Q: I have 2 7900gt sli, and i am looking for a motherboard and some efficient working ram sticks. I do not want to upgrade past 7 series years in hardware, those 7900gts are some picky S.O.Bs when it comes to compatibility and video drivers. So if you could refer me to a motherboard that my 7900gts will run best on, and recommend me what brand for ram deal i should get and whats a good sound card that would manage to run a music studio to its full potential. Thank you for your input.
A: A good friend of mine is running dual 7900s on a board with an AMD Athlon FX-60. The brand of his RAM is gskill, it's DDR1, and performs very well. He got the board and proc as a bundle deal from Newegg.com. As for sound? He uses integrated. However, the Creative X-Fi series are notoriously decent. ***Edit: Are you kidding?? Two 7900s in SLI will kill an 8600. Obvious to experienced individuals, they're PCI Express. AGP SLI doesn't exist. My laptop games nicely with one gig of RAM, and would purr at two. If you can get your hands on a socket 939 board, go for it, and get the FX-60. It's excellent. AMD beats Intel, price for performance. Intel systems can be sketchy at times. And avoid motherboards with ATI chipsets. They'll occasionally clash with your video card. All boards are *compatible* with your cards, but some work better than others. I like the nForce chipsets. And a sound card gives you a DRAMTIC increase in fidelity, audio quality, and the whatnot, provided you have a good sound system. Especially for audio editing! Here's my advice, make the decision that works best for you.