Building a budget gaming PC

[Smoldering_Puckster]

I'm looking at building a decent gaming PC on about a $1000 budget. I have never built my own PC before, but realize that it is far better and cheaper than buying a store bought unit. I've already got a great monitor and mouse and keyboard from my current PC. All prices from tigerdirect.ca

EVGA nForce 680i SLI Motherboard CPU Bundle - Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Processor 2.40GHz OEM, OCZ SLI-Ready Edition Dual Channel 2048MB PC6400 DDR2 800MHz Memory (2 x 1024MB)
- $437.99

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 500GB Hard Drive - 7200, 16MB, Serial ATA-300, OEM
- $79.99

EVGA GeForce 8800 GT Video Card - 512MB DDR3, PCI Express 2.0, SLI Ready, (Dual Link) Dual DVI, HDTV, Video Card
- $129.99 x 2 (via SLI)

Sony DRU190A 20X DVD Rewritable Drive - 20x DVD±R, 8 DVD+RW, 6x DVD-R, 8x DVD±R DL, ATAPI/EIDE, Black
- $29.99

OCZ / GameXStream / 700-Watt / ATX / 120mm Fan / SATA Ready / SLI Ready / EPS / Active PFC / Power Supply
- $128.99

Apevia Black X-Cruiser Case ATX Mid-Tower Case with Clear Side, Front USB, Audio and Firewire Ports
- $85.99

Windows Vista 64 bit (32?)


A little over $1000 but in the ballpark. Everything is nVidia SLI ready. Is SLI even worth it? Would the dual 8800GT setup ($260.00) be as good as comparitively priced single card? Do I need more RAM?

Any opinions or tips would be appreciated.
Anyone else ever done it?

[SebC]

Tom's Hardware does this every month or so... here's the latest:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/System...iew-31034.html

Just about the same as what you've got there, so you did well!

This one's just about graphics cards:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/gaming...iew-31055.html

Apparently the new ATI 4850 is pretty good bang for your buck.

Overall though, looks good to me, other than one thing. Unless you're going for 4 gigs of RAM, stick with 32-bit XP. Otherwise go with 64-bit Vista. 64-bit XP has just about the same driver support issues as 64-bit Vista, without the benefit of having DirectX10.

[Vulcan]

I'd deal with NCIX or Memory Express before I'd deal with TigerDirect although I have used them. NCIX has free delivery this week for orders over $1000 and Memory Express is handy if you have any problems.
Not a big fan of OCZ power supplies either.

Maybe look at this with the 8 pin Video card connection which some of the new cards require.
http://www.ncix.com/products/index.p...g&promoid=1015

Lots of other deals until Wed. Your OCZ PS is $90 and a 8800GT is $99.99 but I'd look for a 4870 instead of SLI.

http://www.ncix.com/promo/promosale....bid=xmasjuly08

[SebC]

Just a quick note on SLI - doesn't work with dual monitors, so if you want to do that, SLI is out.

[Crispy's Critter]

I'm running SLI on my current gaming machine (7600 GT OC's) and I bought 2 7950's from someone here to run SLI on the new machine I'm building, but in researching it's kind of looking like there's minimal benefit to that over a single 8800 GT OC card. I still have a couple sites to hit up to see if I can find out more, but honestly on my SLI rig I'm running right now I don't really see any huge difference in performance over running a single card. (I've tried running with just one of my 7600's as an experiment) But being that I'm running older cards it might not be an apt comparison to running two 8800's.

Anyway, I know that's not overly helpful, but I guess all I can say is do as much research as you can to see if SLI is worth it, but you would probably do well enough with a single card with that setup. Also it depends on the games you're playing as well.