Any Comments Would Be AppreciatedPost Date: 2008-03-12 |
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traylorc 
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Joined: 23 Jan 2008 Online Status: Offline Posts: 73 |
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 Topic: Any Comments Would Be AppreciatedPosted: 12 Mar 2008 at 8:36pm |
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Ok...after months of research I have narrowed my choices to Digital Storm and Puget. I have heard good things about both companies. I am a day or so from ordering, so any thoughts you may have will be appreciated. Specifications: I sent in a request to have this reviewed by the DS staff but have not received a response...so I'm looking for some feedback. Edited by traylorc - 13 Mar 2008 at 12:17am |
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Tyler Lowe
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Joined: 14 May 2008 Online Status: Offline Posts: 0 |
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Posted: 13 Mar 2008 at 1:04am |
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If you have not already done so, I would suggest reading this before making an investment in a Skulltrail based platform. I understand there is an allure to that motherboard that has nothing to do with performance, and if the exclusivity of owning a system based on one is something that really appeals to that inner electronics junkie/ technophile, it may well be worthwhile. If you are looking for substantially more muscle than a standard quadcore setup will provide however, you might be somewhat disappointed.
Also, as far as I know, the skulltrail takes a socket LGA 771, which means the CPU you selected will not work with it. You'd be looking at least ~$500 more for a single QX9775 if not ~$2200 to load up both sockets to realize any of the potential the board does have over a more mundane 780i. To the best of my knowledge, Ultras are an end of life product and are unlikely to return to stock. That's the bad news. The better news is the 9800x2 and 9800GTX should be out *very* soon to replace the ultra's position at the top of NVidia's product line. I am looking at specifications for the 46" XBR, and if I have the correct model, the maximum supported resolution is 1920x1080. Again, I do not wish to dissuade you from purchasing high end gear. If you have the means, and love technology, I see no reason not to indulge that a bit. Unless I am misunderstanding something however, your TV would be using some form of multiplier, showing each pixel multiple times to fill that 46" screen. The end result, again, if I read correctly, is you could easily support the XBR's native resolution with a single 8800GTS, maybe two of them if you wanted to gain a boost in games to do exceptionally well with SLI. On the other hand, I would probably suggest upgrading to the Fatal!ty soundcard. I'm looking over the on board support for DD EX and DTS EX, and thinking that might be a good idea. Unless of course you already have a sound system you plan on connecting to the analog 7.1 channel outputs on the standard X-Fi. Given the drop in the Blu-ray DVD drive price, I might be tempted to go that route, but again, I don't know what other components you have attached to that TV. One final note about the case. If the decision is not based on case aesthetics, the 850 is a better choice for air cooling. If aesthetics play a role in the selection, the 950 still provides excellent airflow, just not quite to the level of the 850. I looked at your build and final price, and offer up this alternative: $4318 It's $700 less, and there is room to trim, but I added in some items to feed that inner geek. A terabyte of storage in RAID, Blu-Ray DVD drive and Fatal!ty sound card. You could go one further as well, and drop in 4GB of RAM and dual boot with a 64 bit OS. Edited by Tyler Lowe - 13 Mar 2008 at 1:06am |
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traylorc
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Joined: 23 Jan 2008 Online Status: Offline Posts: 73 |
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Posted: 13 Mar 2008 at 4:49pm |
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Thanks for responding Tyler: 1. Appreciate the link on the review of the Skulltrail. I was enticed by the flexibility of having a motherboard which could handle Nvidia or ATI cards. However, there appear to be some issues with this mobo. 2. I have considered waiting for the new "nine" series of Nvidia cards....but I'm not convinced the nine series is going to represent significant improvement from the eight series. I just get the feeling the nine series is meant to tide us over until Nvidia's next generation cards are released. Just my opinion. 3. Blu ray is not necessarily needed for this rig, I have a home theater set up downstairs with Blu ray. Additionally, I have a PS3 already hooked up so if I do want to watch blu ray movies I'm good to go. 4. I appreciate the comments on the 850, I will have to look into that. |
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Tyler Lowe
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Joined: 14 May 2008 Online Status: Offline Posts: 0 |
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Posted: 14 Mar 2008 at 12:20am |
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I agree to an extent about the 9 series of card from a strictly technical standpoint. From a performance to price standpoint however, the 9 series looks to be shaping up into a very nice refresh.
The Blu-ray was more a whimsy than anything else. I guess I felt the need to toss something "cool" into the build having removed some of the wow factor.  At this point, with both ATI and NVidia either with a dual GPU video card on the market or soon to be released, I think you could say, at least from a certain perspective, that virtually any motherboard can support a multi GPU setup from either chipset manufacturer. That's at least something in terms of flexibility. |
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