First Build...video card advice needed

[jbbrown211]

I am hoping for some suggestions on this. I want to build a good gaming/multimedia system. I was looking at the ATI All In Wonder cards for their multimedia capability on top of the graphics. With this in mind, can anyone recommend a good card. For gaming purposes, I would want something that can run Elder Scrolls: Oblivion / Neverwinter Nights type games at max graphic settings. PCI Express also comes into play here, which I want, but not sure how the AIW cards are progressing from when I last looked at them.

Also- I know less about Nvidia than ATI, so I would welcome any suggestions on an Nvidia option (what is sli exactly?)

[gtucker329]

SLi (Scalable Link Interface) allows two graphics cards to be used in sharing the video processing workload. This in turn gives you better graphics performance. ATi's version of this technology is called Crossfire. If you go to nvidia & ATi's website they have pretty good overviews of the technology.

All in wonder cards have very good multimedia aspects but the are not the best gaming cards. Oblivion needs a very good gaming card to get maximum settings. Neverwinter Nights is older and doesn't need much above a 128MB 9600 Pro to get max settings.

If you really want to play Oblivion in high settings get at least a X1800XT(ATi) or 7800GTX (nVidia) and a separate TV card.

[jbbrown211]

That makes sense, what kind of mobo & cpu would you recommend for Nvidia to take advantage of the SLi? Do you prefer ATI to NVidia?

[Alaron]

For SLI you need a powerful, and expensive combination of hardware. I would suggest you avoid SLI, and just get one powerful card like the X1900 series from ATI or the 7900 cards from NVIDIA.

Both brands have plenty of power for games, so either one will do the job.

Decide if you want AMD or Intel (again, both are fine) and then we can work on other parts.

[jbbrown211]

Just from familiarity, I would prob go with Intel

[glc]

Moved to BYOPC.