Hardware discussions

[F19_Klunk]

I thought that we ought to have a dedicated thread for HW issues..



Q1: As I am now contemplating on new hardware, will there be/is there any difference performancewise in GAMING between dual and quad processorns?, i.e will the processor still be the bottleneck, or will focus rather be in gfx cards and RAM in the future?

Q2: Now to gfx cards. Are we waiting for new technology? The last time I built myself a rig, I got an AGP card. a few months later we had PCI. Nice timing for me

Q3: Should one go for SLI?

[Zoom2136]

Q1: Read this

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/10/...el_processing/

Q2: There is nothing in the pipeline to replace PCI-E. Right now only the addition of more video cards in one's system is on the horizon. New cards are expexted in novembre/december fron NVIDIA.

Q3: I just went SLI. I used to run a single ATI X850XT card and must admit that I find SLI a pain. For iL2 I had a multitude of issues that I had to resolve before it ran good. My ATI card was A LOT easier to setup.

Now does that means you should discard NVIDIA SLI... I don't think so. When you get it working it is a very stable and capable platform. But so is ATI Crossfire setup. Right now NVIDIA as the absolute performance edge... but who knows in the future ??? I personnaly prefer the image quality of ATI but it is not like I find NVIDIA horrible... just that ATI seems better (well to me atleast).

IMHO it all boils down to how much you are willing to pay and what gives you the most bang for the buck. On this read this:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/10/...for_the_money/

[HanneG]

Originally Posted by Zoom2136

Q2: There is nothing in the pipeline to replace PCI-E.

Except v2.0 which is gonna be with us in a bit. Granted it will be backwards compatible if the PCI-SIG FAQ is to be trusted, but you never know with these things. Differing AGP voltages is a case in point.