building a gaming rig, need advice

[blazefox2]

hey all, started buying the parts for a new desktop so far have the case (cm storm trooper), motherboard (asus sabertooth 990fx)and cpu (amd bulldozer quadcore 4.2 ghz)

and was wondering a few things

the board i have is sli/crossfire certified and was wanting to get the best bang for buck vid cards, any suggestions? needs to be sli/crossfire and 1gb or higher. are the 2gb vid cards overkill since there will be 2 of them? what are the advantages of sli over crossfire and vica versa.

also the board has an onboard sound card (realtek 8channel) will that be more than enough or should i get a dedicated sound card, if so what are your recomendations.

thanks in advance, love you all!:salute:

[Meshman]

Hey, nobody answered you! I will.

First the on-board sound, it should suffice and the days of old where having the sound system creating a performance hit are long gone.

Second, the video system depends upon what you're using for entertainment and how much you want to spend. You mention "needs to be sli/crossfire and 1gb or higher", so I ask why? Some games running multiple cards will have a benefit, but not FS 9/X or X-Plane. Unless you were going to be running a very high resolution display, then going multi-card could help.

So what are you wanting to do and how much are you willing to spend?

[blazefox2]

Hey, nobody answered you! I will.

First the on-board sound, it should suffice and the days of old where having the sound system creating a performance hit are long gone.

Second, the video system depends upon what you're using for entertainment and how much you want to spend. You mention "needs to be sli/crossfire and 1gb or higher", so I ask why? Some games running multiple cards will have a benefit, but not FS 9/X or X-Plane. Unless you were going to be running a very high resolution display, then going multi-card could help.

So what are you wanting to do and how much are you willing to spend?

thanks for the response, the reason i want a multi card setup, is because im running high end games (ac3, black ops 2 skyrim etc.) and also looking for improved performance for recording and rendering videos (looking to get back into machinima/fsx movie making)

looking to spend less than $400 for vid cards

[demorier]

A friend of mine with a home built high end desktop that plays a lot of games online, eventually got rid of his second video card from the machine...it just wasn't giving anymore performance than one good card. Was just adding to noise, heat and power load.

[wombat666]

I finally reached the point where my Uber rig was ready for use, and I have been really pleased with my SLI set up.
Two GTX690 cards in SLI gives me the power of four GT680s, and they run cooler and quieter than most of my previous cards.
Wretched excess I know, but the results are worth the expense.