Hi, I'm looking at building a new PC over the summer. I am wondering about a video card at the moment. I'm not using Vista because I have too many issues trying to get everything to work right, so I don't need to worry about Direct X 10 or anything. Now I'm thinking I could get 2 Nvidia 8600 GTs and run them in SLI for the same price as one 8800, I know both cards run DX 10, but I won't need it. I was wondering, does anyone have much for experience knowing which non direct X 10 video card configuration is best right now? I do prefer to stick with Nvidia as I have better luck with Nvidia drivers in Linux and do most of my Windows development in Linux. Thanks

Quote: Original post by Kevin_Forshey
Hi,
I'm looking at building a new PC over the summer. I am wondering about a video card at the moment. I'm not using Vista because I have too many issues trying to get everything to work right, so I don't need to worry about Direct X 10 or anything. Now I'm thinking I could get 2 Nvidia 8600 GTs and run them in SLI for the same price as one 8800, I know both cards run DX 10, but I won't need it. I was wondering, does anyone have much for experience knowing which non direct X 10 video card configuration is best right now? I do prefer to stick with Nvidia as I have better luck with Nvidia drivers in Linux and do most of my Windows development in Linux.
Thanks

Only question i have is why get two video cards that are to be sli'ed only to get the same performance for the same price as one card? Benchmarks show that two 8600 gts's in sli are equal to performance of one 8800 gts.
I'd get the 8800 and save yourself the trouble of setting up sli and save your power supply the extra load.

Get an SLI enabled 8800gts and be ready to pop a second one in there a year or so down the road when you can pick another one up for cheap?

I used to run two 7800GTs in SLI until recently. My advice on SLI? Don't do it. At the time I needed two cards to run at my monitor's native resolution but now that cards are faster I would say you are far better off just buying one fast card. Also, support for SLI under Linux is less than stellar.

Quote: Original post by Jarrod1937

Quote: Original post by Kevin_Forshey
Hi,
I'm looking at building a new PC over the summer. I am wondering about a video card at the moment. I'm not using Vista because I have too many issues trying to get everything to work right, so I don't need to worry about Direct X 10 or anything. Now I'm thinking I could get 2 Nvidia 8600 GTs and run them in SLI for the same price as one 8800, I know both cards run DX 10, but I won't need it. I was wondering, does anyone have much for experience knowing which non direct X 10 video card configuration is best right now? I do prefer to stick with Nvidia as I have better luck with Nvidia drivers in Linux and do most of my Windows development in Linux.
Thanks

Only question i have is why get two video cards that are to be sli'ed only to get the same performance for the same price as one card? Benchmarks show that two 8600 gts's in sli are equal to performance of one 8800 gts.
I'd get the 8800 and save yourself the trouble of setting up sli and save your power supply the extra load.

Add to that the extra heat and the added risk of having another piece of hardware that could fail.

It might be worth waiting for a few days...