Honestly I just don't know what to do. I've heard so many conflicting accounts I don't know what is right. I'm upgrading from a 8800GTS 320 I'm looking for max performance on current games. Due to a thread I saw on Overclock, I just became aware that my 8800 may still be a card worth keeping hooked up next to something else. I hear 470's have heat problems. I hear 5870's have driver woes. My budget for Graphics is $450 ~ 288 pounds
Save your money, buy a GTX460 and Overclock it to get approximately the same result as a GTX470. Or buy 2 GTX460 for the same price and overclock both for SLI
Heres your problem. You've been listening to a lunatic who believes the 470 GTX is a good card. If your spending £288, get the 5870 or 460 GTX SLI.
Which will see the greatest future proofing? While I'm enamored by the easy setup of 1 GPU, I'd like to be able to run max settings for at least games coming out in the next year. Reviews for sure show the 460 GTX in SLI beating out a single 5870, but it's about $30 outside of my budget. (And I'm straining my budget as is with this being my first mod)
Having been reading more and more the last hour, I'm becoming increasingly convinced 460GTX SLI is the way to go. I'm not thrilled at going outside my budget, but the price/performance ratio is at a peak that will not be seen for several months.
Between other forums and such, the winner is steadily changing towards a 470GTX - the price is great, and I can continue to use my 8800GTS 320 for PhysX
Believe me, I was totally looking at the GTX 460 SLI, until EVGA put up their 470 for $279 with a lifetime warranty.
That seems like a great deal on the 470 so it really comes down to how much you want to spend: $280 for the 470, $400 for SLI 768MB 460s or $460 for SLI 1024MB 460s. They all offer similar bang for buck at those prices.
pair of 460s. Rapes 5870 and is 20% better than a 480 even at stock clocks so imagine what the SLI overclocked would be. MONSTROUS.
i'd go with 470, it's a great card despite bad early reviews. offers the full nvidia package, without the need to buy 2nd card, hack drivers to get it. however, get 5870 if you don't value PhysX/CUDA and games such as Batman AA, Mafia 2, Mirror's Edge. those are on the assumption that multi-GPU relays heavily on driver, thus not the best option.
Alrighty, looking for 6 GB to go with my Asus P6X58D-E Motherboard and i7-930. Now Intel publicly states that the i7-930 only supports 1066/1333 Memory, but I have from good sources that you can Bios the settings up to 1600. With this in mind, should I be looking at the following? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231335 or http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145236 The G-Skills have lower CAS Latency, however I keep reading about nightmare scenarios of people unable to get a stable machine while setting the timings in their BIOS. Any help would be appreciated! (Edit, no recommending those hideous red mushkins. Great memory but they don't go too well with my White and Blue ATCS 840 Mod)
I would avoid ram with tall heat spreaders. it isn't a important feature and it limits what cooling solutions can be installed. You will get 1600mhz easily by just raising the bclk in the bios and putting a bit of a overclock on the i7 930.
Interesting, I thought setting the clock timings just involved modifying the bios. Just to confirm, OC'ing the Processor *is* necessary in order to get 1600 out of my RAM?
+1 for the 470 (and i'm not a lunatic by any means ) - i've been running one for four three months now and i think it's a great card - idles at 40c - never exeeds 76c in my cm690 v2 case , (ive got a nice fan profile set up in msi afterburner), noise and heat issues have been exaggerated IMO - my card easily overclocks to 750 on the core and i could push it further with a voltage bump if i wanted too...
