What to do?

[Geekling]

I need some help with deciding on what to buy.

I'll either upgrade my LCD and go from a Rosewill R912E to a Dell 2407.

Or

I'll upgrade my mobo and go SLI

Right now I'm running DFI Ultra D Mobo w/ eVGA 7800GT. I looked on newegg for the videocard and I found one that said recertified. What exactly does that mean? will it still be compatible with my old one? Would it be a better idea to upgrade the card as well?

 

[Lord Evermore]

What to do depends on what you want. Do you want wide-screen gaming and desktop use, or do you want faster framerates and antialiasing and all the other eye-candy? If at the moment your CPU is the limiting factor in performance, then going with SLI isn't going to make much difference. Keep in mind that a larger screen area will result in overall lower perceived performance since it'll be dealing with more pixels (at least in games that can handle the higher resolution).

Recertified means refurbished and tested to ensure it meets the same specs and performance as new. It's still the same as far as features, but check what the warranty is on it. Some things have a warranty as good as if it was new, some only have a short warranty when recertified.

 

[Geekling]

Here is my current system.

AMD 3800X2
DFI Ultra-D Mobo
eVGA 7800GT
2gigs OCz Plat
250g HD/160g HD


I don't see my CPU causing to many problems right now. The dual core does cause problems for me in some games....like World of Warcraft and Lineage 2.

How about the dell 2007? Its a lot cheaper. How is it for gaming?

 

[acegazda]

if you don't want to spend a lot of money you can get the viewsonic vx2025, a 20.1" widescreen that's great for gaming. It's ~$300, so if your budget is $700, you can spend the extra $400 on an sli MoBo and an extra 7800gt. That will allow you to play with all the eye candy turned up.

 

[StevenNevets]

Originally posted by: acegazda
if you don't want to spend a lot of money you can get the viewsonic vx2025, a 20.1" widescreen that's great for gaming. It's ~$300, so if your budget is $700, you can spend the extra $400 on an sli MoBo and an extra 7800gt. That will allow you to play with all the eye candy turned up.

 

[Geekling]

Well I can get a dell 2007 and the 7800 GT. The GT has come down a lot since I purchased it($194 now). A friend of mine has a Asus SLI Deluxe Mobo that he would sell to me for cheap.

I just looked at the viewsonic vx2025 on newegg.com. Its $310, so its cheaper then the Dell 2007...but how does it compare? I would like a good LCD for gaming. Thats what I do with most of my time on the computer.

 

[Geekling]

If I was to get another 7800GT I would have to upgrade my PSU as well. Right? Its a Fortron 450w. That can't be enough.