I haz the PC upgrade itch !! Ballin' on the cheap

[WalkinTarget]

Its using an older AMD chipset, which Nvidia did not grant them the license to support SLI on that chipset.

In the past, AMD used Nvidia chipsets to implement SLI on their products, but after AMD bought up ATI, Nvidia started to get worried that they were being edged out of their market, so they locked out other vendors from offering SLI on their chipsets. Intel's SkullTrail was the exception, having purchased a license from Nvidia for that board.

Beginning with the newest AMD 900 chipset, SLI is again enabled, but that doesn't help me now that I have bought a second card.

More info on the two links below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalable_Link_Interface

http://www.techpowerup.com/143260/NV...ards-Soon.html

[Apache Warrior]

Can you return it for an exchange?
Apache

[WalkinTarget]

Can you return it for an exchange?
Apache

Nope, bought everything used from gamers such as myself. I will run it in single card mode until I determine what my options are. I've even seen a Russian website showing off an SLI hack for a number of older AMD boards, but its not for the faint of heart, that's for sure.

I rarely buy PC hardware without doing some solid research, but in this case that trusty old 8800GTS just make me act before thinking it out fully.

[WalkinTarget]

When will my sanity return ?? Not able to leave well enough alone on next weeks AM3/Crossfire build, I have entered the speculative sale world of Ebay and commenced bidding up several ATI video cards.

Not sure why I can't accept the fact that I screwed up and leave it at that, but I'm bidding on a 4850X2 and two ATI 4850 512mb cards with Crossfire dongles.

I really didn't want 512mb cards, but I am not bidding to win either auction. I just set a low bid and will leave it end w/o bidding again. Maybe by the time I get back from vacation I will be able to forget about buying a pair of ATI cards.

I haven't used an ATI card in a build in .... oh my .... never ?? Interested in mainly the VisionTek 1gb cards or the Sapphire dual slot cards (altho Sapphires tech support is atrocious).

[{CLR} Cobalt]

Before the Dual Card setups came into play. I used ATI cards exclusively for over 10 years. I cant even remember when i crossed over. Maybe at the end of the AGP architecture. But I havent been back since. Dont know if I'll ever go back, but some on here have good luck with ATI.

After Dead and Gone's loading problem, it kinda turned me completely off of ATI cards for good. That plus I bought an HD 5770 that I didnt care for too much. Ran it about 10 minutes and put the GTX 275 back in I got from Duke. Been runnin that for a while.

I'll wait and see what the prices are on the 580's in a couple of months when BF3 comes out. Should be down in price a bit more by then.

[Apache Warrior]

Every ATI card I ever bought gave me problems of some kind.
Apache

[TheSilentAssassin]

Nvidia for life

[Dead...Again]

I have always used NVIDIA. Never had any problems... Plus I like buying EVGA cards.

[WalkinTarget]

Well, I lost all of the auctions I bid on over my vacation, missing out on the Crossfire'd 4850s by $11 .. I didn't want to spend any more than I bid, so at least that is over with .. wheww

I set about swapping out the problematic Asus board for the MSI board and adding Phantom's PSU to the mix (tested on the Asus board before using it on the MSI board). I wiped the SSD and loaded Win7 onto that, adding a spare 250gb drive as storage for now.

Overall, an easy build, and it runs very well. A 965 4 core AMD Black Edition, SSD running Win7 64 bit and 4gb of DDR3 seems quite snappy !

Notes from the build:
Ya, I know ... no PICS !!! I'll get them up later ... I got home yesterday at 4 PM, so I only had 4 hours to swap and test everything.

Wow, that 8800GTS that seemed so powerful back in 2008 does not get it done for modern gaming these days. My Win7 scores were all 7+ other than the gaming and video scores.

Phantom, you have more $$ coming your way tonight. With only one old video card to push, I can rely on that 650w unit for the time being.

Plan is to see if I can trade an older laptop for a pair of 4850's or a larger LCD for my workbench setup and call it a done deal.

[K PhaNTOM]

Glad it set up fine!

[WalkinTarget]

Finally pulled the trigger just now on the video card. That was the one component I kept going back and forth on, and for the first time EVER, and I DO mean EVER, I am going to be rocking an AMD card ...


How's this thing look ? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814102951

It came back in stock in the wee hours of the morning and I added it to the cart and bought it 10 minutes ago. After refreshing my wish list, it was back out of stock again so it looks like I got the last one available at Newegg for the time being.

I ended up going with it after a glowing review on HardOCP:

This gaming performance the SAPPHIRE TOXIC HD6950 produced stomped its competition in the relevant price range. On top of the great overclock that this card comes with, we had plenty of head room to push it even farther. With the overclock on the faster 1536 Shader BIOS the card was able to produce equal or better gaming performance than the much more expensive HD 6970 and GeForce GTX 580, at a fraction of the price.

The SAPPHIRE TOXIC HD6950 is a high-end card that sits in the middle of the HD 6950 the price market. You get two free games; DiRT 3 which is valued at $49.99, and Deus Ex: Human Revolution valued at $49.99, which just released on August 23rd, 2011. You will pay $269.99 after MIR for two free games and the fastest Radeon HD 6950 on the planet. The SAPPHIRE TOXIC HD6950 Video Card is Radeon HD 6950 done right.

[Duke{CLR}]

Nice grab, I hear theses cards are hard to come by.

[WalkinTarget]

Nice grab, I hear theses cards are hard to come by.

Yep, Newegg's Auto Notify is not processing emails when it does come in stock, and 2 days ago when it was in stock they had a total of 5 to purchase. You can add a high number to your cart and see how many are left, but rather than look I just hit the BUY button.

I got lucky enough to read the HardOCP review and received a thread reply email from a guy who said they were back in stock at 5:45. Ordered at 6:10 and out of stock immediately after I refreshed the page.

[Caddys83]

Someone is [H]ard

[Dead...Again]

Sounds like a nice card. I have always used NVIDIA, but need a new card soon, performance-wise I was wanting a 570GTX. I may have to consider one of these instead...