Too many choices. need some help.

[jthunderloc]

I'm currently running a Q6600 on an MSI P43 board with a GTS 250. I game on a 24" widescreen monitor at 1920x1080. Christmas came along and I thought taking a trip down the SLI path would be a great plan, and I was wrong. I picked up an MSI 750i board that was crap and from what I've read most nvidia motherboards are less then stellar. I now have 2 GTS 250s and only 1 slot. The board has been returned and I've got $100 cash and 2 GTS 250s that will net me an easy $200 (1 is within its return period) At some point down the line I want to upgrade to an i5 750 SLI/Crossfire rig but thats a ways off. My options seem to be

1. Buy a 780i board and run my 250s on it and transfer them to my i5 rig when the day comes
2. purchase a Crossfire board, return 1 of the 250s and sell the other and pick up a pair of 4850s or 4870s
3. return/sell the 250s and pick up a single 5850 and try and squeeze a 2nd into the budget when it comes time to upgrade

1 is far and away the simplest, but I just dont know if it will perform well enough. 2 is the most complicated and gets decent performance. 3 is looking the most tempting but is far and away the most expensive option for a multi GPU setup. My ps can handle SLI/Xfire as I had it running over the weekend and played heavily. My chief complaint with the 750i I returned was its inability to overclock. I would struggle to push my Q6600 to 2.6, I have it running at 3.2 right now on my old board.

Any options I'm not seeing? My total budget with returning/selling the cards is $315, no more.

Thanks!
-Wes

 

[Shmee]

good cross post. See my reply in other thread

 

[happy medium]

A q6600 at 3.2 is enough for 5850 @ 1920x1080.
Sell both cards and grab a 5850.

 

[jthunderloc]

I think I'm going to go the 5850 route. The 5XXX series just seems to be seriously powerful GPUs. Its more $$ then I wanted to spend on a single card, but I think it will last me the longest of any of the other setups.

-Wes