New PSU or something else?

[nvening]

Hi,

Ive recently been given two 7800GTX 512MBs from a friend who upgraded. After modding my motherboard to work in SLI its up and running but apparently my 480w tagan isnt up to the job.

Now im no sure whether to upgrade the PSU or to just sell the cards, getting what I can for them, and spend the money on something else - i dont do alot of gaming tbh, and im considering the purchase of an xbox 360 in the summer so gaming performance isnt essential but i would like to be able to play games! I would really like an SSD but there generally a bit pricey atm - is it only the Intel MLCs which arnt effected by the lag problem?

Would i need to upgrade my PSU to power modern cards or are they generally alot more power efficient these days? I wouldnt mind a passive one as well tbh as i use my pc as a media center.

What are SLI 7800GTXs like compared to a single, modern card, thats not too pricey, and passively cooled??

Thanks!! Neil.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The best passively cooled cards under £100 are the HD4670 and 9600GT.

The 9600GT should be faster than a pair of 7800GTX in newer games released from the middle of 2007 onwards. In older games the 7800GTX in SLI may end up being faster(not sure about this though).

Also SLI with the GeForce 7 series scaling may not always work well in all games(especially newer ones).

HD4670 passively cooled:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?W...source=froogle

9600GT passively cooled:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/512MB...-DL-DVI-I-HDTV

The HD4670 and 9600GT will consume FAR less power than a pair of 7800GTX cards and should run fine on your current PSU.
Both of these graphics cards will probably have less power consumption than even one 7800GTX!!

In the next few weeks though some low power high performance GPUs are being launched.

One of these is the Nvidia 9800GT Green Edition and the other which is the ATI RV740 GDDR5. These will have much better performance than either a 9600GT or an HD4670 and since they will have low power consumption there is a big probability that passively cooled versions will exist.

Hopefully they should be under £110.

[nvening]

Im now actually considering an upgrade to phenom II (i7 is whey to expensive) - is it possible to use the onboard VGA of a 790GX board with a dedicated GPU at the same time as i need to run 3 monitors?

Also whats a better choice of mobo, the Asus M3A78-T or J&W JW-790GX-Extreme?

Thanks

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Im now actually considering an upgrade to phenom II (i7 is whey to expensive) - is it possible to use the onboard VGA of a 790GX board with a dedicated GPU at the same time as i need to run 3 monitors?

Also whats a better choice of mobo, the Asus M3A78-T or J&W JW-790GX-Extreme?



Thanks

The J&W is cheaper so it gets my vote!! You could bung in a cheap HD3450 to get additional monitor support.

Big Edit!!


This maybe helpful:

http://ati.amd.com/technology/hybridgraphics/index.html


The HD3450 would not be much use for playing newer games like Crysis unless you go for at least the HD4650 GDDR3 or better.

I would look at least an HD4650 GDDR3,HD4670 or RV740. However I am uncertain whether surroundview will work with any other cards other than the HD3450 or HD3470??

[nvening]

Well i have 4 PCI-e cards which i can use till those are released, so i could go ahead with the Phenom II upgrade. I do alot of multitasking with high powered programs so more ram and a better processor would help to limita freeze ups which are seemingly more common recently, probably due to moving to dual monitors aha.

Ill probably be running the Windows 7 RC1 if i can get it - i dont really want to be shelling out for vista 64bit now - is the drive support ok?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Well i have 4 PCI-e cards which i can use till those are released, so i could go ahead with the Phenom II upgrade. I do alot of multitasking with high powered programs so more ram and a better processor would help to limita freeze ups which are seemingly more common recently, probably due to moving to dual monitors aha.

Ill probably be running the Windows 7 RC1 if i can get it - i dont really want to be shelling out for vista 64bit now - is the drive support ok?

I have a copy but installed the 32bit version instead. Supposedly the driver support is FAR better than the 64bit version of XP and more and more systems are shipping with as 4gb of system RAM is quite common now.

