of those in crossfire... Mmmm.

Dual GeForce 8800 GTX here. To answer your question, yes, the second card makes a big difference. When I run in SLI mode, I get about a 30% boost to FPS in SL. Some people like to "correct" me when I say that, by claiming that SLI shouldn't make any difference for SL. Well, all I can say is that it definitely does. I don't know if those other people's machines work differently somehow, or if they've simply never tested.

That said, I don't use SLI very often, since I use dual monitors. I'll fire it up from time to time for gaming, but since 90% of my time at the computer is for work, I need multiple monitors at almost all times.

I don't know for certain that the second card is benefiting me for the dual monitor setup, but I think it is. It could be my imagination, but Maya and SL seem to fight less with each other over graphics settings this way. If I plug both monitors into one card, there seem to be more conflicts. By keeping each monitor on its own card, the two programs seem to get along better, as long as I keep each entirely on its own screen. This could just be coincidence, or there could be a good technical reason for it. I don't know for certain.

The only drawback is I lose a little bit of system RAM, since every 32-bit OS has a 4GB memory limit, which includes video memory and system memory combined. With two 768MB video cards, my system RAM is limited to 2.5GB. If I pull one card out, I could have 3.25GB of system RAM. I like to think that having the card in there is worth 768MB sacrifice, but I haven't done any real testing to make sure.

How is it missing, JulieAnne? The poll only asks about motherboard-to-video-card interfaces, not about any cards or boards themselves. Crossfire is listed right after SLI, so both nVidia and ATI are equally represented.

Or did I misunderstand your meaning?

More than likely my poor understanding of PC is showing....
I got asked if I wanted the latest and greats card in my system and said "sure!" (OK, I admit that when my Dad pays for it, everthing is "sure!". So now that I'm getting this card in my new system, I'm starting to wonder if I will be able to play Sl with it?



Thanks, JulieAnne

I think Nvidia works a little better then ATI..but I dont use ATI so just going by what I have heard

Hmm.. I just built this new system.

Asus M2n32-SLi Deluxe Mobo
AMD Phenom 9850 BLACK EDITION 2.5GHz
8GB Ram
2x 8800GT 1GB in SLi

No problems with SLI at all, except sometimes, sculpties don't seem to load properly.

Other than that, it eats anything I can throw at it. Even Crysis.

Quite pleased with myself, really.

After watching SL on a dual 8600, and reverting back to my single 7600 (Nvidia both) I notice a huge difference. *sniffle*

Anyone using the new Nvidia 200 cards? and can you roast hot dogs on it to? heh

Nice system

Mine is:
DFI Infinity NF570 SLI
AMD Athlon64 X2 5600+
4Gb Patriot DDR2-800
2x MSI 6800GT 256Mb in SLI
2x 37Gb WD Raptor 10,000rpm HD's in raid0

Upgraded on the cheap: Mobo, CPU, and RAM was $302 total with free shipping.
Both video cards and both harddrives have served me well over the last 3+ years, but its time to upgrade them soon.
I run SLI 24/7 on this box.. no issues. Second card makes a very noticible difference.

ATI X300 and whatever Motherbaord Dell put in this machine. It has 2 PCI express slots and 3 PCI slots. I don't plan on upgrading it for another year , when I will look into buying a new computer.

Asus A8R-MVP Crossfire
NVIDIA 7900GS 256Mb (PCIe)
Athlon 64X2 4200+
2Gb RAM

Another 2Gb RAM and an 8800GT on my Christmas list, but it runs nicely enough already. It even handles PS7 alongside SL, although my PCTV card sometimes chokes it. I assumed the OP meant PCIe, not PCI on the poll.

Show off

For PCI, do you mean PCIe?

PCI just sucks for gaming.

I have an Nvidia 8800GT 512MB card. Works great.

Nope I ment PCI SLi cards are PCIe

a single pci-ex16 slot has nothing to do with sli. an sli motherboard has two or more pci-ex16 slots that run in SLI.

as for me, one 8800GTX 1920x1200 24"LCD.

Oh wow, I had been wondering this too! Lol. Not sure what I use.. whatever was good a few years back when I bought this thing. Been meaning to upgrade, but my $50 US budget doesn't really allow for much imrpovement =p

Hi. Built this about a month ago...

GIGABYTE GA-EP35-DS3R LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz 6MB L2 Cache
4GB G.SKILL DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit
BFG Tech GeForce 8800GTS 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express HDCP Ready SLI
Acer 22" 5ms Widescreen LCD Monitor with HDCP support

Perfomance in SL has been worse than my with my old 2.7GHz Opteron/7900 GT. Reason? Vista! I finally had enough and installed XP Pro. SL smokes now. I'd be interested in what others have to says about this.

I have an 8800GT on a 650i motherboard with a single PCI-E slot. Works great couldn't imagine it being any better for my purposes.

i run vista and it runs better than it did on my old comp with xp ;P

edit- vista, if you get a clean install, and your hardware is up to date, is now the best os on the planet. dont know if youve seen the sp1 benchies, put that minor framerate advantage that once belonged to xp now belongs to vista. reason? drivers have caught up and theyre only going to get better with time.