Athlon64 boards with SLI/PCI-Express and without

[JoyMonkey]

I'm going to put together a killer gaming PC for my brother in-law and I've been a little out of touch with all the hardware advancements of late (Athlon64, PCI-Express and SLI are all new to me).

In a nutshell what I want to know is; is it worth getting a more expensive SLI motherboard if it's only going to be running one graphics card? And if I was going to use two cards, do they have to be identical?

As far as I can tell, SLI is only beneficial if two graphics cards are hooked up. Is that the whole idea of it?

[pointdablame]

As far as I know, the cards DO have to be identical.  I also believe the board will work fine with one card, but I'm not sure it's worth it.

In all honesty, unless you are ready to pair an SLI board with TWO $350-500 video cards, you're probably much better off with a single slot mobo and a nice high end video card.IMO, I'm not even jumping on the PCI-Express bandwagon yet since there is only small differences in the high, HIGH end stuff.

If you'd like to try to futureproof his system, even though we all know you can't with PCs heh, go with a nice SLI board, even if it's just with one vid card.  If you want to build him a kick ass gaming system without spending as much, I'd get a nice s939 motherboard, the fastest Athlon64 you can buy, and the best video card you can get.

just my .02

[sirwoogie]

Yeah, I would avoid SLI at the moment. That area is just not mature enough to be worth the pricetag. PCI-Express is a bit more seasoned, but still is not the official norm of the community yet. But for PCI-E, there are cards from all the major vendors. Most are the high-end, but there are some mid-level cards as well. If this is a gaming rig, follow these rough guidelines:

1) At least 1G Dual-DDR RAM.
2) Decent CPU. Doesn't have to be top, but should be up there.
3) At least a 2 drive RAID-0 PATA/SATA setup.  If the budget allows, go with Raptor IDE drives from WD
4) Decent MB chipset. Don't go with a last year model style. The Nforce 3 and other Intel chipsets as pdb just pointed out are good..
5) Do not use onboard sound. Get a Creative or Turtle Beach PCI card. Most onboard (not all) are not adequate for a gamer since it eats up CPU cycles. Again, some newer chipsets take care of this problem.
6) Spend the rest on the video card. Seriously, if they are dead set on a top gaming rig, then $400-$600 bucks on a video card is not out of the question.

Research on the gaming websites and be sure to pay Toms Hardware a visit.

[bionicbadger]

The thing with the SLI right now is that it is probably the only PCI-express motherboard you will find in stock for socket 939.  There dont seem to be any single slot PCI-express motherboards out there that are in stock.

I would want to get socket 939 and pci express, so if you don't want to spend the extra $ for an SLI motherboard, you will probaly have to wait a while.

[crashwg]

correct me if I'm wrong but don't you need XP's 64bit OS on a 64 bit processor otherwise you're pretty much wasting all that power?  also you need special drivers for xp 64 and alot of companies have little to no support specifically ATI...

I was looking into getting a 64 bit settup going but decided against it for those reasons so please, by all means correct me if I'm wrong 'caus I'd love to set something pretty powerful up in the not so near future...

[sirwoogie]

bionicbadger:

That's not true. Gigabyte and other manufacturers offer standalone PCI-E boards for 939 socket types. The GA-K8NF-9 comes to mind.

crashwg:

The Athlon really doesn't come any other way. You are right that if the OS can't support the 64-bit processing, then you aren't taking advantage of that additional address space. However, the 32-bit performance of the chip is on par with its 64-bit speeds as well. Thus, if you run native 32-bit OS/apps, it'll perform relatively the same way. Athlon does not come any other way currently. The AthlonXP series is retired.

[paigeoliver]

Wow, they dug up SLI again? Doesn't anyone remember that back in the old VOODOO days. I used to have 3 video cards in my computer driving one monitor (An ATI card, and a pair of Voodoo 2's), and the whole deal was obsolete in months.

[Harry Potter]

From what I know, the PCI-E bus can only be fully utilised in pro applications, such as 3D. For games it's simply overkill.

There's only a handful of games which manage to fully utilise the AGP4x bandwidth, let alone the AGP8x (or PCI-E which is roughly equivalent to 16x).

Stick to AGP. It's cheaper and proven. For now.

[JoyMonkey]

Alright then, so SLI and PCI-E are out of the picture. What about the Athlon64 then?
Should I just stick to the fastest AthlonXP that I can get, or go Athlon64?

Since WindowsXP 64-bit isn't available yet, it'd probably make sense to stick win an AthlonXP right now. Right?

Thanks for all the comments, this thread has cleared up a lot for me already!


Edit1: Actually, since the 64's are now cheaper than XP's, maybe I will go down that road.

Edit2: Tom's Hardware has a good guide up today on the various socket 939 Athlon64 motherboards here. It seems the NForce4 based boards (with SLI) bench a little better than the rest.

[sirwoogie]

Joy,

Please read my last thread. The AthlonXP is a discontinued model, and using the Athlon64 is a good option. Ignore the fact it's a 64-bit processor. It is faster than its AthlonXP counterparts.

I wouldn't discount a PCI-E board just yet. I don't agree with the assumption that the AGP bus is not being fully utilized, as benchmarks clearly show a positive differential with identical cards used in an AGP option vs. a PCI-E card.

[pointdablame]

I'm going to totally agree with SirWoogie here.

Don't think of the Athlon64 as being worth it only for 64bit apps... they are just better processors.  In fact, without starting an AMD/Intel flame war, if you look around, most reviewers will tell you that the A64 are currently the best gaming processors you can buy.

I also wouldn't say you should discount PCI-Express totally... the only problem is, as was mentioned, it's difficult to get a s939 board with only one PCI-Express slot currently.  There aren't a whole lot of options on that front without going to SLI.

Summing up... get an A64 and search for a good mobo, either AGP or PCI-Express.

[GGKoul]

Wow, they dug up SLI again? Doesn't anyone remember that back in the old VOODOO days. I used to have 3 video cards in my computer driving one monitor (An ATI card, and a pair of Voodoo 2's), and the whole deal was obsolete in months.

Monster Voodoo card.  I still have one in my P2 box.

[GGKoul]

I'm going to totally agree with SirWoogie here.

Don't think of the Athlon64 as being worth it only for 64bit apps... they are just better processors.

[shmokes]

Wow, they dug up SLI again? Doesn't anyone remember that back in the old VOODOO days. I used to have 3 video cards in my computer driving one monitor (An ATI card, and a pair of Voodoo 2's), and the whole deal was obsolete in months.

Well, nVidia bought 3Dfx back in the day.  I wonder if the 3Dfx technology is finally making its way into some of their products.

[JoyMonkey]

Wow, they dug up SLI again? Doesn't anyone remember that back in the old VOODOO days. I used to have 3 video cards in my computer driving one monitor (An ATI card, and a pair of Voodoo 2's), and the whole deal was obsolete in months.

Well, nVidia bought 3Dfx back in the day.  I wonder if the 3Dfx technology is finally making its way into some of their products.

I think they eventually did put some 3Dfx magic into the GeForce FX series cards.