Hey everyone! I'm new here, but not so new to computers and overclocking, I'm building my first core i pc (i7 930) and have almost reached the end lol but I'm being eaten by what graphic card(s) to get 4 my build It's an asus rampage gene board so I can have up to 2 cards (eg two 460s lol) or a 5870 or a 5970 is what I'm looking at. It's gonna be for gaming and benchmarking/overclocking. I was looking at a 5970 with waterblock at about 550 but a few people (a good few) have said I should go for two 460s instead and I stack up the odds and it works out at the sameish price (with waterblocks and whatnot) and the 5970 still looks faster! Any input or advice would be brilliant as I'm pulling my hair out trying to pick haha Many thanks, Ben
I'd say wait The 5970 is too buggy to get a recommendation read a few topics on this site for it's issues 480 is probably best bet of this gen if water cooling 6 series is close
I'd agree on waiting to see what the new ATi/AMD cards have to offer first. This 460 SLI feature with many benchmark against other single or SLI/crossfire cards should be good reading for your research: http://www.techspot.com/review/309-geforce-gtx-460-sli-performance/ Also Overclockers.co.uk sell cards with waterblocks already attached which means they come with a warranty unlike if you fitted it yourself (although if you do it yourself if anything goes wrong you can just reattach the stock cooler and hope they don't tell of course). I bought the 460 one from there and at the moment it's only £12 more than buying the card and block seperate! Bare in mind if fitting a waterblock to a 460 you need one with the referance cooler as the other cards use a custom PCB which are not compatible. 2x 460 with blocks is 2x £259.99 = £519.98 5970 with block fitted = £549.99 http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?groupid=962&catid=1532 It's a tough choice as both setups are pretty evenly matched depending on which game the benchmarks are from. Sometime the 460SLI is better, sometimes the other way round, sometimes around the same fps. I'd probably go for the 460 SLI but since I'm so impressed with my single card am probably pretty biased having not tested a 5970 myself! I'm planning on buying another 460 around March for SLI. Also before buying the i7 930 have a look into the i7 950 instead which is currently about the same price but will be more powerful at stock speeds and I've heard should overclock further than the 930.
rollo- thanks, yeah a lot of people have said that to me and it sounds like its a pain overclocking as well mrbens- thanks a lot dude I always overlook overclockers! (no pun intended btw lol) er I'm not too fussed about waiting for the new cards plus with nvida I guess I can try out 3d... How do you go about overclocking two cards in sli though? I've never used two cards at once it's very exciting Regarding the cpu-I got it when it was wow and amazing and better than the 920 lol, the age of a component last as long as flies Cheers guys, think I'm gonna go for the 460s in sli... Time to empty my bank.
