New computer time

[SUBMAN1]

My Radeon 9800 AIW finally gave up the ghost on me. I've been stretching the mileage on that card (I know), but I did spend $450 on it when it first came out and that is a fair chunk of change for a vid card. Lame part is, I had plans to keep that board around for one of my other desktops (which needs a new vid card) when I was done with it, so I am not too happy it died on me - screen just went black right in the middle of working on a Word Doc! I'll screw around with it and make sure all the solder connects are still tight, but I am not holding out hope that it is going to survive.

Anyway, since I refuse to stay with AGP and now is as good a time as any to jump ship to PCI-E, I'm thinking that I'll plan for a Crossfire setup since I have never actually seen one (I like to experiment you might say).

My big question is, has anyone read anything negative about this board??? It is an ASUS A8R32-MVP Deluxe



http://www.asus.com.tw/products4.asp...3&l2=15&l3=268

I have read that it gets hot, which is not too intriging. Part of designing a silent system means hot components are not really desirable. I might be able to fix that passively however. The only other option would be a DFI that uses this same chipset (R580 Crossfire CFX3200). This is the only ATI chipset that does full x16 PCI-E when dual cards are installed. The R480 drops to x8 when 2 cards are installed.

The CPU I'll use for that thing is an x2 4400+ (I want the 1 MB cache per core since I will be dealing with file sizes that will use it). The x2 4800+ is way too overpriced, so I am shying away from that. I'll pop another 2 GB of Muskin mem in there as well which should do fine for a little while. Some games are starting to want a couple GB these days it seems and my 1 GB I have now is starting not to cut it. Oblivion comes to mind (hence why I haven't been around for a bit!).

Next on the list is that ATI doesn't make a crossfire ready version of their X1900 XTX. They only make an XT. However, I did find that Visiontek does. http://www.visiontek.com/X1900XTX.html Has anyone read anything negative about this board? I can't find anything yet. What I worry about is some board manufacturers use cheap RAMDAC's on the board and it results in a blurry picture to the screen. Visiontek has been around a while though and I hope that they don't do that.

The plan here is to pop one in right now, and then wait a few months for the price to come down and then plop another one in afterwards. This should last me another 2 years of simming I hope.

I hate having to do this because my board blew up. My machine still works however since I found some old GeForces in my box of tricks. I have a G3 on the desk right now, but if I remember correctly, it has a noisey fan on it. So I popped a GeForce 2 MX (Yeah I know it sucks) and pulled the fan off it so that I don't have to hear it. If it burns itself up, oh well, but at least I won't have to listen to it. Not like I'm going to heat it up anyway since 3D is not even an option anymore for that thing!

-S

PS. Yes, I did try and steal my wifes 9600 XT, but she almost shot me in the process, so I figure it is just safer not to have a 3D card for a while!

PPS. If anyone has read anything negative on the above stuff, please post (Except comments about my G2!!! I know it sucks thank you very much!). I plan to purchase this week. Thanks!

PPPS. This post is almost as long as one of Skybirds! Wow! :P