NEC LCD1980FXI 19" LCD
16ms
1000ms (1s) / 16ms = 60Hz

I wonder whether you see any smearing of the screan when you grab the scrollbar with the mouse and move vogons forum up and down.

2x nVidia GeForce 7800GXT GPUs
2 gpus on one card or 2 cards?
I wonder whether we will be able to use 2 cards (with 2 gpus) in a sli mode = 4 gpus! 😀

2x nVidia GeForce 7800GXT GPUs 2 gpus on one card or 2 cards?
I wonder whether we will be able to use 2 cards (with 2 gpus) in a sli mode = 4 gpus! Happy

Two cards, one card per slot. Someday, Gigabyte may introduce a card that incorporates two separate 7800 cores on one card, (I believe they did this with a 6800 card.) Supporting two GPUs is hard enough, requiring tailored support for each game. Supporting four would be even more tricky! Consider the power requirements for a four GPU system, I would say well beyond consumer requirements at this time. I predict that multi-core GPUs will eventually be released.

NEC LCD1980FXI 19" LCD 16ms 1000ms (1s) / 16ms = 60Hz […]
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NEC LCD1980FXI 19" LCD
16ms
1000ms (1s) / 16ms = 60Hz

I wonder whether you see any smearing of the screan when you grab the scrollbar with the mouse and move vogons forum up and down.

Ghosting and smearing are my true concerns with LCDs, but the more gaming friendly alternatives relied on 6-bit color resolutions. But the LCD will be far lighter and will give off a lot less heat and energy. I will let you how it performs.

I thought I read somewhere that the MSI K8N SLI will not fit 2 7800 cards because something is in the way.

Thank you for informing me, unless MSI revises the board, the second 7800GTX will not fit on the K8N Neo4 Platinum because there is a capacitor or two sharing the same space with the card's fan header. The card won't fit into the slot. Fortunately, I was able to l cancel my order in time. I have made many changes:

Athlon FX-55 (90nm San Diego core) CPU @ 2.6GHz/1MB L2
2x 512MB OCZ Platinum EL Rev. 2 Dual Channel PC3200 DDR RAM
DFI LANPARTY nF4 SLI-DR nForce 4 SLI Motherboard
2x nVidia GeForce 7800GXT GPUs (eVGA)
2x Hitachi T7K250 250GB SATA II Hard Drives
Plextor PX-716SA 16x DVD+/-R DL Rewritable Drive
Enermax Noisetaker EG701AX-VE (W)SFMA 600W PSU
Lian Li V1200 PC Case
NEC LCD1980FXI 19" LCD
Teac 1.44MB Floppy
Logitech MX1000 Cordless Mouse
Win XP Pro w/SP2

The DFI board is confirmed to work with the 7800GTXs in SLI mode. Newegg didn't have the 350GB Hitachi drives in stock yesterday but they had them in today and they couldn't provide me with two 160GB drives, so I upgraded for about $50. I also upgraded the power supply as the 600W Enermax is SLI certified and I don't want to take any chances.

Unfortunately, they did not have the SB Audigy 2ZS that I wanted in stock, so I will have to settle for the on board sound for now, which I hear it pretty good or use the Sound Blaster Live! from my old PC for now (because it supports a gameport/midi adapter.)

I did have to make a sacrifice. The DFI has no support for a Parallel Port, and the adapter which I use to connect my SNES Gamepads to a PC is a homemade variety that uses the parallel port. I hope a Parallel to USB adapter will work.

Is 1GB RAM really enough for that machine? I'd go for 2GB... but that's me.

Yeah me too. Not because of MMORPG's (hate those things) but because I use Vmware alot...even without Vmware the peak memory usage commonly climbs into the 1gb+ range with lots of computer usage. Also ramdisks are fun. 😀

1GB is plenty if you just run games and other apps. The only reason I could think of to have more is if you're doing server stuff.

