Galidin wrote:

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It's a total fallasy that you can't take advantage of 4 gig in XP Pro.

You can't take advantage of ALL 4 gig but I've got 3.2 gig usable and quad boxing in EQ it's night and day vs 2 gig.

If your using ONE memory intensive app and NOTHING else on the system yes 4 gig is useless but 4 gig is ~ 90$ right now so..

As far as 9600 GT, the reviews just don't match that aielman that I've read and SLR is a power hog.

You can get a great 8800 GT for about 175.

Galidin

I don't know what benchmarking you've been looking at, but the performance of the 9600gt is very close to the 8800gt. Here's an example from Hardocp.

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/image.html?image=MTIwNTk3OTgyOXBZc1hjMG9sb3FfNl81X2wuZ2lm - Crysis
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/image.html?image=MTIwMzU0NjE5OHViTDJBRUJHam5fNF80X2wuZ2lm - COD4

It also runs cooler and uses less power than the 8800gt and at a better price. On bang for your buck, the 9600gt is the way to go.

As far as SLI goes, that's a matter of personal preference. If you have a large amount of screen real estate, and you want to run at high resolution, then you'll need SLI. You try running a single card at better than 1900x1200 with all the eye candy turned on and you'll be dealing with very low framerates, especially on games like Crysis.

As to power, that's a irrelevent statement. It uses more power because it uses more equipment. It's no more of a "power hog" than running several HDs is.

In any case, power supplies upwards of 750w are a dime a dozen now, so power is no longer an issue. If you need more, you buy a bigger supply. You should be able to run 9600gts in sli with a q6600 with a 700w supply in a pinch. An overclocked 9600gt pulls 240w at max load, and the cpu will pull 105w maxed.

peace,
Aielman