Hi SoldjahBoy,
Well one was a blu-ray Burner and one was a blu-ray play / DVD burner. But you got a good point on that the cost is very high right now and I should wait. If I just get a DVD burner drive and a DVD reader Drive I can save $200.00 - $300.00 and pay for the sound card. and upgrade the power supply to 1000W.
That's a better idea IMO, unless you REALLY need blu-ray right now.
Also, yes 1000W is what I run, and to be honest, even that is a little sketchy at times when it gets warm outside. I've had a few under-volts even with the 1000W 100A Antec Quattro.
Check amps mainly, more than watts... I would recommend at LEAST 100A on the 12v... if not more... 120A if you can get it... that is, if you choose to stick with the two video cards.
Are you talking about the just the 280 or the 285?
The 280. It's the best card out of the lot, even though it came out first... wait, that's typical of nvidia. The first card out, is the best one, because they try to make it better and screw it up.
If you check out some of the comparison reviews on toms hardware and other places, you will note that the 280 is a much better performer overall. Sometimes the maximum FPS wasn't as high as say the 295, but the minimum FPS was WAY higher. In other words, it's a more consistent card in it's performance.
As I just found out if you go SLI or CROSSFIRE you can not do dual monitor's. I think I will just go with the one nVidia GeForce GTX 275. For the money I don't see the GTX 285 $110.00 better.
You can, you just have to disable SLI when you aren't using it. It's not that much of a pain if you use nvidia control panel... whole process takes maybe 30 seconds.... so if you know you are going to be using Photoshop or something like that for a few hours, then you can easily enable the second screen.
Plus, you can have games across two screens awesome for RTS games, not so much for games where your crosshair is dead centre, half on one screen and half on the other since the bezels never hide well.
nVidia GeForce GTX 275
Manufacturer: nVidia
Series: GeForce GTX 200
GPU: GT200b
Release Date: 2009-04-02
Interface: PCI-E 2.0 x16
Core Clock: 633 MHz
Shader Clock: 1404 MHz
Memory Clock: 1134 MHz (2268 DDR)
Memory Bandwidth: 127.008 GB/sec
FLOPS: 1010.88 GFLOPS
Pixel Fill Rate: 17724 MPixels/sec
Texture Fill Rate: 50640 MTexels/sec
nVidia GeForce GTX 280
Manufacturer: nVidia
Series: GeForce GTX 200
GPU: GT200
Release Date: 2008-06-16
Interface: PCI-E 2.0 x16
Core Clock: 602 MHz
Shader Clock: 1296 MHz
Memory Clock: 1107 MHz (2214 DDR)
Memory Bandwidth: 141.696 GB/sec
FLOPS: 933.12 GFLOPS
Pixel Fill Rate: 19264 MPixels/sec
Texture Fill Rate: 48160 MTexels/sec
nVidia GeForce GTX 285
Manufacturer: nVidia
Series: GeForce GTX 200
GPU: GT200b
Release Date: 2009-01-15
Interface: PCI-E 2.0 x16
Core Clock: 648 MHz
Shader Clock: 1476 MHz
Memory Clock: 1242 MHz (2484 DDR)
Memory Bandwidth: 158.976 GB/sec
FLOPS: 1062.72 GFLOPS
Pixel Fill Rate: 20736 MPixels/sec
Texture Fill Rate: 51840 MTexels/sec
nVidia GeForce GTX 295
Manufacturer: nVidia
Series: GeForce GTX 200
GPU: GT200b x 2
Release Date: 2009-01-08
Interface: PCI-E 2.0 x16
Core Clock: 576 MHz
Shader Clock: 1242 MHz
Memory Clock: 999 MHz (1998 DDR)
Memory Bandwidth: 223.776 GB/sec
FLOPS: 1788.48 GFLOPS
Pixel Fill Rate: 32256 MPixels/sec
Texture Fill Rate: 92160 MTexels/sec
Yep, those are some specs alright. Don't let big numbers fool you. It's like horsepower in a car... if you can't get it to the ground it's useless.
I've got 2x280's in SLI in my machine... and well, basically... there is nothing they won't run in super mega graphics mode (except Crysis... which is a giant piece of shit I have determined).
Hope all that helps!
I hate to see people buy the wrong thing because some dick in a computer store told them it would be OK.
~Sol