General upgrade.

[Atomic978]

Hello all. With all the new hardware out I was thinking of upgrading my video cards and wonder what you all think.

First off this will more then likely be my last upgrade until my next build that probably won't be for another year or so.

I currently have a Asus p5n-d mother board in my alienware. It came configured with 2 ATI HD 4850. Video cards running in crossfire. I thought the was weird seeing how the mother board has the 750i chipset. I am thinking of getting 2 Gtx 460 and run in sli. I know they will out perform my crossfire set up as they are newer and faster cards. But will my motherboard be up to par for the set up. I have 2 pci-e 16x slots. And they are 2.0 slots. My CPU is in sig. Thanks

[Pilotasso]

The questions you should consider are,

 

either buy 2 mid end cards or a single high end one.

 

and does your screen size need that kind of power?

[Cali]

I'd go with a higher end card myself, but I guess it depends on if you play other games that take advantage of SLI/Xfire.

[Atomic978]

Well my screen now is an acer 23" hd monitor. I am running in hd with the hdmi cable. My res. Is 1980 x 1020 I think. Might be wrong. And running 1080p. I don't think it needs that much power but I love sims. And want to crank out more if I can.

[Atomic978]

Mostly just flight sims. Occasional MoH. Arma2. Both of those run better with the crossfire set up I have then with it disabled. Fc2. Black shark as well.

[Atomic978]

If I went with one card what would be the beat for my motherboard for less then 300.00 us.

[EtherealN]

I'd say a 470. It gains you a couple FPS (not all that many, but some) in most games that are CPU-bound compared to a single 460, and is still cheap enough (~30 to 50 dollars extra on top of a 460) that if you find yourself needing it you can purchase a second one to SLI it.

 

You could also look at the 570, but I haven't studied that card enough to say all that much about it.

[Pilotasso]

The 570 is like a 480 but its quieter, cooler and cheaper.

[Atomic978]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130566&cm_re=gtx-_-14-130-566-_-Product

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121389&cm_re=gtx-_-14-121-389-_-Product

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814162064&cm_re=gtx-_-14-162-064-_-Product

 

These are the 3 that I have narrowed it down to I think. The clock settings on these cards are better then a stock that I have been able to find and The bottom choice is actually a sli set up with 2 cards for a low price. I do not know much about Galaxy though for a brand name. I have had EVGA in the past and have had no problems.

 

Decisions, Decisions.....

 

Thanks for your guys input now I got to decide.

[Atomic978]

Well in closing for the day I think I might have made up my mind but still keep asking myself do I really need SLI or Crossfire.

 

I was looking at a MSI Cyclone GTX 460.. Thinking of getting 2 of them and running SLI. This card has had some great reviews all over that I could find and runs real cool compaired to most others out there.

 

I can not find any reviews on the galaxy sli kit. I dont know if they are any good compared to the MSI.

 

I am also thinking that I should wait and see if the cat 10.12 drivers affect my current set up before spending the money on new cards. I do not get bad performance on most of the games I play now. I am not using A10 as a reason to upgrade the graphics card. I am just thinking ahead as I will not be able to make a new build for a while and want to get the most out of this machine while I can.

 

Thanks Again, If anybody has any other ideas please feel free to jump in.

 

Thanks.

[Succellus]

470 is a waste of money compared to the 460, or you stop at 460 or you flex your buck a little more and goes to the 570. Any number beetween is waste of monwy since the 570 advent.

[Pilotasso]

No, Not really, if your talking about stock clocks the 470 is considerably superior. If your talking about superclocked variant of the 460, it comes close, but so does de price. ;)

 

I bought my 470 for a mere 15€ difference between the 2. :)

[BKLronin]

Agreed I also decided myself for a 470 GTX after some research.

[EtherealN]

470 is a waste of money compared to the 460, or you stop at 460 or you flex your buck a little more and goes to the 570. Any number beetween is waste of monwy since the 570 advent.

 

"Flex your buck a little". Well, not only "a little".

 

ASUS GTX 460 1GB: 1750:-

ASUS GTX 460 DirectCU TOP 1GB: 1850:-

ASUS GTX 470 1280MB: 2349:-

ASUS GTX 570 1280MB: 3650:-

 

Flex buck a "little" is 55% up from the 470... That's more than a "little".

 

As for the 470 supposedly being a waste of money compared to the 460, lets look at some game numbers! :D

 

Regular 460 gets obliterated by the 470, the factory overclocked 460 gets beaten (though marginally) by the stock 470.

 

Same again: factory overclocked 460 is almost but not quite as good as the stock 470.

 

The HAWX tesselation/geometry benchmark repeats the story - overclock the 460 and it gets close to the stock 470. Not to par with it though, and that's with you already spending a good bit of your OCing headroom, of which none at all has been spent on the 470.

 

There is a lot more material out there, but in my opinion the only reason to go 460 instead of 470 is:

 

1) You specifically want a DirectCU cooled card.

