Should I buy an SLI motherboard or not?

[razibhasan]

Dear friends,
I am going to buy a mid range pc within the first week of next month (previously I posted a topic about it. but now my question is a little bit different).

I have decided to buy;
- AMD Athlon 3500+ 2.2GHz (S939) or AMD Athlon 3200+ 2.0GHz (S939)
- Asus A8N-SLI Premium or Asus A8N-E
- 1GB Corsair Value RAM
- Western Digital WD2500KS 250GB SATA-II
- nVidia 6600GT 128MB or nVidia 6800XT 128MB

Now, I want to tell u guyz that I am not a serious gamer. Moreover, I think I won't ever buy a second PCI-E card. So, should I spend on SLI motherboard? Or should I buy A8N-E and spend a little more on AGP?
Another question ... I am planning to buy another 1GB RAM in future (may be within 3-6 months). What should I do now? Should I buy 2*512MB instead of single 1GB? Now I am going to buy corsair RAM. In future if I buy Kingston then will those work together as Dual Channel DDR?

Hope you guyz will be helpful to me once again ...

Thanks in advance

 

[Bobthelost]

Don't go SLI. The A8N E is a nice board.

If you're defintly going for another GB of RAM then a single stick is best.

As long as the two sticks have the same specs they should run as dual channel, although buying the same brand is a common way of increasing the odds of it working.

 

[996GT2]

You don't need an SLi card. The only instance that I can think of where SLi is good is if you have the cash to buy 2 top of the line cards to run in SLi. Otherwise, you could just buy one better card vs. 2 worse-performing cads.

Also, as far as RAM goes, you should buy a single 1 GB stick of RAM right now and get another stick later. The reason is that if you have 4 sticks of 512 your computer switches to 2T Timings which is a bit of a performance hit. Also yes, you can use any brand of RAM as long as they are the same type if you want them to work as Dual channel. For example if you have 1 stick of Corsair DDR400 and 1 stick of Kingston DDR400 then they will run in Dual Channel.

Lastly, for a non-gamer, don't spend the money on a 3500+. The 3200+ should be more than enough for you, and if you OC then that 3200+ will reach 2.6 GHZ on air.
Btw if you plan to overclock this computer then get the EPoX 9nPA+ Ultra motherboard. It's $105

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

I'd say go with the Asus A8N-E. I got that for my wife's machine, and it's a nice board. If you plan on overclocking, you have to enable the floppy drive though. It won't let you OC with the floppy disabled.

 

[razibhasan]

U guyz are really helpful to me ... Thanks a lot to all of u for ur times and recommendation ...
Now, I have decided myself to buy A8N-E ....
Like 996GT2 said ... I am now thinking to buy 3200+ instead of buying 3500+ that would definitely save some of money which I can spend either on PCI-E or on RAM ...

Thanks again to all

 

[JatZilla]

I bought an SLI board becuse somebody here said "why not just get it since it's only $10 more" and I thought, sure why not. I got the ASUS A8N-SLI mobo.

Questions are: 1) Is the SLI mobo going to perform *worse* in any way than the A8N-E board? I'm definitely not going to use dual video cards. No gaming. 2) Is the A8N-E board more stable/bug-free than the SLI board?

TIA

 

[eastvillager]

Originally posted by: razibhasan
Dear friends,
I am going to buy a mid range pc within the first week of next month (previously I posted a topic about it. but now my question is a little bit different).

As soon as you said mid range, the answer became "No".

 

[eastvillager]

Originally posted by: JatZilla
I bought an SLI board becuse somebody here said "why not just get it since it's only $10 more" and I thought, sure why not. I got the ASUS A8N-SLI mobo.
TIA

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle

In otherwords, why spend more money on a board that is more complex(more potential points of failure and/or conflict)when you have no plan to use the additional features?

 

[bozack]

I am still more than happy with my Epox 9NPA+ Ultra, might be another option to consider to keep the cost down....