Hi

I have a choice of two Dell XPS 1730 machines. One with a 2.8gig extreme processor and sli'd 8700GT and the other with a 2.2gig processor and dual 8800 GTX's.

Which one would you go for? (price is very similar).

Thanks for any help etc.

Cheers

Nick

8800GTX's. 2.2 to 2.8 is not the big of a jump.

it depends on what CPU you have. Whats the model of it? Having a great video card means NOTHING if you're being bottlenecked by your CPU.

This are the choices he has:

Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T8300 (2.4GHz/800Mhz FSB/3MB cache) [Included in Price]
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T9300 (2.5GHz/800Mhz FSB/6MB cache) [add $125 or $4/month1]
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T9500 (2.6GHz/800Mhz FSB/6MB cache) [add $400 or $12/month1]
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Extreme X9000(2.8GHz/800Mhz FSB/6M L2 Cache) [add $750 or $23/month1]

Go for the 8800's and 2.2,it will game light years better than the 2.8/8700.

I have the penryn 2.4 and 8800's and bioshock spends most of its time tapped against the 60fps vsync limit at max res and settings.... compared to the other 1730 I had which was a 2.2/8700sli....it scores faster avg FPS at 1920x1200 than the 8700's did at 1440x900.

It would cost you a lot less to upgrade the cpu at a later date,if you were so inclined.

I would say go with the 8800GTX's and 2.2GHZ proc. This is mainly because its easier to upgrade processors than it is to upgrade graphics cards.

I do agree though that the 2.2GHZ proc will bottleneck the hell out of the 8800GTX's.