SLI Vid Card vs. Single

[ItalianDDog]

Was hoping somebody here has experience with this sort of thing.  I am in process of building a new computer... the motherboard I have purchased is SLI capable...  and I want to run FEAR, Condemned, Call of Duty2 on MAX settings. With NO performance issues.  Motherboard will support 4gb ram.. but I'll be using 2gb..   and I was thinking of one 512mb Geforce 7900 and possible buying another down the line.. (but they are $$$) or 2x 256 mb Geforce 7900s... I would save like say 80bucks rather than purchasing the 512.. for the same or better performance.. but with both my vid card slots taken... any1 have experience in running a high end system? And actually seeing the results...? Any pointers would be nice thanks. I also plan on running NWN2 on MAX settings sooooooo thanks in advance  ;P

[Faldred]

Afraid I can't give you advice, but I'm planning on putting together a dual GeForce 7900 with 256 MB per card, so if you go that route, I'd love to hear how it turns out.  

[Moley1000]

I haven't built such a system.  However I have looked into such things.  Two Nvidia 7900 512mb cards (in SLI mode) can give a better performance than a single card, it depends on the game.  The performance using two cards can be anything from the same to 1.5 times better, maybe more.  I'd recommend the 512mb cards, although not many games currently request 512mb of graphics RAM, in the long run it might be a better idea.  As for saving money, if you can wait a litte while for the graphics cards there is a price drop due soon,  and one 7900 512mb card is good, without the second card.  So perhaps wait a little while, and purchase one 512mb then purchase the second a little while after.

Good luck building the system.