Which motherboard ???

[CarbonFire]

I can only see two instances where SLI beats out 1 regular higher end card making it a good idea

1. You have wads of cash, and want the best performance available (beyond what a single card is currently capable of).

2. You don't have wads of cash, but two lower-end cards cost less combined than one higher end card, and can outperform it.

The "upgrade path" option for SLI isn't that great of an option IMO. Generally by the time you're ready to grab a second card, there's a new single card that will outperform your SLI setup.

And I reject the "because it doesn't use 100% of the card" argument. This is high end computers we are talking here. You aren't getting 100% out your graphics card anyway, unless you pair it with the highest possible CPU and the highest speed RAM. It really doesn't matter how many components you have in your system, it matters what kind of performance you can extract from that setup (and how much it cost). While SLi boards shouldn't cost twice as much, they often do have pretty high-end components and performance, so generally the little extra you pay for them is worth it (though 3x as much makes little sense unless you're just trying to get bleeding edge).

SLI has its place, thought rarely as a good way to upgrade.

[Donziboy2]

Sometimes carbon you buy 1 uber card and decide a month later to add another ubercard and just be that much more poor and L33T.

I put a pair of 7800 gtx ko into my current system when i first built it and i loved it. so what if it cost a grand:P but after about 1.5 years i got the bug and bought an 8800 gts (g92) and it beats the sli setup but not by much.

I use a 24" monitor and 1900 res so i need that extra boost. atm im looking at buying another gts cause it would easily beat an ultra in sli. And most games will actualy play better with 2 cards if you have your settings tweaked for that game.

also you cant use sli on p35. wich is silly since intel is just shooting themselves in the foot helping amd lol.

also cain if your looking for a nice processor get a wolfdale they kick butt for the price newegg wants for them.

Most important is to get what your looking for. No point in buying something that doesnt have all the bells you wanted.

DDR2 is the way to go also since DDR3 is way overpriced for the very small amount of extra boost it gives.

Soon as i get the money im goin with a 780i/ 8400 wolfdale/ some nice ddr2/150gb raptor/ and a copy of xp if they still have it when i have the money. Im not at all impressed with vista, its not a gamers os. But the extra ram would be a small plus i guess, if the os doesnt eat it all lol. You can get 2x2gb ram ddr2 800 for 70ish dollars, wich is pretty damn cheap lol.

Also if your looking to save a few dollars check retailers in your area. Like i have a compusa in my area that would save me about 40$ plus the shiping if i bought my cpu/motherboard at there store.

[juneau]

I can only see two instances where SLI beats out 1 regular higher end card making it a good idea

1. You have wads of cash, and want the best performance available (beyond what a single card is currently capable of).

2. You don't have wads of cash, but two lower-end cards cost less combined than one higher end card, and can outperform it.

The "upgrade path" option for SLI isn't that great of an option IMO. Generally by the time you're ready to grab a second card, there's a new single card that will outperform your SLI setup.

And I reject the "because it doesn't use 100% of the card" argument. This is high end computers we are talking here. You aren't getting 100% out your graphics card anyway, unless you pair it with the highest possible CPU and the highest speed RAM. It really doesn't matter how many components you have in your system, it matters what kind of performance you can extract from that setup (and how much it cost). While SLi boards shouldn't cost twice as much, they often do have pretty high-end components and performance, so generally the little extra you pay for them is worth it (though 3x as much makes little sense unless you're just trying to get bleeding edge).

SLI has its place, thought rarely as a good way to upgrade.

But most people that use SLI are running high speed CPU's normally along with above normal resolutions.This frees up the bottleneck created within components, but the power of the second card still isn't used due to the limitations and design of the SLI tech.

And let's take Crysis for instance. We all know what a joke this game is performance wise. If you had 2 top end cards in SLI wouldn't you love to see what they could do when being both used at 100% of their capacity? We pretty much all know that this game isn't CPU bound like it first appeared it would be. Maybe then the game would be playable.

SLI boards do have high end components, but so does my P35 (And this uses Crossfire... not so different to SLI). I guess that Nvidia boards must be getting built in a place like the UK, where things cost more to build for no apparent reason. To me it seems more like somebody in the Nvidia ranks just slapped whatever price tag they wanted onto it. It's not a secret that the PC geeks of this world don't mind paying out huge ammounts of cash so that they can feed their l33tn3ss.