2x 660's or 1x 680 for gaming?

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Kasbark

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Jun 2, 2012
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I'm in the process of looking for a new gaming PC, and i think i've narrowed it down to two choices, from diffrent vendors here in Denmark.

But, i'm unsure how big of a diffrence i will notice when gaming (stuff like Metro Last Light, Crysis 3 and the like) between two MSI GTX 660 TWINFROZR III OC Edition, and a single 2GB DDR5 MSI TWINFROZR GTX680OC.

I play on a single 1920x1080 monitor.


Thanks for any replies!
 
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lostgamer_03

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Aug 4, 2012
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I would lean more towards a GTX 670 as it is only about in average 5% slower than a GTX 680 and the price is somewhat 15-20% lower.

A single GTX 670 will do on 1920x1080, there are litterally no games that I can't play on high/ultra settings on the market at the moment.

Always choose a single GPU, if it can suffice your needs. SLI of CF have compatability issues, latency, frame drops and does highly depend on drivers to give good scaling.

In most situations 2 GPUs doesn't deliver 2 times the performance, but what it does provides is more heat and more power consumption.

HOWEVER:

News are that the next 700 series by Nvidia is just around the corner and might get released at the end of this month. So keep your money in your wallet and wait.
 
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ilikegirls

ilikegirls

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To answer your question directly, assuming you are talking about the GTX 660 Ti (The normal 660 is not the best option as far as bang for buck) a pair of GTX 660 Tis is on par with a single GTX 680 in the raw performance category.

However, taking the price of each card into consideration.

A single GTX 660 Ti ~ $300.00
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121656

A single GTX 680 ~ $550.00
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130794

So two 660 Tis would $600.00, and while it can be argued that two 660 Tis are worth it. Taking a step back, and considering the price difference I would recommend going with the GTX 680 because it's cheaper than the two 660 Tis and as a single card, it's not as reliant on the coding in the game to be SLI compatible.

That being said, as the others have mentioned a GTX 670 might be a better option because it's only $450.00 ($100.00 less than the 680)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130824

and is only (again as already mentioned) 5% less powerful.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-670-review,3200-15.html

I have a GTX 680, but I think getting a 670 would be a much more economice decision and you wont be giving much up anyway.


UPDATE:
As mentioned above me, waiting for the newer generation cards will only benefit you, but in tech you can always wait so the line must be drawn somewhere.

Then again, they are coming out in less than a month...
 
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Kasbark

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Jun 2, 2012
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Thanks for all the replies!

I'm buying a whole new PC's, so i don't have a motherboard yet (well, i have a H55M-LE in my old PC, but that's the one that's getting replaced :)

The SLI 660's come on a MSI Z77A-G45, while the 680 come on a ASUS P8Z77-V LX2.

It sounds like it might be a good idea to give it 2-3 weeks and look at the 700 series. If nothing else the price of the 600s might drop a bit once the newer models are on the market i guess.
 
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ilikegirls

ilikegirls

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It sounds like you have t figured out!

Just make sure you dont wait to long after the 700 series launch because soon after the prices drop, the cards will stop being manufactured.

Good Luck man :D
 
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swifty_morgan

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you see these posts every day. what people always look at are the raw FPS numbers and have no knowledge of or want to even hear how much certain games rely on the memory bandwidth of the bigger card (ie:670/80 ), which in reality would play a significant role in gaming as resolution and settings go up.
 
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ilikegirls

ilikegirls

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I dont understand your comment, it is implied that as the memory bandwidth gets bigger, the amount of information the card can put out is larger. Like when you need to scale textures.

This shows in all of the benchmarks, and is clearly visible when you compare the resolution charts.
 
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