Newbie question on SLi

I'm considering an upgrade to my system, actually a complete overhaul. Would it be wiser to get two midrange cards in a SLi configuration, such as two 7600GT's or a single card such as a 7900GS? I'm new to the PCI-e world and am just starting to research the pro's and con's of such a set up, especially being on a very limited budget.

Thanks in advance for the advice.

Bryan

I think you meant to say 7900GT. 2 7600GSs cost about $280 which is about the cost of a 7900GT and the 7900 GT is a sizable amount better than 2 x 7600GS.

Check out the VGA charts on the homepage, they are quite useful.

All in all, it is *generally* better to always go with a single card over SLI unless you are gaming at extreme resolution.

No, he meant a 7900GS. Where have you been all this time? A 7900GS would infact be a most likely better option. You could even opt for the 7950GT if you really wanted too.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814186006

Or from a Ati standpoint, this is the craze once again:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814161047

If you should get the best single card you can buy, and from looking at the VGA charts seeing performance, what good is SLi or Crossfire even? If your not getting that much a performance boost why go use it?

Also, how much bottlenecking am I to expect if I'm using either a 7900GS, or 7800GT if I'm running a S939 Athlon 64 4000+ with 2Gigs of single channel PC3200 RAM? I don't plan on overclocking really, so that is not really a factor at the moment.

But it appears that the performance boost you'd receive is negated by the cost of the card itself making if more worthwhile to just invest in a higher end card, or am I mistaken? Like I said originally, I am just diving in headfirst here into this end of the pool. I thought my setup I had was good enough with a 256Mb 6200LE and 1.6Gb of RAM on a 3200+ S754. Then I tried to play Vanguards beta and was in for a rude awakening. I really hadn't been following the advancement in cards and was stuck in the old "More memory the better the card". The whole Pixel Pipeline and Shaders, etc is all fairly new...maybe I need GPU's for dummies or something like that.

Need to thank THG for opening my eyes a bit after reading the article about updating AGP cards in older systems to get me thinking...especially since I was going to do just that.....