The problem with 2GB was that I couldn't get the same rated RAM in 1GB DIMM module size, and using 4 DIMMs is alot slower at the moment than using 2 DIMMs. (1T to 2T Command Rate.)

Great Hierophant wrote:

...and using 4 DIMMs is alot slower at the moment than using 2 DIMMs.

Excuse me for being blunt (and rude)... What's the 'improved' RAM timing gonna do for you in real terms? 2 or 3 FPS more in the latest shooter? a second difference in MP3 encoding? It'd be a small amount that wouldn't be worth the worry. You initial post contains far too much 'mine is gonna be better than yours' marketing bullshit 😀

Dual 7800's - ROFL! Got any game that can destroy the fastest 6800 or a single 7800 at 1280x1024? Nope didn't think so! The 7800 card only takes a significant performance lead when using high resolutions (which your LCD cannot handle). $4K on a PC - you need help! Technology is always faster and cheaper later so why buy something that you're not likely to make full use of?

That brings up some valid points, despite the rather tactless, confrontational manner in which they were expressed (*zing*). The relationship between performance and cost in computer hardware seems to be logarithmic. That is, once you reach a certain price level for a given type of hardware, any increased costs tend to far exceed any associated performance increase.

For me, part of the fun of shopping for new computer parts is finding that spot in that curve where I'm getting the best performance for my money. I decided when I bought my current computer's parts that I would do things this way and then buy a new computer (again, the same way) in a year that will probably be similar to what G.H. is getting now only much cheaper (except now I'm eyeing dual-CPU or dual-core 64-bit setups).

It works well in the long run because you end up just far enough ahead of the curve that you can enjoy the benefits of a cool setup while paying a fraction of the price every time you upgrade. It could even be argued that this makes upgrading more often more affordable, allowing you to stay consistently ahead of the curve (plus you get more computers laying around to turn into servers or LAN party machines or home media centers or hand-me-downs for friends and family, or whatever else you can think of).

Considering his current setup, I'd also cut G.H. some slack. I can totally understand the desire to jump as far ahead of the curve as he is behind it now.

I'm a tactless person and I usually say what I feel. Anyways, he wasn't looking for advice or whatnot, he merely wanted everyone to stand (post) in awe of his huge beast of a system and give him a slap on the back 😀

His old system wasn't that much worse than the one I just ditched! (I had a P3 1Ghz with GF4/4200). I recently put together a replacement that runs HL2 and Far Cry at my LCD's max res of 1280x1024 with full details at very good speeds. Total cost was $1000 (rough translation) and that was a lot higher than I could have paid had I not bought a weird system.

Belive me, the new system is revenge for all the performance problems and lack of power I have had to deal with over the past few years. It has elements that are forward thinking (the 7800GTXs in SLI mode, the SATA II drives array) others that are perhaps not (Athlon FX-55, 1GB of RAM.) I may double the RAM someday, but I want to gauge current performance first.

Although I will have to use a parallel ATA cable, I will include my Pioneer 16X DVD-ROM drive that is currently in the old rig because although it was an RPC 2.0 drive, I was able to flash it with hacked firmware to enable the drive to be region free. I would prefer not to do that with my Plextor DVD burner.

Actually, the prices for a retail SB Audigy 2ZS are not significantly more expensive in a store (104.99 inc. sales tax) than online. I will simply buy one in a store.

1280x1024 may not be the most taxing resolution, but when I have some money at a later date I may buy another panel or replace it with that 1920x1200 panel I have always wanted. Plus, I have been informed of the joys of anti-aliasing and anistropic filtering at high levels.

You should give the onboard sound a try if it is something decent, such as a recent Realtek chipset. Creative is getting very stale in their role as top dog and even onboard sound chips are catching up.

Unfortunately, among other things, the Audigy 2ZS offers a Gameport/midi bracket which I need to connect my Roland CM-500. Of course, it also supports EAX beyond 2.0.

Ah, yes the old-school gameport connector. My nForce2-based motherboard (with nForce2 MCP/VAPU/Sonata and Realtek ALC655 codec - instead of Soundstorm unfortunately) has a pin header for a gameport/MIDI bracket but didn't come with a cable, and I can't find one that I'm sure is compatable (there seems to be no standard). As a result, I ended up buying a USB-to-MIDI adapter to connect my Yamaha MIDI keyboard instead of the Voyetra gameport-to-MIDI-with-joystick-passthrough cable I used on previous computers. I can't tell if the CM-500 has a standard DIN-style MIDI input, but if it does then a USB adapter or something similar might be an option for you.

The last computer I had (a loaner from my roommate) had an Audigy 2, and I used the awesome kX drivers on it. Those didn't have much EAX support, but I found that absolutely no new games are taking special advantage of EAX 3 or higher. Instead, it seems game developers have learned from the antics of companies like 3dfx -- who try to push proprietary APIs on developers to retain a stranglehold on their respective markets -- and instead use DirectSound3D instead (which is fully supported by almost all modern sound hardware). In short, I promise that you won't miss not having EAX 3/4 if you play lots of games.

One game that may even bring this rig to its knees, Everquest II. On the Extreme Quality settings, at the 1280x1024 resolution frame rates may just be "acceptable." Of course, the HL2 and Doom 3 engines probably look better and I can certainly run them at the 1280x1024 resolution as smooth as butter. Naturally, I have never played either Everquest and have no intention of it, having exhausted my pay-to-play MMORPG needs in the early days of Ultima Online.

I wonder whether you see any smearing of the screan when you grab the scrollbar with the mouse and move vogons forum up and down.

I got my monitor today, FedEx will be shipping the rest of my computer tommorow (they kept it at the storage facility which is only 20 miles away for the whole of today.) The screen is huge, far larger than I expected. The screen will smear if you scroll the screenin Firefox rapidly, but its something I can get used to. The portrait mode is very useful for reading text. The LCD has only one stuck subpixel, located in the top lefthand corner of the screen. (I believe it is stuck because white means on and black means off and it only can be seen at an extremely close distance on a black screen.) So far I am very happy with the screen.

I bought an Audigy2 instead of an E-mu or M-Audio card for EAX3+ support. In the few games I've run that used it, it's been freaking awesome. You have no idea how useful object occlusion is in calculating where a sound is coming from. That said, you are so right, very few games use it. Disappointing. I might break down and get a better card after all.

Well, I have finally got everything installed, Windows XP Pro runs just fine with the two hard drives in a RAID 0 array (only real use for a Floppy Drive these days, but the floppy drive that came with the system was not working so I had to use the old floppy drive) and with the two graphics cards in SLI mode (boy do they give off heat. I have a single 460GB NTFS partition.

I had a real problem getting the DFI board to run at all. The solution was to plug in a proper cable for everytype of outlet. It requires a 24-pin ATX, a 4-pin ATX, a 4-pin hard drive and a 4-pin floppy drive cable.

There was little helpful documentation to speak of. Fortunately most things installed very easily but at times I was reminded that I hadn't built a system in seven years. The stock CPU cooler is very, very large but installed far more easily than earlier CPU coolers I have dealt with. I was generous with the nonconductive cooling agent, underneath the CPU fan its probably very messy.

Without the floppy drive and front case connector cables, I still have something of a cable jungle inside the Lian Li. NewEgg sent a black case, which I hadn't ordered but I am happy with because it matches the color of my monitor, speakers and mouse. No more beige! Still, the case does collect fingerprints, so I have to wipe it down and dry it with a damp cloth. Brushed aluminum is very nice material and is still reasonably light. The inside of the case is far easier to work with than earlier ATX cases.

I think the Plextor DVD Rewriter may be damaged because it has had difficulty reading some of the installation CDs (but installed Windows XP Pro without incident.) I may have to RMA it, which is an inconvenience. I found firmware to remove the region encoding from the drive, but I will not flash it until I know whether the drive is good or faulty.

All this power, what to do with it?

Put DOSBox on it and play old games 😉