You will seen an enormous improvement in performance going from a 285 to a 580, however a new 580 (or 660 for that matter) is not very good value for money IMO seeing that used 480s go for about the £80 mark and they are only very slightly behind the 580/660. If you get a preowned EVGA card you will get whatever warranty is left. And there's nothing unreliable about used cards - my 480 was bought used and I had it for 18 months before selling it on.
Yeah but I'm talking purely in terms of performance and value. I would never pay more money on the basis that a card consumes less power or runs cooler. All GPUs get hot - my 670 gets to 75C, exactly the same as my 480.
Maybe not but your cooling system is legendary. Others might take these factors into consideration. That said a 480 for £80 is a bargain.
If something close is wanted, the 2GB 7850 can be found for £140, and beats the 580 when overclocked. I'd personally save for the 7870 LE or get a second hand 7950.
480s are absurdly cheap. However I am not necessarily comfortable with using them just because they were rather...toasty. If not a bit loud. If the 580 is a tad more. There's no reason not to get it.
I'd personally stop upgrading components on the cheap like you're looking to, because you're just creating new potential bottlenecks. Save some cash, then go on the splash and buy everything new on a release cycle. You'll get better value for money in the long term. I bought my rig on the SB release and I'm not planning to upgrade for a long ass while!
good advice that, tis what i am doing, was thinking about upgrading just the memory card but then why shift the bottle neck around i thought
I incrementally upgrade. It just depends on how you do it. If you can wait every two to three generations just start buying a slightly older high end card at a lower price and then wait it out. It's still cheaper than buying new, and at the 40-50% increments, it takes two generations. Of course the best course is just to wait 2-3 generations and buy midrange. As the performance is about 100-150% per 3 generations. The High end tends to last a bit longer, but the upgrade urge tends to take over reason.
Bought it I actually went and bought it. I had a HD6850 and never really liked AMD software. Can't say why just find nvidia better. I also can't resist a bargain so looked at HWcompare for a table on cards performance and it seemed to punch well above it's priced point. That was just my opinion though. Anyways I got it and it looks great and evga usually rule as a brand. If I could have gone £30 - £70 more I would have got something more recent but in terms of bang for buck I thought it was great. Plus plays BF3 better than my old HD6850. I also looked at the 660 twin fozer previously linked on scan but although being more current on the tables (bit noob ish here) but I used all the info I could readily find it did look like the gtx580 wiped the floor with the 660?
660 and the 580 perform similarly with the 580 tending to pull ahead, but the 660 has the general benefits that newer cards have (power draw, heat etc) the next substantial upgrade from the 580's tier would probably be something like a gtx 770 or 7970 ghz edition
That's a fair point in terms of power the 580 is a hungry beast. If you have the psu ready for it shouldn't be too much of an issue. Unless like me you lost the 8 pin modular adapter and found out scan didn't send one so then you have to buy one and get lost in the fact of how to power the 8pin FYI as I found out 1 6 pin to 8 pin adapter doesn't give enough power. 2molex to 8. Pin can work. As can 2 6 pin to 1 8 pin Make sure you have this before you buy this card from scan as it's in a brown box too :/
Well if it out performs a 6850 AMD and im on a GTX285 then i think im sorted. Given that yes upgrade cycles usually means buying all new, i recently plopped a Q6600 off ebay into this instead of E6600 and now the system feels a bit more CPU balanced but now the GPU is getting on a bit, i needed more GPU power, where the CPU can just be clocked higher ( i can nudge it to 3.4 with a bit more tinkering) But an overall CPU mobo and Ram upgrade are far away so 137 on a GPU rather than 400 on the total saves me money and gives me more FPS in general. Thanks everyone for time and effort into this discussion.
You could always consider gettinga 7870 or a 7850. They pull quite well into the 580 range for rather low prices.
Yeah but given the environment for most financially speaking if i can pay less I will. I do appreciate the reply and the options I can have that may be better for too much more money, So thanks in that respect of course, Incase i do come across a £20 on the floor in the supermarket or hit lucky on the lottery (for a small win lol). Unless I put it off and save up, which is usually hard at the moment, any money I have spare im putting away to save for a mortgage etc. But if i can lose 3 Fps in comparison to the 7870 vs 580 but save 30quid, id rather do that, as long as im at a decent 30FPS Avg at 1920x1080(1080p). Do you see what I mean? Lol Cheers though I will keep monitoring them incase i spot a bargain of them
3fps isn't worth even mentioning (unless we're talking rates of about 30fps). Bioshock Infinite 1080p - 580 30fps, 7870 45fps, 7870 LE 50fps.
7870 prices vs the one I quoted is about £13+ But the game frame rate performance is questionable http://gpuboss.com/gpus/Radeon-HD-7870-vs-GeForce-GTX-580 The on paper and power consumption (if true) does show better benefits however.... Hmm
This will sow more varied results, I expect improvements have been made on both sides with updated drivers.
