Need advice with decision

[friikazoid]

Hey everyone, I need your advice on a choice I have to make regarding my system upgrade. Currently I am running a X2 4400+ slightly overclocked on an ASUS A8N-Premium SLI motherboard with 2 gigs of Corsair XMS Twin-X memory and a XFX 7900GT.

I have been running two monitors on that card - a widescreen 21" (1650*1080) and a regular 19" (1280*1024). The GT was doing fine even if I was playing Guild Wars on the widescreen at max settings and watching a movie on the 19" full-screen at the same time. However, the 19" monitor is slowly dying (when I turn the computer on, for 15 minutes I have to keep turning the monitor off and on cause the picture just keeps going black) and I need to upgrade.

However, I don't have money for a full system upgrade, so here are the two options I was thinking about:

1. Ditch 19", get another 21" and another 7900GT. The problem with this one is that I can't SLI them, cause SLI doesn't support DualView. Hence, I would have to be running two cards separately, one powering each monitor.

2. Ditch 19", ditch the GT, get another 21" and buy a 640MB 8800 GTS to power both monitors.

What do you guys think, which is a better option? Thanks for your help!

 

[prozac26]

Second option is much better.

 

[friikazoid]

Do you think that the GTS by itself will have enough juice to power both monitors (for example playing GW or WOW full-screen on one monitor while watching a movie on the other)? Also, is it possible for its peformance to go down because of my other system components? Thanks!

 

[aevm]

If the 7900 GT can do it then the 8800 GTS 640 can do it better. No worries there :lol:

What kind of PSU do you have? Not all PSUs can support an 8800 card.

 

[raven_87]

screw both ideas...

buy 8800GTX and 30in monitor.... makes mouths happy :lol:

 

[cleeve]

If you don't SLI them, a second 7900 GT will be a complete and utter waste.
Without SLI, there will be no performance increase if the second card was a 7900 GT or if it was an old 6600 GT.

Option 2: a single 640mb 8800 GTS and another monitor is the obvious way to go for what you've described your needs to be. Then you can sell the 7900 GT for a few bucks, too...

 

[friikazoid]

Aevm, I have an Enermax Liberty 500W power supply, I think that one should have no problem with the GTS.

Yeah, my initial thought was the GTS and the new monitor, but it never hurts to ask - maybe there would have been some advantage to having two cards and two monitors.

Thanks everybody who responded, I appreciate it!

P.S. If I had the money for that kind of hardware Raven I wouldn't be asking this question