So confused I did put a system together with 2 sli gforce 8800 cards in sli. Looking to build again, now I wounder, is it a waste to buy crossfire or sli for two cards, or should I just buy one good card I am looking at the AMD Phemon quad 965 3.4ghz, so probably going with ati. My monitor is only a 20 inch. I play crysis, Halflife 2, bioshock, mass effect and the like. What is the best bang for my buck? Power supply is a beast, 1000 watt "sli ready"

Now that video drivers are allowing multi-gpu setups to actually scale well, sli/xfire is nowhere near as risky an investment as it was a couple of years ago. Radeon HD 4850 crossfire setups were (and still are) extremely popular in Midrange AMD land. The performance and price of such a setup beats a single HD4890. I'm betting that when the HD 5850 becomes available, running two of them in xfire will be just as popular. Two 5850s should easily outperform a single 5870. However, with a 20 inch monitor, you may not need more than a single 5850. It'd be a good idea to buy one first (when they're available), and add another if/when you want the extra performance.

I really didn't mean to mark this as bad. How do I take it back? Thanks for you response. I am wanting to build a higher end pc. What would you suggest. I have always gone with AMD, should I be considering intel? As for video vards, would dual gpus be better than single gpu in a two card set up? Thanks again

"How do I take it back?" I'll do it for you... Skip

"I play crysis, Halflife 2, bioshock, mass effect and the like. What is the best bang for my buck?" Best bang for your buck for the above games is pretty much any card that will allow you to play these games adequately. I'm sure your dual 8800 was able to do that adequately. Not gonna advise you against building a new rig with a pair of HD48XX (CF), but you won't get much out of such setup with your monitor as jackbomb suggested & I doubt you'll enjoy the gaming experience any better than you're used to at this time ... law of diminishing returns :-( Windows 7 News!