2) You had to save on something in the rig, and better GPU than CPU

[Atomic978]

So do you think it would be better for me to go with highest supported socket 775 CPU over upgrading my video cards at this point. With the hd 4850 in crossfire I do get good performance in most of my games. In ARMA2 benchmark on high settings I get around 43fps and it is smooth gameplay. I guess I could just get on card and the better CPU instead of getting a sli set up. I don't know. Lol.

[EtherealN]

To be honest, few games will actually perform better with any other Socket 775 processor. If you were to stay with a socket 775 system I'd basically just recommend that you purchase a stronger cooling system and overclock that thing. You might get slightly better performance from something like an e8xxx processor, but those applications and games that have fully saturated multithreading would perform less well.

 

So I'd probably say that you could get yourself a 470, see how things go, then possibly get another one for SLI or save for a new mobo/CPU/RAM setup. But it is a bit hard to call since some games do scale well with SLI/Crossfire, others don't, so we have a slightly similar situation there as we do with a socket 775 processor swap - might be better in some cases and worse in others. Hard to call.

[Atomic978]

Yes that is why I think I am having such a hard time deciding. Not really ready for a entire new system. The q9400 that I have I know can overclock higher then I am running. Got a real huge cooler on it from alienware. Right now with a full load I don't think it really goes o er 50 according to CPUZ. My voltage is only at 1.27. I know my video cards right now can be improved. The HD 4850 in the crossfire configuration that I have performs well on most sims that i play. They are only 512mb cards ddr3 cards. That is why I have been looking to switch to a newer sli configuration. Those MSI cyclones look pretty good. The area 51 case that I have is huge. Allot of room and well vented.

[Pilotasso]

I good overclocked Q9XXX processor can stay on par with new i3 and i5 systems. I get a win7 rating of 7.4 on mine:

 

CPU: 7.4

mem: 7.4

GFX aero: 7.5

gaming 7.5

Storage: 7.7 oh my! :)

 

Achieved a very balanced system and im staying with it for at least another year.

[Atomic978]

Thx Pilotasso..

 

Our system is very simular in performance..

CPU: 7.3

mem: 7.3

GFX Aero: 7.3

Gaming: 7.3

 

 

My main things are that i would like to crank up some settings on some games a little more and get same performance. In Arma2 Benchmark I get around 45FPS on high Settings at 1920 x 1080... With everything on high in FC2 and BlackShark I get from 45 - 60 depending on situation. So with that said. I have been looking at allot of video cards this last week. Looking at the clock speeds and as well cooling. Reading review after review.

 

Now my current set up is the 2 ATI HD4850 in crossfire. They are the 512mb GDDR3 video cards with DX 10. They still hold there own in all the games I play.

 

I got a budget of around 450.00 for a upgrade. I think out of all the cards I looked at it seems that the MSI Cyclone GTX 460 1gb cards are the best bang for the buck. They will keep up with a GTX 480 and run cooler then most cards on the market with the non reference fan they have.

 

I just did not want to waste money on a might increase if you know what I am talking about. If I were to change out my 4850s for the GTX 460 I would hope to notice the difference.

 

I also looked at the same evga GTX 470 and just keep asking myself do I need the SLI or just revert to a single card.

 

I know most games do not support the sli or xfire as of now but most of them will in the future. So I think it would be a safe bet to set up for it now.

 

Thanks for all the info from you all. Time to get ready to place a order.

[Atomic978]

uh oh. I can get a GTX 570 EVGA cheaper then buying the 2 GTX 460. Do you think I will see a bigger difference with the 570 vs the 460 in sli..

[Pilotasso]

Your crossfire setup is more than enough (512MB is fine for your screen size). If your going for an upgrade with that budget I suggest CPU+MOBO+MEM (and re-use both your 5850's+ drives), although in some circumstances an SDD alone might do the trick because of the stutter free experience. Either way dont expect much more performance for that amount of money. Its up to you.

Edited December 13, 2010 by Pilotasso

[EtherealN]

Pilot, it's 4850's he's got, not 5850's.

 

Regarding the 570 vs SLI 460's, I'd probably go 570 in that case. It's roughly equivalent though with some extra potential on the 460's, but only in cases where the application manages to fully utilize the dual-GPU configuration.

[Pilotasso]

My bad, but...

 

My old 9800GX2 was still fine hadnt it fail on me last month, and it was 2X512MB also. Pound for pound I think his crossfire is better.

 

I noticed ZERO improvement on LOMAC and DCS, and marginal improvements on Starcraft II be warned.

[Atomic978]

Thanks Guys,, I guess I will take the plung and try out the 570 approach.

 

A SDD will be in my near future as well. Heard nothing but positive things about that.

[Atomic978]

ok here it is. This is what I just ordered. Thanks again for all the help in making my decision.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130595&cm_re=gtx_570-_-14-130-595-_-Product

 

hope it does what I want it to. LOL.