2 Old sli Or One New Card.

DannyB1954 · Jul 17, 2013

I will be building a new gaming system. I had installed a Nvidia 9800GT with 1 meg in my present computer and was thinking that in the new system I could buy a second one, (cheap), and SLI them. I know it is not directx11 compatible, but for about $32 I would be getting better performance than I now have. My budget does not allow for the latest and greatest, but I think that I would be happy with last generations technology at a more reasonable price. Maybe buy 2 older SLI cards to get the same performance as one new high dollar card.
Any thoughts or suggestions?

COLGeek · Jul 17, 2013

If your motherboard supports SLI and your power supply is sufficient to power 2 9800GTs, then $32 is a small price to pay.

However, I would recommend you not do that and save a few more bucks and get a single, more modern and capable video card.

What are the specs for your system?

DannyB1954 · Jul 17, 2013

COLGeek :

It will be a new build using not the latest and greatest, but still twice what I have. No set components, but I was thinking maybe I7 quad core processor 16 meg memory, 2 hard drive in raid 1. I was thinking that if I could get away cheap with the video card for now, more of the budget could go towards a better CPU. later I could upgrade the video.

COLGeek · Jul 17, 2013

I would still go with a single, more capable GPU vice SLI'd 9800GTs.

DannyB1954 · Jul 17, 2013

COLGeek :

What would you recomend for a last generation card? I have been happy with Nvidia. They used to have the best support with drivers and such, but if the other brands are just as good these days, I am open to those as well.

apower101 · Jul 17, 2013

As a budget card the 7750/7770 from amd are great (the first doesn't need extra power). I would get one of these as an in between card. If you don't intend to upgrade the gpu for a while, buy an i5, which is as good as the i7 for gaming, and put the extra money towards a better gpu. Don't buy older cards. Also, the i7 is the latest and greatest. It also carries a significant price premium for that. So if good, relatively cheap components is what you are after, get the i5.

DannyB1954 · Jul 17, 2013

apower101 :

I thank you very much for taking the time and effort to educate me. I will shop for components for an I5 system with a 7770 video card

apower101 · Jul 17, 2013

Sounds like a good plan. Enjoy your build!

chriss000 · Jul 17, 2013

DannyB1954 :

Yay, when you get your new card, you can sell your old system for some money to put towards the 2nd 7770. Be sure to buy a crossfire mother board for 7770's, sli is for invidia cards.

apower101 · Jul 17, 2013

If he has the money for 2 7770's, he should get a better single gpu. I would never recommend two 7770's. I only recommended this one as an inbetween card until he gets a better one.

chriss000 · Jul 17, 2013

apower101 :

But he doesnt have the money upfront, so there you go.
I would never recommend 2 cards in the first place, mearly one decent one,
but people like to buy fancy boards and big cases and whopping great psu's etc etc. . Unless you run 3 monitors or encode video its an expensive passtime.

DannyB1954 · Jul 18, 2013

chriss000 :

I went off of the deep end. I went to pricewatch.com to shop. Each video card was just a little nicer and a little more expensive, I started with the 7770, then for $15 more there was the 7790, then for $20 more there was a 7850, Etc. So what's $20 more? and $20 more? Well it added up to more like $200 more. I ended up with a 7950 for about $270. It comes bundled with 4 popular games, (Crysis 3, Bioshock Infinite, & FarCry3:Blood Dragon, and Tomb Raider I don't know that I would have bought all of these games, but some web sites say the retail value of the games is about $170, so the card cost would be about $100. It seemed like a good deal. I then went to newegg and bought the high end stuff that they had promotions on.

I went with an amd FX-8350, Asus Sabertooth 99dfx, OCZ 1000 watt PS, 2 refurbished Seagate SV35 Series 1TB, (going to run Raid1. If one dies for $54 who cares, just get another, no data loss), COOLER MASTER "Heatpipe Direct Contact", LITE-ON DVD Burner, GeIL EVO 16GB DDR3 1866, and a Rosewill BLACKHAWK Gaming ATX Mid Tower to stuff it all into. total cost there $861. So for $1131 I should have a system that will last me for another 5 to 10 years.

I would like to thank everyone who helped me make up my mind, even if I did not follow your exact suggestions, what you said did have an impact.

chriss000 · Jul 18, 2013

DannyB1954 :

chriss000 :

I went off of the deep end. I went to pricewatch.com to shop. Each video card was just a little nicer and a little more expensive, I started with the 7770, then for $15 more there was the 7790, then for $20 more there was a 7850, Etc. So what's $20 more? and $20 more? Well it added up to more like $200 more. I ended up with a 7950 for about $270. It comes bundled with 4 popular games, (Crysis 3, Bioshock Infinite, & FarCry3:Blood Dragon, and Tomb Raider I don't know that I would have bought all of these games, but some web sites say the retail value of the games is about $170, so the card cost would be about $100. It seemed like a good deal. I then went to newegg and bought the high end stuff that they had promotions on.

