Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Computer Advice

The 8800GT (not sure if oc) in this article is compellingly better at gaming:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3151&p=6

The Asus P5K-V board that I am considering is a full ATX board that is crossfire compatible but the second board is only running at 4X. However, I'm not sure that the PSU could handle a second GPU (Antec earthwatts 500) so it's likely that I will stick with one card and upgrade possible a couple years down the line.

The 8800GT (not sure if oc) in this article is compellingly better at gaming:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3151&p=6

The Asus P5K-V board that I am considering is a full ATX board that is crossfire compatible but the second board is only running at 4X. However, I'm not sure that the PSU could handle a second GPU (Antec earthwatts 500) so it's likely that I will stick with one card and upgrade possible a couple years down the line.

I always have found crossfire (and nvidia's SLI for that matter) to be a big gimmick. Not all games support it and I don't find the boost in perfomance to be worth the price of 2 cards. And by the time you wait long enough for the cards to be cheaper to get a second one there's usually a newer model that'll be cheaper and faster than the 2 old ones... Not even talking about power consumption, noise and heat!

A stock 8800GT is better than a stock 3870 for gaming, hands down. And I also wouldn't consider SLI or Crossfire, after specifically buying a board for Crossfire then discovering that (as above) by the time I could afford a second card, the performance/price ratio had moved far beyond that.

Also, I wouldn't touch an Athlon 64 x2 in a new computer right now. Sure, if you're going cheap, go with a really low end Athlon. But the Core2Duos are much faster.

Skyhawk669 and kcarlile,

You summed up my exact thoughts regarding AMD and Crossfire/SLI. I'm already spending more than I had intended and can't see myself spending $500+ on GPUs alone.

I hope AMD gets their act together. I recall reading that they bled out 1.7 billion in the final 1/4 of last year. Ouch. Phenom doesn't seem to be the answer either.

Can anyone commend on the difference between the P35 and G33 chipsets? (Asus P5K and P5K-V respectively). People keep saying to go with the P35 over the G33 but cannot seem to explain why the P35 is better. I realize that the G33's integrated graphics won't be used due to my GPU but I figure that since the two boards are the same price, why not opt for the G33? Thoughts?

Jordan

Here is a pretty good article on them.

Last question - Vista Premium 64 bit or 32 bit?

Read this excellent article on the subject:

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_ff_x64.asp

It comes down to compatibility. Unless you're going to be doing some serious computation with huge data sets, and have already checked to make sure all your components have 64-bit drivers available, stay with 32-bit for your own sanity.

The advantages of the 64-bit version are pretty much moot for a home computer.

My neices husband went 64bit and he regretted it after a week. So he went dual Vista's. He says he only uses the 64bit for the few games that will support it. Otherwise it is 32bit for everything else. I haven't noticed any games that support 64 bit but then again I haven't been looking at the specs for them either.

I am hoping the 64 bit will catch on in the next few years. I have seen the power and really liked how fast every worked.

64-bit will pretty much be a universal standard, likely before 2010 (just my guess).

Tangent:
One of the nice things about the latest Mac OS (Leopard) is that you don't have to choose a special version. There is exactly one version (not counting Server), and it is BOTH 32 and 64-bit.