Originally posted by: Matthias99
Which system would you rather have? BTW the second system is the one I am currently building.
Uh, ever heard of a strawman?
You priced out a Dell system with the fastest P4EE processor (about, oh,
$1100 by itself), using DDR2 (which costs more than DDR). And Dell gouges mercilessly on any sort of upgrade from their base models, and on top of that you're unlikely to get as good a case/PSU/memory/hard drive. Of course it costs more than a self-built AMD system using a more sanely-priced processor. This does not prove anything useful, other than that Dell is not a good choice for value in high-end gaming systems, and that the P4EE is a huge ripoff compared to a regular P4 or A64 processor. Price out a system from Newegg with the exact same specs as that Dell (don't forget the printer) and see what it comes out to. I'm guessing it's a tad more than $2200.
In your second config, if you subbed out the A8N-SLI for the Chaintech NF4 board ($120), and the 520W Powerstream for an Antec 430W TruePower ($70), the system costs $160 less, which, BTW, is a good chunk of the difference between a PCIe 6600GT ($180) and a 6800GT ($400). Certainly dropping to a 3200+ processor instead of a 3500+ would fill the rest of the gap.
Basically, right now, in terms of using SLI as an upgrade path, you're paying a ~$150 premium (between the more expensive motherboard and PSU) in the hopes that a) the next-gen cards won't be that much faster than the current-gen ones (a 6800GT SLI is about 75% faster than a single 6800GT, for comparison), and b) the prices on the current-gen cards will drop significantly by the time you want to upgrade. If a year from now a 6800GT still costs, say, $300-350, buying one is probably not going to be a very attractive upgrade path (if the prices plummet, then obviously this becomes much more attractive, but I don't think this will happen quickly given the supply problems so far). If you intend to keep the 6800GT for 3-4 years before upgrading, the upgrade price will likely be much better -- but a 6800GT SLI is likely not going to be competitive in performance and features with single cards 3 years from now (since by 2007 you'd probably be looking at DX10-class hardware in new cards).
I also think that we're more likely to see a move towards multi-GPU cards (and/or multi-core GPUs) in the future rather than SLI. You're replicating a lot of hardware between the two cards; a single card with two (or more) smaller (and possibly multicore) GPUs is a more cost-effective way to get more pipelines.
As i said before, just buy the Sli setup and the ONE card you want to run your current games NOW. THEN - when your games slow down - you have the OPTION(s) to 1) Sell your card and buy another single card or 2) add a second card for SLI.
I don't think i can explain it any easier.
To me, the extra $50 for the sli MB is no big deal to preserve my upgrade option.
$50 is a lot more reasonable than $150-200 (although still not insignificant if you're on, say, a $750-1000 budget), but unless you already have a high-wattage good-quality PSU, you have to take the PSU pricing differences into account. I don't know how soon the price differences on the motherboards will get closer (or what the street prices will eventually settle at). It may reach a $50 difference eventually, but right now it's about $100 (it's actually more on newegg; the A8N is up to over $250). Unless someone releases a 'value' SLI board (ie, not with onboard everything), I think you'll be looking at a ~$200 street price on SLI boards for a while.
Look. My point is just that, if you're in the market for a new system, you should realize that
SLI *might* turn out to not be a cost-effective upgrade choice in the future, and you're paying a premium for it now. Don't come back whining in a year when the best bang/buck you can get is to sell your 6800GT and buy a single NV50/R500, and you realize you wasted your money on a super-high-wattage PSU and NF4 SLI board. Of course, in a year the prices on the PCIe NV4Xs could also plummet, and then I'll look like an idiot.
😛 But you're essentially making a wager on future prices if you buy SLI intending to use it as an upgrade option, and it might not pay off.
PS: Merry Christmas!
🙂:beer:
