For 2008-20012 games any ot the two rigs will be more than adecuate, but the second one will be a bit better in games that use SLI and 8GB of memory will be enough.

if the games you want to play have an SLI profile the second one, if not the first one.

More than 8GB of memory should not be a major factor for games of that time, SLI on the other hand can pose a bit of a headache if things don't work right. Either will do ultimately. Personally, I would likely go for the former, I prefer having some excess memory and I'm not overly fond of multi GPU setups.

I havent really played too much with SLI setups outside Voodoo2 SLI, so I wasnt sure of the hangups / issues. I am into FPS games mostly, and some RPGs. Not sure of what games do and dont use SLI....is it a lot of games or more of a here and there thing?

For OS, was going Win 7 to get 64-Bit and be able to utilize all the RAM.....I read XP 64-Bit doesnt play well with a lot of games....

Voodoo 2 SLI has absolutely nothing in common with nvidia SLI outside of the name.

Some of the issues are SLI randomly not working despite being activated, sometimes being active despite being deactivated, microstutters, graphical issues and glitches when SLI acts up despite supposedly being compatible. Compatibility depends often on the driver version.

Generally I find it to be more hassle than its worth.

https://www.geforce.co.uk/games-applications/technology/sli

this is a list of games with SLI support. I don't know how complete it is, but considering the website is run by nvidia I would suppose it should be rather close to accurate.

Smack2k wrote:

I realize from the start that neither of these following builds are anything near playing new games

Hey! My main PC until 2 weeks ago was a Phenom II X6 with a 1050ti and it played lots of modern games quite well. And all I did was upgrade it to a FX6330 (everything else same), which gains me about 1ghz but I lose 3 real cores. And I am still planning on keeping it as my main PC for a few years yet.

Koltoroc wrote:

Voodoo 2 SLI has absolutely nothing in common with nvidia SLI outside of the name. […]
Show full quote

Voodoo 2 SLI has absolutely nothing in common with nvidia SLI outside of the name.

Some of the issues are SLI randomly not working despite being activated, sometimes being active despite being deactivated, microstutters, graphical issues and glitches when SLI acts up despite supposedly being compatible. Compatibility depends often on the driver version.

Generally I find it to be more hassle than its worth.

https://www.geforce.co.uk/games-applications/technology/sli

this is a list of games with SLI support. I don't know how complete it is, but considering the website is run by nvidia I would suppose it should be rather close to accurate.

Thanks for the info, helps out a lot...I dont think I want to deal with a bunch of issues I havent dealt with (SLI) when I want to start gaming....but a lot of the games I want to play appear to be SLI compatibile (lots of FPS), and with 8 GB being enough RAM, could I turn SLI on and off as I need to use it via the drivers, so games that are compatible I can run it with, and those that arent, I can just run non SLI?

A geforce 6 puts you closer to 2005 than 2008. I bought an HD 4850 online for 20$ shipped, which a bit faster than a 8800gt and more than adequate through at least 2010. A radeon 4850 or an 8800gt, 9800gt, or 250GTS (a bit faster still) would be much more ideal, and each regularly go on ebay for 20$ shipped US.

The phenom II is a much more capable CPU and plenty for that era of gaming. I would take the single card over AFR sli any day. The fussing with drivers and game capability, to say nothing of micro stuttering, just isn't worth the hassle.

If you are going to stick with DX9 or DX10.1 cards you might as well stay with windows XP. You can count the number of DX10 titles on one hand, an all of them look pretty much the same on a DX9 card.

Also, the SLI boards supports Phenom II.

https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/M3N72D/

You might need to flash your bios, but there is not reason you can't get the best of both worlds.

Smack2k wrote:

"Thanks for the info, helps out a lot...I dont think I want to deal with a bunch of issues I havent dealt with (SLI) when I want to start gaming....but a lot of the games I want to play appear to be SLI compatibile (lots of FPS), and with 8 GB being enough RAM, could I turn SLI on and off as I need to use it via the drivers, so games that are compatible I can run it with, and those that arent, I can just run non SLI?

You can deactivate SLI, but that is the problem I mentioned, It doesn't always work. Sometimes SLI stays active no matter what, sometimes it will stay deactivated no matter what. A reboot tends to "fix" it, until the next time its stuck for whatever godforsaken reason.

mothergoose729 wrote:

A geforce 6 puts you closer to 2005 than 2008. I bought an HD 4850 online for 20$ shipped, which a bit faster than a 8800gt and more than adequate through at least 2010. A radeon 4850 or an 8800gt, 9800gt, or 250GTS (a bit faster still) would be much more ideal, and each regularly go on ebay for 20$ shipped US.

The phenom II is a much more capable CPU and plenty for that era of gaming. I would take the single card over AFR sli any day. The fussing with drivers and game capability, to say nothing of micro stuttering, just isn't worth the hassle.

If you are going to stick with DX9 or DX10.1 cards you might as well stay with windows XP. You can count the number of DX10 titles on one hand, an all of them look pretty much the same on a DX9 card.

it is A GTX 660 ti, a keppler card from 2012, geforce 600 series, not geforce 6.

mothergoose729 wrote:

Also, the SLI boards supports Phenom II.

https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/M3N72D/

You might need to flash your bios, but there is not reason you can't get the best of both worlds.

It IS a phenom II. the original phenoms have a 4 digit model number with the fastes bein the Phenom x4 9950 BE, while all non X6 phenom IIs have a 3 digit model number (X6 is 4 digit starting with a 1).

Looks like I will going the way of non-SLI for this setup and see how things go from there....I can always change over to SLI down the road, but for now, will go with the non SLI setup....

Would there be any real advantage to moving to a Phenom II X6 setup? The 1055T is about as high as I would go as the 1090's and up are kind of pricey....I know the X6 would have more cores, but the core speeds are slower than the X4's cores, so not sure which is better for gaming...

Ddr3 bandwidth is pretty important for newer games, at least if you want to run a 6 core Phenom ii and a semi-modern gpu. Ddr2 800 really can not compete with dual channel ddr3-1600, which the Phenom ii should support iirc.

honestly a GTX 660 Ti can play games up through 2017, its a little faster than a GT1030 and matches a GTX 750 Ti, the only limiting factor is the 2gb of vram on the 660 Ti, but even most games at 1080p today and all at 720p are still in your wheelhouse. You can also overclock that CPU to 3.8-4.0 and get similar performance to an i5 2400

Smack2k wrote:

Looks like I will going the way of non-SLI for this setup and see how things go from there....I can always change over to SLI down the road, but for now, will go with the non SLI setup....

Would there be any real advantage to moving to a Phenom II X6 setup? The 1055T is about as high as I would go as the 1090's and up are kind of pricey....I know the X6 would have more cores, but the core speeds are slower than the X4's cores, so not sure which is better for gaming...

Games of that time period need clock speed over cores. Only in the last 3 or 4 years have games begun to properly use more than 2 cores and even now games that use more than 4 cores are not that common. The X6 would make sense if you do more than play games, but just for gaming it doesn't make much sense.

When it comes to newer games (2016+) the phenom does not make much sense in general, there are games coming out that plain don't run, because the phenom lacks some newer instructions. Examples for that are Dishonored 2 (I believe that dependency was patched but it didn't work at launch) and Mafia 3 (It's shit, so no loss here, but the point stands)

candle_86 wrote:

honestly a GTX 660 Ti can play games up through 2017, its a little faster than a GT1030 and matches a GTX 750 Ti, the only limiting factor is the 2gb of vram on the 660 Ti, but even most games at 1080p today and all at 720p are still in your wheelhouse. You can also overclock that CPU to 3.8-4.0 and get similar performance to an i5 2400

the 2GB are only really a limiting factor in edge case and in theory. The Card *can* run anything modern, but to get playable frame rates you have to cut down details to the point the 2GB Vram cease to be an issue (with some exceptions like GTA 5)

This is primarily only for games, so thanks for the info on if the X6 would be worth it.

Smack2k wrote:

Would there be any real advantage to moving to a Phenom II X6 setup? The 1055T is about as high as I would go as the 1090's and up are kind of pricey....

*warning* *warning* The 1055T is multiplier locked and cannot be easily overclocked. That's why the black editions like the 1090 cost more. That's also why I upgraded to an FX model, which is unlocked and has a much higher stock clock speed than any Phenom, and as others said, losing 3 real cores is no big deal for gaming.