hi,
I'm confused between:
asus rampage formula (x48) with 3870x2 (CF it later this year)
or
Asus Striker II Formula (780i) with GTS512mb (SLI it later this year) not going 3way coz i need the PCI slot, 780 and not 680 coz of the better 45nm support.

y x48? better CPU OC (planning on Q9450 2.66Ghz 333x8 @ 400-420x8 3.2-3.33Ghz at least)
y ATI? 3870x2 is a good Cost/Pref card.
y Nvidia VGA? FPU support in the "near future" & better VGA pref for gaming

i want a dual VGA coz of the 1920x1200 res i want to play.

(DDR2 1066 4G, Vista 64bit Ultimate
PSU- evermax 1000W
case- Kandalf LCS)

another option is to go with GTX/GTS512 with P35 board & buying a new VGA card next year that will get good Pref in 1920x1200

if i want to play with AA x2/x4 what is more importat VGA or CPU?

i'm also thinking about skulltrail, but don't know about Xeon OC. how much OC he can Handle....


thanks a lot guys!

D.

Okay, at your resolution, SLI or Crossfire becomes reasonable. I don't like going with either, I like single card solution. The ASUS P5k-e is an excellent P35 board, and coup it up with the 3870x2 when the price drops to $380. With that vidcard and mature drivers, any game, except crysis, should be easy.

And yes, if you want AA, you'll need a better vidcard. Skulltrail isn't worth it so don't bother with it.

but with next year games this pc will be sucks!
no to mention far cry 2....
this is y 2 vga's is my chice.
i cannot buy a new hardware after a year coz i can't sell the old one where i live. the sec hand market of pc hardware here is sucks...

the buttleneck today is the VGAs so i need the most upgradable solution for my opinion... at a reasnable price.
this is y i tend to go with the rampage & 3870x2, if a 3rd gpu will be a good advantage so maybe. ati already said that 2x3870x2 is not much of a difference than 3870x2 +3870 so CF it will be not much money.
but if a GTS512 or GTX on SLI is much more powerfull than i would want that... but 780 mb sucks for a lot of opinions o hear for now.
problems with Quad CPUs etc...

i saw a bench yesterday, a good one of 780i & p5e3 with q6600/qx9650/qx9770
at 1920 they all gave the same experince not even a frame for...

so even if i can OC the CPU to 4Ghz or more, the pref will stay the same...

p.s.
rampage & 3870x2 is not cheaper than striker 2 & GTS512/GTX
i think 2 GTXs will kick a$$....

just sharing my thoughts if someone has an opinion he'd like to share....

780i sucks? It actually appears to work!!! My big gripe so far is it sees 2.75 gigs of 4. With vista 64, wont matter. Seems to OC well... can get my quad 2.4 to 3.6 no problems other than its friggin' hot since its on air, and not even a TRUE.

--Lupi!

i think the question is SLI of 8800GTX/GTS512
or Single 3870x2 or 3870+3870x2. coz from the tomshardware article on CFx, it clearly shows that 4 GPUs VS 3 GPUs not worth the money...

Lupiron
y it has a prob with the 4G if it's 64bit???? i tought about 8G 800mhz with no paging so it's a biggy i thing...
the OC of the 1066 is nice on 780.
but i'm talking about OC 45nm CPUs, so far, the x38 boards reached 300-500 mhz more with QX9650.
i'll find the review later and put the link here.

but, i really don't know if i'm going to OC more than 450FSB. i don't like to bust the Vcore too much.
and even so, the buttleneck is the VGAs so i think the OC feature is not the first one i should think about...

i will look for a comparison, maybe after catalyst 8.3 will relese, we'll see reviews of CFx 3870x2 VS tuff SLIs- GTS512,GTX,Ultra or new highend 9x00 SLIs...
& than i'll decide what to buy.

i think end of April-May is a good date to buy, we'll have a new info on stuff...
i'm willing to pay 600$ for single card if the pref bust from 3870x2 (420$) worth it, looking at next year to give this 600$ card a friend and sli it...

i really really really want for once to get a highend rig to enjoy games like they should be played...

say,
what is your specs & how you play crysis, COD4, Oblivion?!?

thanks man

My specs? ::chuckles.:: Hmmm, right now I have a q6600 g0 @3.66 on a p5k-e. The cheepest of the boards I have, and it appears to work the best, the audio does its own thing in crysis, but I didnt look for new audio drivers, and have the older bios on it, and didnt update crysis! It has x 2 x GeIL 1066 high voltage trash ram.(2.35-2.5 volt.) I will be getting the 2 x 2 GSkill 1066 @2.0-2.1 volt come tomorrow! (I cant even run this $hitty memory at its rated speed while OCd. My vid junk variates, but I have a pair of ultra normals on water, a 8800gts oc, and an 8800gts normal.
Then I have this one, my new 780i board, a b3 q6600 @3.2 because its a flamer. (Can get it all nice and stable at 3.6 as well, however, the voltage is way high, hehe, and it smokes! (85c+ hottest core under fully loaded small ftts.) To hot to use. Just has 4 x 1 gb pc6400 corsair value ram, which CAN run at its rated speed under OC conditions.
All my comps have 2x500 gig sata seagates in raid zero. (The p5ke is currently using 2 x 250 gig SATA 2.5 inch 5400 RPM laptop drives in raid zero, lol, because I needed the drives for a fresh install of vista on this comp while I try and figure out how to save my original 680i disks. Both the q6600s are lapped and so are the sinks, arctic squares, so not the best.
Uhhh, I have a phenom 9500 w/4 x 1 gig kingston hyperx 1066 on an m3a32-MVP w/a CM sphere basically welded to the processor!
My Maximus Formula is in the shop with ASUS, winflash took out the bios.

Crysis is the game!! However, it really doesnt matter... damn dell 30 inch @2560 x 1600 makes an ultra look like a 6600 gt, lol. I need a good Bios flash for my ultras.

I have all sorts of other junk, but pretty much need to wrap up the OCs before I can put em in cases, try water, blahblah...

--Lupi!

Going 780i with 2x 8800GTS 512MB is a good idea. Then get a Q6600 and OC it to 3.8GHz or so.

8800GTX is not worth the money, unless you can get it for less than $300.

this is completely off-topic, but I wonder how much revenue those game studios are actually reaping from these high-end games. They obviously haven't done their market research right imho.

Hehe, as I got my Ultras for 700 bucks, a pair with water blocks!!

--lupi!

Stop bragging!

Considering the amount of hype you get for having the "best" looking game out, and the number of people who are upgrading machines I'd say it was a good move on their part. If the interwebs are to be believed they've sold over 1 million copies of the game so far. Pretty good considering every review I've seen paints the game as fairly unimpressive.

I'd say they made a smart move and I'm sure they've incurred some serious favor with the graphics card companies. The only piece of software that seems to have sold more video cards in my recent memory is Vista That has to pay off next time they want a little help on a new game engine.

Even though you have probably made up your mind by now I would go with a pair of 8800gt's. They are in the same price range and even cheaper than the GTS according to newegg and here on tomshardware they out perform the gts's.