Gettin' my upgrade on!

[inii]

First of all, thanks to all the tech-heads for helping me build a sweet little rig pre-release. Your information and suggestions were an immense help, and I couldn't be more grateful :3 If I could impose on you all once more to get some feedback on upgrading a bit, well, you'd just be the bee's knees.

Okay, so this is what I'm currently working with:

AMD Phenom II x4 955 Black Edition
2x2GB Ripjaws DDR3 1600
MSI 870-G45 mobo (PCIE 2.0 x16/x4)
MSI N460 GTX 768MB
Antec EarthWatts 650W

Now, I haven't had any problems with any of my parts; the whole thing came together quite nicely! But I've got an extra few hundred bucks and since I'm making all of my holiday gifts this year by hand, I'm dumping the cash on myself! >:3 Here's what I'm planning to get (again via NewEgg, because they rock):

Another MSI N460 GTX 768. I can't justify buying two N460 or 470s when I already have a pretty solid one. The second I'm (obviously) going to hook up via SLI, and I remember reading you need to have two of the exact same card, lest you divide by zeros.

New mobo: ASUS M4N98TD. TWO PCI-E x16 slots, BOTH of which run at x16 in SLI. It's not very expensive, and I've had good success with ASUS mobos in the past.

Question: Are the dual x16s going to make a noticeable difference over a mobo with x8/x8 in SLI with the cards I have?

Another 2x2GB pack of Ripjaws DDR3 1600. They run so cool with those big ass heatsinks!

A beefier power supply capable of supporting the above components.

Question: Does anyone have any recommendations on wattage and brands?

I'm working on two HannSpree HF257 HD monitors, which I *love*. Really the only gaming I do on PC is in FFXIV/FFXI, but I am a graphic designer by trade so I've usually got at least half of Adobe's creative suite open at any given time. Anyway, hopefully someone can point me in the right direction on this Cheers!!

[xopher]

Go for a Corsair 1000W PSU. Nvidia cards take up quite a bit of juice but that will give you some overhead. Keep in mind also that when running SLI only one monitor at a time can be active. You will not be able to multitask.

You might want to look into getting a single card and selling the one you have currently.

[inii]

Only one monitor can be active at a time? Augh, that is balls! Guess there's no workaround for that, eh?

[xopher]

Checked into it a little further since the last time I ran SLI was years ago; found out that it now supports multi monitors.

[Appie]

Even with a heavy overclock on CPU and maybe a little on the GPU's 1000W is overkill for SLI 460. 750W should be plenty. 1000W or 1200W is more for running 480 SLI with some headroom. That's with an i7 9xx, I assume the AMD's use less since they don't get as warm either.

Reports say there is 1-2% difference between running 8-8 lanes and 16-16 lanes SLI. Take it as you want. Personally it ate at me that I didn't have the option to utilize SLI fully so I went with shit that supported 16x 2 even though I currently don't have a SLI/Crossfire setup.

Also if all you play is FFXI and FFXIV, be prepared to be disappointed even on such a high end PC, it's a fucking PS3 engine on PC. Shit will mess up at some point while on other games your PC is overkill.

[sruon]

First of all, thanks to all the tech-heads for helping me build a sweet little rig pre-release. Your information and suggestions were an immense help, and I couldn't be more grateful :3 If I could impose on you all once more to get some feedback on upgrading a bit, well, you'd just be the bee's knees.

Okay, so this is what I'm currently working with:

AMD Phenom II x4 955 Black Edition
2x2GB Ripjaws DDR3 1600
MSI 870-G45 mobo (PCIE 2.0 x16/x4)
MSI N460 GTX 768MB
Antec EarthWatts 650W

Now, I haven't had any problems with any of my parts; the whole thing came together quite nicely! But I've got an extra few hundred bucks and since I'm making all of my holiday gifts this year by hand, I'm dumping the cash on myself! >:3 Here's what I'm planning to get (again via NewEgg, because they rock):

Another MSI N460 GTX 768. I can't justify buying two N460 or 470s when I already have a pretty solid one. The second I'm (obviously) going to hook up via SLI, and I remember reading you need to have two of the exact same card, lest you divide by zeros.

