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So yep...just got my Wife's computer together finally. Can't say I'm not a bit jealous teehee....

Biostar A770 AM2+, DDR2 1066 16 GB max, Board - $69
AMD Phenom 9750 Quad Core - $215
2 Gigs G.Skill DDR2 1066mhz - $55
BFG NVidia 9800 GTX OC - $280
700 Watt PSU - $60
Hitachi 250 Gig SATA (from another computer) - Free, but originally ~ $60
Sony DVD Burner - $25
Thermaltake SopranoRS Case - $50

Right around $850 USD if you include the hard drive I didn't have to purchase and shipping. Pretty superb budget gaming computer.

Right off the bat before any real burn-in time, I was bouncing around from 100-180 fps in Team Fortress 2 with fully maxed settings, 16x AA/AF, 1280 x 1024 resolution. I suspect after a few weeks or so it'll probably average around 150-200 fps.

Now I get to kill my wife......when she logs in.

Nice! That is a nice little beast machine there.

Not bad

Though you can do something with a dual core and 2x9600GT for ~500$

How's the Phenom workin?

Cool

Get some pictures up

That's a nice comp! Got any pics?

Phenom is ok so far. Probably won't see it's full potential in games for a while, but her machine is doing as well as my machine so far - AMD 6400+, 2 gigs DDR2 800, 8800GTS. It's almost as if her better video card is making up for the slower cores in the Phenom. However, I bet it can run more programs and games at one time than my machine though It just runs so smooth with multitasking. I can do like 10 things at once and run a game in Windowed mode and still get high fps.

As far as pics...I didn't do anything special. It's basically the SopranosRS case with a pretty blue glow coming out the clear plastic left side. Apparently something I put in there has an LED or two on it lol.

And about SLI I can't really say I'm sold on it. So far in every review I've seen, the cost savings of two cheaper cards doesn't seem to be made up in performance. Then you have to have more cooling, a bigger PSU, a more expensive SLI board, more space taken up, etc. I've never come up with any build to justify going with SLI/Crossfire. I'd rather just keep it simple and put one real nice card in and get full performance out of that card.

Which GTS? 512?

I've personally found SLI to be great performance, I have 2x9600GTs and I must say.. they just tear through the latest games at max settings with DX10