If I were you I would do some research on ATI surroundview as it would be great if you could combine a higher performance card with the integrated graphics card!! It does seem to only work with ATI cards though and I would assume keeping to an ATI integrated graphics card and an ATI discrete graphics cards will give less issues with drivers.

[nvening]

ATI Hybrid Graphics technology enables ATI SurroundView™ which provides support for 4 independent monitors when an applicable integrated GPU is combined with a discrete GPU. Each additional discrete GPU supports 2 or more independent monitors. The integrated graphics processor and the discrete graphics processor work in parallel to drive multiple displays for superior productivity.

Thats perfect, im not sure if i will need a xfire compatable card to work alongside the onboard VGA or not but if i do i can use use two dedicated GPUs untill i upgrade

I was looking at this for the CPU
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/AMD-P...che-95W-Retail

How well are these overclocking and is there much performance benefit from getting an x4 over an x3?

cheers

EDIT - also i guess a might as well get 8GB of ram cause its cheap aha??

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Thats perfect, im not sure if i will need a xfire compatable card to work alongside the onboard VGA or not but if i do i can use use two dedicated GPUs untill i upgrade

I was looking at this for the CPU
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/AMD-P...che-95W-Retail

How well are these overclocking and is there much performance benefit from getting an x4 over an x3?

cheers

EDIT - also i guess a might as well get 8GB of ram cause its cheap aha??

The only advantage of an X4 over an X3 at the same clockspeed would be in software that can use all 4 cores. Of course if you are lucky you maybe able to unlock the fourth dormant core on the X3 720 using a 790GX motherboard. At least one Hexus member has done so but even if you cannot the X3 720 is still a good choice. It is a good overclocker too with its unlocked multiplier!!

At Ebuyer 4gb of Geil Black Dragon DDR2 is under £35:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/161773

I have this and it is great for the price!!

[Blitzen]

Why do you think your Tagan wouldnt be up to the job?

I wouldve said it would be OK.

[nvening]

Because the nvidia driver warns me at startup that it is underclocking the card has there is not enough power and in SLI mode the pc turns off after about 5 mins of gameplay

And yuh both PCIe power connecters are in and ive set the PSU to split rails which made no difference.

Ill check out that geil thanks

EDIT:

Does it actually matter whether i get 1066 or 800 RAM?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Because the nvidia driver warns me at startup that it is underclocking the card has there is not enough power and in SLI mode the pc turns off after about 5 mins of gameplay

And yuh both PCIe power connecters are in and ive set the PSU to split rails which made no difference.

Ill check out that geil thanks

EDIT:

Does it actually matter whether i get 1066 or 800 RAM?

1066mhz DDR2 is not that more expensive though on Ebuyer!! The only thing which would worry me is if the memory controller would have issues with 8gb of 1066mhz RAM.

[nvening]

Well obv i can just run it slower if there is - but from googling i think that was only a problem with some of the intel boards, not the 790GX boards, does anyone know anymore?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I would make sure that I would get 1066mhz RAM which has 5-5-5-15 timings. A lot of the cheaper 1066mhz RAM have higher latencies which reduces some of the impact of the speed increase.

This Kingston set seems good value for money:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/148859

This looks nice too:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/141930

Not sure if the fancy heatspreaders do anything more than normal ones?!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I did a quick read and it seems the J&W 790GX motherboard does not support unlocking of the X3 720 yet!!

The Asus seems to support ACC with the latest BIOS and this is need to be able to try unlocking.

However these Biostar 790GX motherboards do seem to be able to unlock the X3 720:

http://www.scan.co.uk/search.aspx?q=BIOSTAR+790GX

http://74.125.77.132/search?q=cache:...ient=firefox-a

[Nyar]

yes it does, bios is band up to date, i just bought one

[Nyar]

the j&w supports my am3 720x3 out of the box. its a great mobo by the way.