New mobo: ASUS M4N98TD. TWO PCI-E x16 slots, BOTH of which run at x16 in SLI. It's not very expensive, and I've had good success with ASUS mobos in the past.

Question: Are the dual x16s going to make a noticeable difference over a mobo with x8/x8 in SLI with the cards I have?

Another 2x2GB pack of Ripjaws DDR3 1600. They run so cool with those big ass heatsinks!

A beefier power supply capable of supporting the above components.

Question: Does anyone have any recommendations on wattage and brands?

I'm working on two HannSpree HF257 HD monitors, which I *love*. Really the only gaming I do on PC is in FFXIV/FFXI, but I am a graphic designer by trade so I've usually got at least half of Adobe's creative suite open at any given time. Anyway, hopefully someone can point me in the right direction on this Cheers!!

Question: Are the dual x16s going to make a noticeable difference over a mobo with x8/x8 in SLI with the cards I have?

Don't claim to know exactly, but from what I've read and what I've seen (e.g. my own card running at x8), I'm tempted to say no

Question: Does anyone have any recommendations on wattage and brands?

Brands : Corsair, OCZ, Antec, 80+ kind
Wattage : 750W-800W

Bonus recommandation : Look into a SSD, they really change your life.

[Olo401]

On the dual 16x thing - It's really hard to say right now if it makes a difference. The little bit I've heard & read about PCI-E bandwidth and video cards has said that in most cases a single video card rarely uses more than 8 of the 16 pipelines, even with SLI or Crossfire active. (I need to look around & find the articles that mentioned it)

[CoronA1979]

First! Hi Olo :D

-As for the x16 slots, no go.. The only cards currently that you are going to see a drop in performance on running @ x8 are the GTX 480's (Well, probably the new 580 too now...). I've done a fair amount of research and even my GTX 470's don't take a hit running @ x8 vs x16. I have a board that supports them both in x16 but it's not necessary. If that's your only real reason to upgrade your MOBO is the x16 slots, save the money IMO.

-Yes, you can run a multiple monitor setup via SLI 460's.

-750W is more than enough. The 470 and 480 model GPU's are power demons, in a massive way. However, the GTX 460's Nvidia got it right in terms of power consumption. You can google the power draw on them if you want but 750w is way more than enough. My suggestion is to just make sure you buy a quality power supply. Corsair makes great PSU's along w/ Antec. An HX1000 (Corsair's 1000W PSU - which I have for my 2 470's) is way overkill for what you are wanting to do. To give you an idea of what I am generally powering on my HX1000

-GTX 470 x2
-6 HDD's
-MCP655 Pump
-16 120mm Fans
-Couple DVD Drives

So, yeah... You don't need an HX1000

- +1 to the SSD suggestion someone made. Watch closely on Black Friday and you are likely to be able to find one hell of a deal on some SSD's. They have been popping up alot lately. If you have the money go for a decent sized drive around 120gb or so. You can throw your OS on it and have room for some of your most played games. If you can't swing that then just get a small 30 or 40gb, throw your OS on it, web browser, anything you use alot that doesn't require massive writes, and enjoy how blazing fast your system becomes.

- Lastly, if you are hoping to gain something amazing in FFXI w/ an SLI setup, don't. In fact, FFXI scales HORRIBLY w/ SLI unless something has changed since I quit (which wasn't that long ago). I would always find that I had to actually disable SLI or XI was just horrible. XIV though, I can't really say. I played it for a week and it just wasn't for me no matter how much/long I played XI.

Sorry for the long winded responses - Hope it helps.

[inii]

Wow, WOW! Thank you all so much! So I'm good to multitask with SLI on two monitors? Just want to be sure, I get antsy not being able to switch screens haha. If so, I will definitely pick up that second 460 and a 750-850 PSU. Thanks again for the explanations and info!!