I went with an amd FX-8350, Asus Sabertooth 99dfx, OCZ 1000 watt PS, 2 refurbished Seagate SV35 Series 1TB, (going to run Raid1. If one dies for $54 who cares, just get another, no data loss), COOLER MASTER "Heatpipe Direct Contact", LITE-ON DVD Burner, GeIL EVO 16GB DDR3 1866, and a Rosewill BLACKHAWK Gaming ATX Mid Tower to stuff it all into. total cost there $861. So for $1131 I should have a system that will last me for another 5 to 10 years.

I would like to thank everyone who helped me make up my mind, even if I did not follow your exact suggestions, what you said did have an impact.

You need to be aware everybody I know who I consider 'experts'
(know vastly more than I do) consider using onboard raid as problematic at best and data suicide at worst.
You need to spend $150 on a raid card before going down that route, or you will just keep having major crashes and system re installs.
As these raid cards require a pci-e slot, you might not have room.
I would just save files onto a second drive as back up and keep what i needed fast access on the ssd.
Its a case of 'walk first, run later'. Feel free to try if you wish but
be prepared for the worst.

DannyB1954 · Jul 18, 2013

chriss000 :

DannyB1954 :

You need to be aware everybody I know who I consider 'experts'
(know vastly more than I do) consider using onboard raid as problematic at best and data suicide at worst.
You need to spend $150 on a raid card before going down that route, or you will just keep having major crashes and system re installs.
As these raid cards require a pci-e slot, you might not have room.
I would just save files onto a second drive as back up and keep what i needed fast access on the ssd.
Its a case of 'walk first, run later'. Feel free to try if you wish but
be prepared for the worst.

In Raid 0, the information is split between the drives, so if you lose one drive, all your information is gone. In

DannyB1954 · Jul 18, 2013

The motherboard that I bought says it supports Raid 0,1,5, and 10 I believe. That means the Raid card is already built into the motherboard.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID Describes the different raid configurations. In Raid 1 There are 2 hard drives, but they contain the exact same data, (the second drive mirrors the first). If one drive does fail, there is no problem installing a new drive and copying the data from the remaining good old drive to the new drive. I bought the refurbished 1TB drives for $54 each. They should be good as new, but if one does fail there is an instant backup. The computer does this at the bios level, so there is nothing extra that the operating system or user has to do. When one disk gets info written on it, the second one gets the same exact info.

chriss000 · Jul 18, 2013

DannyB1954 :

I am no expert on this, but even the n7n8x asus motherboard from 2003 I have in a cupboard has onboard sata raid. i understand you think its some built in card, but it is an add on feature, probably in the chipset. Give it a bash by all means; I am just stressing its likely even running in mirrors if and when it crashes, you will not be able to boot or recover from either drive. I have never tried, because my expert mates told me not to waste my remaining hairline. I wish you luck.
Yours , Baldy.

DannyB1954 · Jul 21, 2013

I am no expert on this, but even the n7n8x asus motherboard from 2003 I have in a cupboard has onboard sata raid. i understand you think its some built in card, but it is an add on feature, probably in the chipset. Give it a bash by all means; I am just stressing its likely even running in mirrors if and when it crashes, you will not be able to boot or recover from either drive. I have never tried, because my expert mates told me not to waste my remaining hairline. I wish you luck.
Yours , Baldy. [/quotemsg]

Your expert friends must be thinking of times past. It used to require special scsi hard drives to do a Raid array. They were very expensive, and the motherboards did not support Raid, so you had to buy a controller as well.
Today, any drive will do, as long as they are all the same. I decided to go with a Raid 10 setup instead of a Raid 1. I am still waiting on receiving the last 2 drives. The total cost of the 4 drives is a little over $200. This will give me 2TB of storage.
As a test, I put the 2 drives that I have in a Raid 0 configuration and I loaded Windows 8. The computer has not had any problems reading the 2 drives, so the on board controller is working well. When I get the other 2 drives, I will redo the whole thing as a Raid 10. With Raid 10 you have 4 drives I will call them a, b, c, & d. Drives a & c have exactly the same info, and b & d have the same info. For drives a & c, (or b & d), to fail at the same time should be very unlikely. The system should be a lot quicker and more reliable than a single drive system.

chriss000 · Jul 22, 2013

DannyB1954 :

Your expert friends must be thinking of times past. It used to require special scsi hard drives to do a Raid array. They were very expensive, and the motherboards did not support Raid, so you had to buy a controller as well.
Today, any drive will do, as long as they are all the same. I decided to go with a Raid 10 setup instead of a Raid 1. I am still waiting on receiving the last 2 drives. The total cost of the 4 drives is a little over $200. This will give me 2TB of storage.
As a test, I put the 2 drives that I have in a Raid 0 configuration and I loaded Windows 8. The computer has not had any problems reading the 2 drives, so the on board controller is working well. When I get the other 2 drives, I will redo the whole thing as a Raid 10. With Raid 10 you have 4 drives I will call them a, b, c, & d. Drives a & c have exactly the same info, and b & d have the same info. For drives a & c, (or b & d), to fail at the same time should be very unlikely. The system should be a lot quicker and more reliable than a single drive system. [/quotemsg]

'Fraid not. as a group our last try was with a 2500k, and an asus board about 18 months ago.Soon became unstable , unreliable, and no tweaks were able ultimately to prevent system crashes and data loss. On board raid is still mostly a Waste of time.

2 Old sli Or One New Card.

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