I have a dilemma. I cant decide which to get with my brand new build. FYI I have a 22" Widescreen LCD.

Should I get 2x EVGA 8800 GT AKIMBO 512MB w/ factory OC of 720/1k(2k respective)
or
Should I get 2x 9800 GTX

My main decision factors:
1) Price: The 9800GTX SLi will cost about 200$ more (regarding obvious price drops in 8800 series soon to happen)
2) Power Consumption: I have already purchased a Thermaltake 700W PSU. Its rated for 8800GTS & 8800GT SLi.
3) Performance: Are the performance gains worth the price?
4) OCing: Will OCing the 9800GTX SLi consume too much power and rape my PSU?

My build:
CPU: E8400 (Hyper TX2 cooler)
Memory: 4GB DDR2@1066Mhz Cas 5-5-5-15
Mobo: 780i
HDD: 3x Seagate ES.2 250GB SATA II w/ 32MB Cache(yum) in RAID 0
PSU: Thermaltke 700w
VGA: UNDECIDED
Case: Antec 900
Cost: $1500 approx w/ 8800GT Akimbo SLi or $1700 approx w/ 9800GTX Sli

Note: What was with the mid-range build on Tom's System Builder marathon... This build seems like it would greatly outperform that at a lower cost. A q6700? Common drop down to a q6600 for $300 less and go Sli!!! I don't think the bottleneck from the q6700 to q6600 is going to change much! Oops I ended up ranting... sorry guys.

gtx

Ok I caved in... 2x 9800GTX... Hoping to play Crysis on high w/ 1680x1050... Newegg'd it for a total system cost of 1740. See specs above.

Note:
IM SO **** BROKE NOW!

22" not worth the GTX son!! 512MB G92 GTS way to go unless you getting a larger monitor soon.

Yeah, 8800 GTS single card is enough for 1600x1200 res. But if your upgrading monitor down the line to 24 inch or bigger then SLI'ing high end cards starts too pay off.

A single 9800GTX would probably do the trick as well, That is what I am considering at this point. I was going to get another 8800GTS 640mb to go with the one I currently have but can't find one for a decent price. I would rather sell the one I have and just spend a little more and get the 9800.

I played Crysis on all high at 16x10 with 2xaa/16xaf with SLI 8800GT. So two 9800GTX will do quite well at those settings. I don't think that two 9800GTX were worth the price though over two 8800GT or two 8800GTS 512MB. But that's your call.

I played it (Crysis) thru last week on 16x10 on high on my 28" monitor, with 2 x 8800 GTX's SLI'd. I waited to play the game for over 4 months till I had the second gpu so I could play at that res.

It still did not like my native res at 19x12, too stuttery on a few levels.

So enjoy the 9800's, you rarely look back and say I spent too much, mostly say I wish I had spent a little more for top drawer stuff!

FYI- check out the New Seagate 640 gig drives, they spank your raid 0 array, and are cheaper to boot!

Thanks for the input, I'll think I'll be satisfied! Cant wait till Friday!


On the Hard Drive issue:
A single Hard Drive that can spank three drives in Raid 0? I'm looking at a maximum read transfer performance of about 250 MB/s... Maybe if your going 20k RPM w/ a 64 MB cache you could potentially touch that. Getting a fourth drive in this array would be the maximum needed since the limit of SATA II is 300 MB/s. To consider saying it "Spanks" my setup you would need to see an maximum read performance of at least 300 MB/s, which is not happing unless this new drive is a miracle... or some crazy SSD.

My 3 drives cost 240 total. I'm looking for performance not size. I have slower and larger drives for that.

I couldn't find this hard drive you speak of anywhere either. Could you please give me a link?

Here's Toms HDD Charts. I compare to the older 32 MB cache drives.
http://www23.tomshardware.com/stor [...] 6&chart=34

Note: Sorry if I sound like an @$$... I get passionate about hardware. Guess I'm just crazy