PCI-E 4X worth my time?

[firebirdude]

Trying to decide between the Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R or the GA-P35-DS4. The only large difference I really see is that the DS4 has two PCI-E slots, but one may only run at 4X. Planning on using the 8800GT, so if I decide to add another 8800GT in two years, would it really yield a worthwhile performance gain for the money? (Estimated $200 for the video card and that additional $50 for the DS4 mobo) Or will the 4X cap only give me a small increase that will only anger me that I spent the money? lol

I'd really like an X38 motherboard...... but they're just too expensive.

 

[Mondoman]

You have bigger issues to overcome:
Problem 1: Intel chipset MBs can't run graphics in SLI mode -- you'll need an nVidia chipset MB.
Problem 2: an 8800GT card using the same version GPU chip (which is what would be needed to run the two cards in SLI mode) likely won't be available 2 years from now.

Use the 4x PCI-express connector for something like a RAID controller card.

 

[Zap]

As mentioned, SLI won't work. However, Crossfire does. But as mentioned too, good luck finding a card two years from now... better off getting a new, faster single card.

 

[firebirdude]

Bah. Didn't notice that only Crossfire was supported. And good point on me not being able to get the exact same card years from now. Think I'm just gonna go with the DS3R. I don't upgrade that often anyway. Coming from a Barton 3200+ and 9800Pro to a Quad core with 8800GT. Think I'll be fine for a few more years....


And on a seperate note, I was settled on just getting a low latency (CAS3) pair of DDR800 RAM..... but when I start crunching the numbers, I get that DDR800 has a clock time of about 2.5nanoseconds. With a CAS of 3, we're at 10.5 nanoseconds total latency. A pair of DDR1066 has a clock time of about 1.86nanoseconds. With a CAS of 5, this gives us a total latency time of 9.3nanoseconds. So despite the higher CAS time, the 1066 is all around quicker?