What is the BEST PC currently available?

[I Am Herenow]

Hi again,
Geforce 8800 Ultra is a make of graphics card produced by Nvidia. It features the "latest generation architecture featuring the most powerful graphics processors available and support for Microsoft® DirectX® 10" [shader model four - I think it's a sort of thing which effects the lighting effects, such as shadows, on games which can do it].

Cheers, but what does "SLIed" mean?

[Omanes Alexandrapolites]

Cheers, but what does "SLIed" mean?

SLI is a Scalable Link Interface - I, think, but am not too sure, that it is the function, used by Nvidia, enabling a user to wire up multiple Graphics Cards together and use them as if they were the same card, but providing you with the power of each one added together. For example, having two 256MB cards together in SLI would provide you with 512MB of graphics memory - I believe that it is a popular way of getting more graphics memory than is possible with a normal single card. Sorry I can't be sure, cheers!

BTW, Wikipedia explains it alot better than my feeble mind can.

[Xiahou]

I personally don't think SLI is very cost-effective, plus it uses huge amounts of power.

Although, he did ask for the best available- not the best for the money... so carry on.

[Husar]

The idea of SLI is not as much about graphics memory but that both cards can share the workload in general, it can be compared to a Dual-Core CPU but in both cases software needs to be designed to support it, though CPUs may give a small advantage even if not supported by the software because you can run multiple programs simultaneously.
The fastest graphicscard currently is the 8800 Ultra and the fastest CPU some Quad Core from Intel but soon you may be able to get eight cores from AMD because they want to allow you to put two of their upcoming native Quad cores onto one mainboard. How fast those upcoming Quad Cores are I don't know though, given that it's a completely new architecture and that they are native quad cores (Intel quad cores are currently two dual cores put together and linked via the FSB), they could well be faster.
However, you'd spend a lot of money for something that isn't even remotely supported by most games of now and probably many games of the future(currently not even dual cores are fully supported by every game, I keep seeing one core is not even at 100% while a game lags and it's not always the videocard either).
Anyway, since you have no money limit, you could get such a rig with 3 8800Ultras(one can be used to calculate physics with the Havoc physics engine) and maybe an additional Ageia physx card to calculate psysics if a game uses the agaeia physics engine. But please do me a favor and don't ask me what mainboard you'd need for that and how much all the stuff costs, I'd probably go insane.

[I Am Herenow]

OK, bottom line is, if I stuff 3 graphics cards and 4 processors (or whatever it is) into a PC, does it mean that I can play any game that's available in the shops today (offline, at least) on the highest detail settings without any lag or interference?

Also, how much, roughly, would these things cost (sorry, Husar :P)? £5000? £10,000?

Cheers!

[edyzmedieval]

SLI momentarily doesnt allow more than 2 graphic cards. You could try the Quad Core, although I am still a fan of the Extreme Dual Core.

Yeah, that's right, you can run on max. Anyone seen that beast Dell has, the ones the Valve developers use for games?

[I Am Herenow]

Thanks :)

Also, where are the best places to buy all this stuff?

[edyzmedieval]

Depends. There are tons of places, but it depends on how reliable they are. Big companies are usually reliable, but sometimes they can slack off.

[Husar]

Well, if SLI doesn't allow for more than 2 cards, getting a board with 3 slots means you connect only 2 via SLI and the third just rund on it's own calculating physics, if that is even supported yet. I do know it hads been announced though and there has to be a reason some boards have 3 PCIe X16 slots.

And concerning your question, no, not necessarily. If the game is not even optimized for dual cores, having four or eight cores won't help you in any way. I play Medieval 2 on highest settings and huge units and with more than about 5000 men it lags but my CPU is not at 100%.

Concerning the cost, I recommend you go to a local shop and ask, might be hard to get as a complete package and to be honest, I wouldn't even buy the stuff if I had the money since it may take a year or so and it's almost outdated again. If you get a cheaper still powerful computer now, you can get a new one in a year or two and still pay less.