2 things 1.I'm going through various forums and what not, reading about people doing SLI with the gtx260 and a 650 watt psu and if it has enough juice. I see various responses of "it runs at full load if Oc'ed cpu' and things along that line, but i cant seem to find an answer to stock clock settings. 2.I plan on doing a very small upgrade and I don't wanna do it if I'm going to bottleneck. my screen rez is at 1600x900 and I don't plan on anything else (everything is default settings) My specs: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 nForce 680i mobo GTX 260 4 GB DDR2 PC6400 x3 7200PM HD DVD burner My upgrade another GTX 260 4 GB DDR2 PC8500 (setting to recommended speeds) not much be eh xD any advice would be most appreciated thanks
I put that info into PSU Calculator (http://extreme.outervision.com/PSUEngine) and it turned out a result of 464W, that's including 4 120mm fans and 3 USB power-drawing devices which should (I assume?) cover any cooling or peripherals you may be utilising. Either way a 650W PSU should do just fine, providing of course it's up to providing that wattage and maintaining the voltages. Generally branded ones are a safe bet, if in doubt check the recent PSU round up on the main BiT site or check if they have a review elsewhere. Providing your PSU is a decent one, you could happily overclock that Q6600, it's totally worth it.
The big question is, what 650w PSU is it? A good branded PSU may be close to 650w, but an unbranded OEM part may not be. Unless you are planning to overclock your CPU beyond 4ghz, I'd save your money on the RAM - the faster RAM isn't going to be that much of a benefit. Put the money towards a branded (Seasonic, Corsair etc) quad-SLI certified PSU and it'll see you right for this PC and probably the next one.
What is the brand of your 650 watt power supply? This will tell us a lot about rather or not it will be able to power the additional 260. I don't know too much about possible bottlenecks with computer hardware, but I think that if you are running your resolution at 1600x900 that you would need to have the other graphics settings cranked way up on your games to REALLY need another 260 imo. Letting us know the games that you do play will help us give you better advice on the matter. As always, I still stand by the fact that one graphics card is better than two or more in SLI or Crossfire. Imo, if you are going to do SLI or Crossfire it is best to do that when you buy a new computer rather than as an upgrade. Have you thought about selling the 260 that you have to offset the cost of a new 5870? Iirc, the 5870 should be about the same performance as two 260s, but with far lower power usage. Anyway, we need to know what kind of Power Supply you have and what games you are thinking of playing. Also if you haven't already, an overclock on the Q6600 would help although the 680i chipset is not exactly a good overclocker...
yeah i was reading on the 680i chipset, ad it dose have issues with over clocking as for the ram, I thought I am bottle necked since it runs at 400mhz and my fbs is 1033mhz just getting the 8500 to run at 1033mhz with the rest of my comp This is my current power supply: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817171023 I might just wait on the 260 and get either the new 470 or 480 to be honest i've always been the one for single card solutions, I was jut really curious as to how sli would work and if there would be any performance difference and the games someone mention earlier , i can run all current gen games maxed with no problems expect for dx11 of course I did have some Slight lag on the new stalker but other than that nothing Edit: my mistake on the ram info
That's a fairly good PSU, not too shabby. You would be better off with a single, more powerful card than two older cards though for two main reasons. 1. The driver support for SLI has always been a little flaky, single cards are almost always more stable. 2. The amount of power they will consume will be far greater, and the heat they will generate will be far more. This is of course assuming the Fermi cards aren't MASSIVELY power hungry and hot running. The 5800 cards use less power than a GTX260 by themselves and provide a huge performance boost and create less heat because of the lower power usage. My recommendation would be to get a 5800 card, or wait 'til Fermi arrives and see what it's like. It would also mean the pricing war would begin.
SLi is actually a good idea when hardware is getting a little old, consider this. Sli compatible board and already owning a GTX260, a 2nd GTX260 would be a dirt cheap upgrade when compared to buying a current card. Also note the GTX260 isn't exactly a slow card, and a pair of them would be in the speed range of ATI 5850. I would say if you cant get a solid 2nd hand price for your current GTX260, then get another on the cheap and enjoy it for now, wait another year and do a full rebuild from scratch then. I have always been a single card, single core guy, as drivers are usually a pain. At the moment as far as i can tell SLi is well supported and fairly stable.
No, your FSB running at 266MHz, while your RAM is running at 400MHz. PC8500 is just speed-binned chips which are able to run faster than PC6400 - it doesn't mean you'll be able to run the RAM at 1066MHz if the rest of your system isn't up to it, and even then, if you wanted to run your FSB:RAM ratio at 1:1 you'd have to overclock your FSB to 533MHz (not possible). Faster memory is only ever advisable if you're overclocking, sp since you're not there's no point, and with the sky high prices of DDR2 at the moment it would be a total waste of money for no return. Your RAM is nowhere near being the bottleneck in your system.
But when you look at information on motherboards it would say the fbs is xxxx/xxxx mhz. Is that not correct or is that just saying the max your fbs could run at? update: never mind to this^ someone explained to me so i understand lol everyone of my friends are ati fans so they keep trying to get to me to get one. Im for nvidia myself, although i do appreciate your advice about the ati cards but im going stick with nvidia xD My Comp is 3yrs old, ill most likely do a new build when i can no longer run my games at maxed settings with that said since apparently my power supply can handle x2 GTX260s, should i get another card or wait and get a single GTX470/80, I means its only a $150 roughly price difference if I do decide to get the 470/80 I think ill just wait on the review of the Fermi cards and compare it to dual 260s in sli and ill go from there Like I said before I really appreciate your advice, since this is really clearing up some things i was confused on before
