Building a GAMING SYSTEM - Need advice please !!!

First, get rid of the 7800 GT and get a 7900 GT. It performs as good as a 7800 GTX, yet it only costs about $15 more than a 7800 GT. Second, get a cheaper motherboard without SLI. SLI is NOT worth it at all, adding a second card does not boost performance by 100%, it will actually boost it by 20 - 30%. Getting a stronger card will be cheaper, more powerful, and it will have less compatibility issues.

Nice setup, except you dont need SLI. As others will atest on this forum, and Tom has proven, 2 mid range cards in SLI will NOT outperform one high end card. So trade it in your 7800GT for a 7900GT and trade in your SLI motherboard for a non-SLI Asus board. The Opteron is a good choice, and is exactly what I would recommend.

As for the hard drive and RAM, both good choices. If you do plan to overclock OCZ RAM tends to overclock better than other brands and 2GB will be around the same price. (Gold is like $220). As for the DVD-burner, Lightscribe is cool, but it requires special (pricey) discs if you really want to burn art on the disc. If you dont really care about this opt for an NEC DVD burner for $39.

So After the changes we have:
Case-$83.00

Asus A8N-E- $94.00

PSU
- $90

Opteron 165- $325

XFX Geforce 7900GT 256MB- $315.00

WD 320GB hard drive- $125

OCX 2GB Gold- $215.00 ($174 after rebate)

DVD Drive- $55/$39 depending

New Total- $1302.00

Nice setup, except you dont need SLI. As others will atest on this forum, and Tom has proven, 2 mid range cards in SLI will NOT outperform one high end card. So trade it in your 7800GT for a 7900GT and trade in your SLI motherboard for a non-SLI Asus board. The Opteron is a good choice, and is exactly what I would recommend.

As for the hard drive and RAM, both good choices. If you do plan to overclock OCZ RAM tends to overclock better than other brands and 2GB will be around the same price. (Gold is like $220). As for the DVD-burner, Lightscribe is cool, but it requires special (pricey) discs if you really want to burn art on the disc. If you dont really care about this opt for an NEC DVD burner for $39.

So After the changes we have:
Case-$83.00

Asus A8N-E- $94.00

PSU
- $90

Opteron 165- $325

XFX Geforce 7900GT 256MB- $315.00

WD 320GB hard drive- $125

OCX 2GB Gold- $215.00 ($174 after rebate)

DVD Drive- $55/$39 depending

New Total- $1302.00

Thank you for the reply.

What if I got a SLI motherboard, a 7900, and planned on upgrading SLI 7900 later on? I understand games out right now will run very smooth with my setup including the 7900, but when the future comes (over about a year and a half or so) will one 7900 run everything on max settings or near max? I could spit out that extra 80 for a sli mobo no problem, but the main question is, is SLI 7900 worth it in the future? Or in the future should I just upgrade to a better card then? I know that the 7900 card will be cheap then, which is the only real reason that im considering this. THANKS!

If would be a better use of money to upgrade the card when the time comes then get another 7900 in the future. Video card prices actually do not fall that much. Look at the 7800s 6 months from now, they won't be rock bottom cheap. However the 7900 is going to run all games currently or in the foreseeable future very nicely. If you want the best card right now, look at the $600 7900GTXs which have 512MB of RAM (2 GPUs on the same card)


EDIT-
My poor typing needs correcting.

I hear all over this forum that onboard sound is very efficient. If that's the case then I am fine with onboard, it saves me a good amount of cash as well, although i know a soundcard would probably help sound a whole lot.

I would suggest replacing the XMS with this, tighter timings for the same price:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820227210
Everything looks good though.

"I hear all over this forum that onboard sound is very efficient. If that's the case then I am fine with onboard, it saves me a good amount of cash as well, although i know a soundcard would probably help sound a whole lot."

Indeed, since the advent of 6,7, and 8 channel sound integrated on most mainboards, I've not bought a soundcard since the year 2000!

uh huh could you post the link for that evidence. oh and 1280 x 1024 res is not applicable 1600 x 1200 or higher please.