Upgrading to 8800GT with MSI K8N diamond mainboard

[NeedToKnow]

Hi I'm wanting some technical advice for a GFX card upgrade.

First off, the current system basics :-

K8N Diamond mainboard, 3700+ CPU, single 7800GT GFX card, 2 GB (DDR2 if I remember correctly) RAM.

I'm thinking about getting a 8800GT card, possibly 2 in SLI, so first question is this-
Is it even possible - ie will a K8N mb support these cards(1 or 2)
I'm assuming it will require a BIOS update(which I'm fine with) but correct me if I am wrong.

Among other things, I'd like it to run Crysis at reasonable settings, not anything insane, but good enough. By good enough, I mean maybe 1600×1200maxish(if I could get better great, if I only get 1280×720 I won't be too upset), not too fussed with high AA settings, but would like decent lighting. One other thing I would like to do a bit of is advanced GFX coding/testing(I'm not a coding n00b, just a little out of date with new hardware)

I would like to upgrade the rest of my system in the coming year, but I think GFX is my biggest bottleneck at present so I'd like to upgrade the components I can currently afford and reuse again first.

My second question is this(it may be a little more difficult to answer so I won't blame anyone if your suggestions are completely incorrect)-
One of the reasons I would like to upgrade my GFX card first(apart from budget) is when I
bought my system I was supplied with a faulty power supply which I believe fried the
VRAM, causing ugly vertex related artifacts(?? I'll explain below) - Quick warning if you
live in Australia do NOT buy from gamedude as they will NOT honour warranties on 2 day
old high end products(ask me if want details of my experience)
Essentially the ugly artifacts are random polys that spam the screen when I'm running
software that is 3D intensive. Apart from the display, all software runs fine, so although
a longwinded question-
Would you agree my issue is likely caused by GFX VRAM breakage?

Question 3 is simple-
Am I wasting my time doing this staggered upgrade, or should I just bite the bullet and do
the whole thing in one step.

As I said earlier, I'm not a complete tech or code amateur, but I have spent several recent years working on business applications that were more network and HDD bound and haven't really kept up to date on recent hardware advancements. If you know of any resources that might help me get up to speed quickly, don't hesitate in sending me links.

Any decent advice in any of these issues is greatly appreciated.

TIA

 

[BernardP]

Welcome to the Anandtech Forums!

Before you upgrade to a 8800GT, you should read this thread on PCI-E 2.0 compatibility with older PCI-E motherboards:

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...=2167785&enterthread=y

Considering the above and your past experience, I would suggest you buy your new videocard from a store with a liberal return policy.

 

[jonnyhazE]

I got just about the same pc as you. the 8800gt works just fine.

I play crysis at 1680x1050 with most options on high and the rest on med. Framerate is not spectacular but it is very playable. This is for single player. For multiplayer I would suggest changing settings to medium detail to squeeze out those extra frames.

 

[NeedToKnow]

Thanks for your replies. I seems jonnyhazE's and my mainboard both have PCI-E 1.0a compliant slots, which unfortunately fall into a grey area, in which <b>some</b> cards will not work with some main boards. I'll look a little further into it.
Is SLI worth bothering with? I'm currently looking at an Albatron 512Mb 8800 GT, as I've never had any problems with Albatron in the past, but I see another company has a 1Gb model, does anybody have any experience with these?
The company I am working for now has a deal with a hardware shop so I think there should be no problems with returns if I need to but I'd prefer not to have to.