Hello all, Happy Christmas I started a thread a while ago about a card that would run the latest titles in their full glory as my 460 was starting to show its limitations in new games and I was in the process of getting a higher res panel. Since then, I have treated myself to a shiny new U2711 (I was gonna get the U2410 but got a good discount on the U2711, Dell business Cheesecake) and considering the super hd resolution, I need to upgrade my GFX card minimum. Would it be sensible though to upgrade other parts of my system to allow for *possible* Sli or Crossfire? I could probably get a second 460 as a stop gap whilst the 28nm cards line up and settle down... Motherboard and PSU are essential upgrades but also the case. I have high ambient temps and the Fractal, although a great case for quietness, is not the best for cooling even if I load it up with fans (I have tried several different configurations without much effect on temps but with much effect on noise!) What is your take on it? I have around £500 left to spend on upgrades. Most of my current build is in sig, old panel is 2209WA. To sum it up for those who don't like reading: Bought a 2560 x 1440 screen, currently have a GTX 460 to run it... what should I do? Thanks in adv dizzi
Time for a new PC Haha, I dunno, I'd be tempted to ebay the 460 and get two 570s and a 750w PSU with the money raised plus the £500. That should cover you nicely.
Have a read... http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=220423 GTX 460 SLI kicks ass and would make a decent stop gap upgrade. Also my Fractal has no problem with temperatures, I must have contributed to dozens of threads on the subject. Basically Scythe Typhoon 1850RPM on the rear and two Silverstone Air Penetrators 1500RPM up front should work wonders.
Need a new mobo for Sli... the vanilla p8p67 has 1 x PCIe 16x, the other PCIe is only 4x... I can't decide whether going for the most powerful single gpu I can or upgrading other parts and going sli/CF would be better
Thanks Blogins, had only briefly looked at that thread once before. Do the air penetrators on intake make a lot of difference with the hard drive cage in the way? I currently use 2 standard fractal fans in the front intakes. I have bought a couple of 140mm for the roof but I prefer keeping the blanks on for noise and hardly made a difference to temps. You should know that the ambient temp in the room where my PC lives is very high, hence my low CPU overclock. I was considering getting a FT02 as it would help my CPU temps also.
Totally agree Parge but my panel arrives on the 29th and I don't want to sink £300 - £360 on a year old plus card that will likely have a major price slash once the 7xxx cards start selling. Considering my future requirements also (new titles at 2560 res) I guess it will be sensible to upgrade now to a mobo that supports SLi/CF and PCI 3.0, drop another 460 in as a stop gap (plus I get to play with SLi which I have never done), and wait some months for ivybridge and 28nm cards to bed in. Just concerned about the R3 and temps
Just ordered the following: 2 X 120mm Silverstone SST-AP121 850W PSU, Corsair Professional Series 1 X 120mm Scythe Gentle Typhoon 1450 rpm, didn't have the 1850 in stock... will see how I get on MSI Z68A-GD55 (G3) mobo Now where can I find a cheaper than £140 delivered GV-N460OC-1GI! Amazon have one for £133 delivered but I have never bought a gfx card from them... Will add pics when items are delivered!
£129.99 at time of posting link... http://www.dabs.com/products/gigaby...le&utm_medium=product+search&utm_content=Q200
Very good card. I replaced the stock TIM with some AS5 which is magic on large heatspreaders such as the GTX 460.
I have the U2711, with the Giga Super OverClocked 460's in SLI, and have no problems running the new games (BF3, BLoPs, MW etc) at High and above settings. 460's will last you until the next gen series comes out - FoSho
Oh, you've already ordered everything. I was going to suggest waiting until the 7970 is out, and seeing what that does to current prices, or buying it. No potential crossfire/SLI issues, and it's of the new generation of cards, plus is probably the first single-GPU card capable of playing all games at ultra settings receiving playable frame rates. I'll be going there from my 6950 2GB CF setup when it's out, despite the performance hit, as I also have a 2560x1600 screen.
I had been weighing up this option a lot. The 7970 looks very capable of running top settings @ 2560 in the reviews I've read, but the price, availability and depreciation put me off. This way I get a very decent PSU and mobo upgrade that should put me in good stead for future upgrades (PCI 3.0/full 28nm range cards) For now SLI 460s, providing there is driver support, should see decent speed @ 2560 in most titles at high settings from what I have been reading up on. Plus in the 9 years I have been putting together systems I have not had a multi GPU setup so that was a major plus for me
It's good to see AMD releasing a card so very capable of high resolution gaming. Just a pity the Frostbite 2 engine falls behind a little with the 7970 compared to current Nvidia cards with lashings of AA.
It's always nice to play with multi-card setups for the coolness factor, but GTX460 SLI at 2560x1600, even with 2GB VRAM per card is not ideal (I had GTX560 2GB SLI, which is identical to GTX460 2GB SLI, and found the outright performance wasn't high enough), nor approaching it. You'll find you'll be running out of memory regularly with 1GB cards on demanding games. At full/playable (for GTX560 2GB SLI) settings all the following games exceed 1GB VRAM easily at 2560 (and more besides): Crysis 2 (with or without DX11 patch) Crysis Metro 2033 Dirt 3 Dirt 2 BF3 BC2 Witcher 2 Skyrim Arma 2 Homefront Dawn of War 2 Retribution It's exactly the same problem as the 5970 has/d, not enough VRAM to be able to run top games at top resolutions, making its power somewhat redundant, even though it showed well in reviews.
I wouldn't hammer GTX 460 SLI that hard. It is very capable and found BF3 playable at 2560 by 1440 but for extra niceness and consistency over frame rates I have lowered it to standard 1080P and increased settings to high and in some cases ultra with a little AA. Solid 60FPS with Vertical Sync enabled and SLI does make one hell of a difference when overclocked in this game. Stock settings were terrible by comparison.
Marvin you seem very depressed... have you been parking cars again? I can't say until I've tried it whether the level of performance will be acceptable to me, but I thank you and heed the warning. I am resigned to the idea that to run at native I will be lowering other settings, especially in demanding games. I am not against overclocking the cards for a bit more performance if temps allow. Perhaps not to the amount Blogins has. I could have bided my time and got a 7970 on release (if I got in there quick enough, there is allegedly more demand than initial supply) but I don't want to be at the mercy of the 1 upgrade path (top end single gpu) in my current rig. I can easily see myself selling the 460s in a month or 2 and upgrading to a 7970 or 7950 CF, half the fun will be tinkering with SLI in the mean time
Fair dos of course, just remember that those 460s might have dropped in value somewhat by that time. Glad to see someone else gets the reference...
