Opinions please, is this a good buy?

[§ôµÏG®ïñD]

It all depends on what he\'s willing to spend also on the long term.

Energy bill 1000W psu + Ultra vs energy bill 600W psu + GT = difference to think about. idle & load.

Also, rumour has it Ati\'s RV670 went well, so i really question the longevity of that +$600 Ultra card.

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/amd-hd-3800-dx-10,review-29720.html

energy bill won\'t change much. PSU don\'t draw the full wattage or more because of size. Only thing that will make a difference is the cards, and that difference wouldn\'t be huge.  The 1000W rating doesn\'t mean it draws 1kWh It means its rated up to 1kW Peak. The Computer will draw what it needs from the PSU.
5000+ AMD 64bit X2, 2x Sata 2 drives, 3 DDR2 sticks, 2x 8800U sli\'d, Fan controller, 2 cathodes, 3 fans LED dvdrw and cdrw, TV tuner card = 607W  This pc would be a pretty full on pc, and it doesn\'t draw anywhere near 1kw.
Although not perfectly accurate. It wouldn\'t be far off.  Only good thing about a 1kW system is it\'ll have more stable rails and lower currents drawn.

[Paul2]

yeah, i checked that calculator measurement site that you posted, and it said it ate over 200 watts for 2 ultra cards SLi.

Downloading TF2 off of steam as I type this. I was sick from work today, came down with a cold. Perfect chance to buy a new game haha. I remember in another thread Sammy mentioned that I should have no problems running TF2. Of course I can\'t run it on high settings, but I can hold out for another week

Well I hope I was right. :P

But worst case senario you\'ll just have to wait a week.

It\'s the Source engine, it will run on a friggin\' Commodore 64.



Add me, Joker.
M1000BE

yeah, I wouldn\'t have sprung for the ultra this late in it\'s lifecycle.. the 8800gt is less than 300 bucks and almost matches the performance.  Two in SLi would beat it in many scenarios and still saved you a few hundered.

But like you said, you wanted the best of the best so I can\'t fault you there.  Have fun :thumb:

Yeah Jbean, picking out the video card was easily the most frustrating part. Like I said, I had already spent a couple months reading about the Ultra over and over and then Sammy brought up the GT like 2 hours before I placed my order so I just said screw it, I knew what I wanted and didn\'t feel like changing a major component that late in the game and for my monitor thats on the way I figured it was the most secure option, it is an Ultra after all so even if new and better cards come out I have no problems saying I have the 2nd or 3rd best card on the market.

As for TF2 I finished downloading the game at 2am and didn\'t get to bed until about 6am. The game runs great on this computer and the game itself is as much fun as I thought it would be. Seeing screenshots and videos of it is one thing, but to play it is a whole other ball game, i\'m really in love with the art direction here and I don\'t think i\'ve played anything other than engineer yet. God I love my sentry guns. I love how they gave the classes a personality this time around. I can see many many hours in the future slipping away because of this game.

Got you added now Raz, add Chaos Rising, I think thats my name >.>

Also with SLI could I put a GT inside to go with the Ultra, seeing as they are both DX10 cards or does it have to be 2 Ultras?

I\'m no expert on SLI, but I\'m pretty sure they have to be the same kind (2xUltra, 2xGT).

2 Ultra\'s,  it also helps if it\'s the exact same ULTRA brand / model, as if you put a slower one in, it\'ll underclock the other one.

[Paul2]

that is interesting.  didn\'t know that.  so two cards SLi aren\'t as flexible as i thought.

Nor are two Crossfire.  Anytime you have a higher clocked card and a lower clocked card, if they even work together, the higher clocked card will clock slower to match the other card.

it used to be that you had to have two of the EXACT same videocards (same Maunuf. same Bios.. everything) at least now you can pair up a EVGA & a BFG or whatever... a little more flexible now than when SLi first came out

computer arrived today and on the box of the mobo it says DDR2 800MHZ. Its the same mobo from the bundle deal I listed earlier but I think I wasted 189$ buying PC8500 RAM.

Lol sorry, I would have mentioned... I thought maybe you were into overclocking or something.

Don\'t worry too much about it, it just means you have more headroom.

those quad cores overclock pretty good, since you got the ram to do it might as well. :thumb:

I have to overclock the processor to make the memory compatible with the motherboard? *brain explodes*

I called the site I purchased everything from and they do accept returns on the ram so I think i\'ll do that. Would I of seen a large difference in performance from the 1066mhz ram?