Things are a bit stupid with video cards these days. I’ve had this discussion with several people. Yeah, I don’t want to be playing with LED lights and hanging out on overclocking forums for the rest of my life either (cue personal preference). But some small part of me today couldn’t get over an SLI setup today.

It’s not really the hardware that is cool but the “clip in magazine” draw. For some reason the last PC I built had a very satisfying “memory install click” thing going on. You put the DIMMs in like an ammo magazine. Is it worth it for some stupid clicking? No of course not. But that doesn’t stop me from somehow feeling the tactile clicking of two PCI Express cards in there whirring away. Especially whirring since the R600 fell on its face today.

I got started on this surfing thread since the 2900xt came out today and it’s pretty bad (as in bad). I mean ATI really lost focus or something. Unless the drivers turn around, I don’t see any reason to believe in ATI this time around. Which means Apple will likely be sticking with Nvidia (who knows) for the updates and Leopard. But the short and skinny of all the reviews on the net is “it runs hot, it’s not high-end and it’s late”.

Regardless of sanity, I priced out just a barebones upgrade including CPU, motherboard, memory, video cards to try and support Supreme Commander or whatever. It came to $1800 where $2500 is basically a new machine. SLI 8800gtx is $3000 with dual core. Add a Dell 2707 monitor and hey we’re at $4000 / Mac Pro territory.

1. What is out for DX10? Nothing.
2. Do I want to run a 800w power supply? No.
3. Is early adopting stupid? Yes.
4. Do I have enough toys? Yes.
5. Is my PC outdate? Not really if I lower quality settings.
6. Do I want to be a hardware guy forever? No and that’s already not true.

So of course this is all just playing around with newegg. But that still doesn’t shake the “ammo magazine” thing that SLI communicates to me. I don’t know why. It’s been a weird day, I thought the R600 was going to kick ass. Oh well.

For now, I’m happy enough with “software” projects and learning but at some point I hope I can click in a couple of GPU magazines and push forward with whatever the tech-de-jour is in 2008/2009.