Think these will be good enough?

[Jest3r]

Was thinking about getting 2 Geforce 8600GTS 512mb and run them SLI. Will these be good enough for most games out there?

Haven't built the rig yet, looking at the Q6600 and 4gb (2x2gb) DDR2 PC6400 800 MHz.
Gonna be running 1920x1200 res on a 24 inch monitor.

Thanks!

 

[zeroburrito]

how much are you paying for each 8600? 1 8800gt or 3870 would blow those away for less.

 

[crapfest]

You would get significantly more for your money by buying an 8800GT instead.

 

[KrispyKreme50]

Wouldn't it be better to just get a non SLI motherboard with 1 8800 GT or GTS? I think the 8600 GTS SLI barely outperforms the 8800GT. You can save yourself some money with a non SLI motherboard and get it with a 8800GTS 512.

 

[smaky]

I agree with above posters. Go with one better card like the 3850 ATI or 8800GT. Unless you really want to go with sli.

also if you only want to game you are better off with a e6750 dual core, its cheaper and kicks the q6600 @ss in games.

 

[taltamir]

e8400 is cheaper... and thanks to SSE4 it should whoop the q6600 in video encoding... and still whoop it in games and almost everything else.

 

[smaky]

edit: isnt' having 2x 512 ram on your video cards, going to completely waste the last gigabyte of your 4gig of ram? I am not sure but you might be ok with just 2 gigs?

 

[zeroburrito]

huh?

 

[KrispyKreme50]

Yes and no Smarky. If you use 32 bit Vista, you won't be able to use any memory beyond ~3GB but if you use 64 bit it shouldn't be a problem.

While 2 GB is adequate, memory is so cheap now that you can get 4 GB for just a bit more.

 

[smaky]

oh, yeah you are right, I might be a little behind the times and still use widows XP hehe

edit: and the price is so cheap might as well go with 4g as KrispyKreme50 said.

mmmmm DONUTS hehe

palladium: You might be right.

 

[palladium]

Originally posted by: smaky
edit: isnt' having 2x 512 ram on your video cards, going to completely waste the last gigabyte of your 4gig of ram? I am not sure but you might be ok with just 2 gigs?

Hmm, pretty sure SLI won't double the addressing space required for VRAM ( meaning your OS only uses 512MB of address space for your video cards).

4GB of RAM is dirt cheap now, no reason why not going for it, and when 64bit computing matures abit more, switch to 64 bit Vista.

 

[palladium]

Originally posted by: taltamir
e8400 is cheaper... and thanks to SSE4 it should whoop the q6600 in video encoding... and still whoop it in games and almost everything else.

Not unless SSE4 is supported by the app. Whoop in games, yes. Q6600 will whoop E8400 in 3D rendering, though.

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: palladium

Originally posted by: taltamir
e8400 is cheaper... and thanks to SSE4 it should whoop the q6600 in video encoding... and still whoop it in games and almost everything else.

Not unless SSE4 is supported by the app. Whoop in games, yes. Q6600 will whoop E8400 in 3D rendering, though.

DivX, Xvid, and h264 already support SSE4 with over 80% boost in encoding speed.
The only encode that would be faster on the Q6600 is audio and mpeg2 encoding.

Now if you get a new quad that supports SSE4... well thats a whole different animal.

 

[Jest3r]

Hey guys, thank you for your replies.

I have looked into the e6750, i might get that instead.

I might also look into getting a single 8800.

I also plan on running Vista 64, and using VirtualPC for Xp 32 Pro. For any legacy stuff.

=D