About to upgrade and need some advice

[colt1911]

I'm about to upgrade my system and need some expert advice. First I'm wanting to upgrade my cpu to a Q9450 45nm quad when they become available. I'll be keeping my DDR2 memory . I having problems selecting a mobo . My choices are either a 780I , P35 or X38 chipset mobo. In my current setup I have 2 8600GT in sli and as you know it's getting quite expenseive to keep buying two cards every time you upgrade. I would like to know if SLI vs price performance is worth the extra cost? If I can get decent performance from one good card say a 8800gts 512mb ( G92 ) then my board choice would be down to the P35 or X38. Please help I need all the suggestions I can get before I drop this money on my new system. Thanks and bye the way I'm knew here and would like to say hello to everyone.

[staffsMike]

Does 780i actually do dual SLi? I havn't read enough about it but it's suggested it's a TriSli board so you would need another 8600GT (maybe).

I would go single card and P35 as the most cost effective solution.

Abit IP-35 at around £70 is a great board.
Asus P5K-E /wifi is a nice board at around £90

You can pick up a palit 8800GT for £138 from scan or around £116 from amazon atm.. good deal but the GTS is slightly better if you want to pay that much.

New quads won't be here until march now we think so don't plan on too much right now.

[colt1911]

Thanks staffsMike for your reply the 780I does support 2 card SLI but if you want to run TRI-SLI then the only cards you can use is the 8800GTX or 8800Ultra. I was planning on ordering my mobo and new gpu and use my E6850 and memory until the Q9450 come out or maybe even just buy a Q6600 go and skip the 45nm all together. What do you think of the 8800GTS 512mb ( G92 ) as a single use card?

[staffsMike]

It's fantastic as a single card. Very (very!!) close to a GTX at stock speeds and does have room for some overclocking so it's great for the price. That said the GT at it's current price on amazon would be a weapon in SLi if you did fancy it

Single card performance is very good these days so there is little point in SLi especially at anything lower than 1920 x 1080 but..still pretty kool isn't it

[colt1911]

Yeah , I only run mine at 1680 x 1050 and I begining to think SLI is more for bragging rights than anything. I was thinking of the P5K Premium Black Pearl mobo, I have seen that it and the Abit IP35 Pro both get very good reviews. I've only used Asus boards in my past builds and I'm kinda wanting to explore something new as long as it's stable and has good support. So that being said I'll order the 8800GTS 512mb and keep looking for a mobo , thanks.