Dual nVidia 7800

[Denyse]

Is there anyone using the Dual nVidia 7800 card setup? I saw an advertisement from Dell featuring this for extreem video work, such as I sometimes must do.

I would be interested in hearing some opinions on this.

[FastGame]

For the type of work you do, you need a fast CPU, 1-2 gig's memory, large fast HD and a professional grade monitor.

But of coarse I don't know what type of work you really do :p

[joshsiao]

No! Not the dual nVidia 7800GTX on a SLi Mobo! Too powerful!

But I know that "extreme video work" would mean real-time rendering in games. I don't see how even 1000GPUs can help in normal video, photo, graphics rendering which relies almost entirely on your central processing unit.
Although I am inclined to think that it may improve image quality on the screen, even rendering previews on-screen in photoshop requires the CPU.

Unless you're a hardcore gamer, I would suggest spending the almost 2k on maybe a better mobo that supports dual/quad processors and >PC3200(400MHz) speed RAM of at least 1 GB. And more HDD since I am inclined to think that you do things like graphics rendering.

[Devil]

You do 3D Design? Like in 3D studio max? Or are you a gamer?
If that the case then you can take advantage of an SLI system, Its pretty fast!!!

But if you only do photograph edition on photoshop etc, a single agp/pci-xpress system is ok. What you really need in that case is at least 1gb of Ram (2gb even better) and a fast procesor!

[rik]

So Denyse, are you talking about video manipulation or still image rendering?

[Denyse]

I am upgrading my personal workstation. It will be a DELL XPS system, I created a "wish list" so far it contains, a Pentium EE Dual Core with HT; 4 Gigs of Ram, a RAID system giving me a full terabyte of storage, DVD-ROM and DVD +- burner, 24" LCD. It is the video I am hedging on right now. I do use at times MAYA and 3DS Max.

[rik]

If it's mainly for video manipulation I would say that the proc and memory is most important IMO, and the proc more so than memory. That system should probably do you fine. Not speaking from personal experience but I've heard that having that much RAM can actually slow down your processes, but again it's probably going to be good for video rendering.