Dual Graphics card

dergon darkhelm · Post by **dergon darkhelm** » Sat Nov 03, 2007 8:47 pm

Do I need/want these on a new desktop?

Grand Fromage · Post by **Grand Fromage** » Sat Nov 03, 2007 9:13 pm

Not unless you have a ton of money to blow. It's still better to get a single, superior card, and will be for the forseeable future.

fluffmonster · Post by **fluffmonster** » Sat Nov 03, 2007 10:31 pm

Grand Fromage wrote:Not unless you have a ton of money to blow. It's still better to get a single, superior card, and will be for the forseeable future.

Mayhem · Post by **Mayhem** » Sun Nov 04, 2007 3:03 pm

However, if you get a mobo that supports the dual card, format, then slot in your single, superior card, a couple of years down the line an identical card will cost peanuts and you can thus do a cheap upgrade.

Maybe.

mxlm · Post by **mxlm** » Mon Nov 05, 2007 12:21 am

'course, the identical card won't have support for shader v 11.5 or whatever the fuck they're up to by then, and so won't be able to run the newer games anyway.

fluffmonster · Post by **fluffmonster** » Mon Nov 05, 2007 2:16 am

video cards don't change in price that much. 7800gtx was still over $450 even after several newer and better iterations had come out, just as an example. dual vid cards are only worth it if you can get the second card for less than, oh, 20% of the original price. Save on the mobo, get the best vid card you can get now and if we're talkin real money it should last you a couple years. If that card is inadequate to whatever you want to use it for by that time, a second of the same won't help.

Joos · Post by **Joos** » Mon Nov 05, 2007 10:24 am

fluffmonster wrote:video cards don't change in price that much. 7800gtx was still over $450 even after several newer and better iterations had come out, just as an example. dual vid cards are only worth it if you can get the second card for less than, oh, 20% of the original price. Save on the mobo, get the best vid card you can get now and if we're talkin real money it should last you a couple years. If that card is inadequate to whatever you want to use it for by that time, a second of the same won't help.

2nded. Its better with one kickass graphics card than two rather good ones.

dergon darkhelm · Post by **dergon darkhelm** » Mon Nov 05, 2007 3:26 pm

Thank you ....

I don't do anything except plan on playing NWN2.

I just wnat things smooth on screen (i presume that's video card) and fast to load the page ( that's RAM i figure)

fluffmonster · Post by **fluffmonster** » Mon Nov 05, 2007 5:03 pm

Load time is more a function of the harddrive and to a lesser extent fsb speed. RAM can matter if you are having to rely a lot on the swap file, which will slow everything down. 2 gigs is minimum for nwn2, but ddr2 ram is so cheap right now its hard to argue against getting 4 gigs even though on a 32-bit OS you'll never be able to use more than 3 gigs of it. Regardless, nwn2 load times are going to be long no matter what, much longer than nwn1.

A buttery-smooth image will depend mostly on the vid card and to a lesser extent the cpu. Get 512MB or better vid ram for maximum eye candy. The new 8800GT will settle to a price of about $250 in another month or two and is reported to be a pretty good performer.