3gb with 280 vs 6gb with 260 (216)

[spanner_razor]

I'm speccing out a machine with my total at £1400, it's currently at £1337 (might leave it at that price just so it says leet, lol) and I'm wondering whether it's worth popping in another 3 gig of ram or getting a 280. The 280 seemed to offer a few more fps possibly but pretty close and according to the infamous Corsair article, 6gb of ram is a big boon. However they're using 2 graphics cards so the cpu and ram are more limiting plus a slightly faster cpu ayway.

http://www.corsairmemory.com/_appnotes/AN811_Gaming_Performance%20Analysis_6GB_vs_3GB.PDF

I'm leaning a little towards the ram just at the moment but majority rules and all so vote what you think.

No suggestions on other upgrade options unless you can find ram or gpu to not take it over 1400 the current ram price is £53 for the 3gig and £194.65 for the 260. UK only.

 

[macabre215]

What cpu are you going with right now?

 

[4745454b]

LOL, care to give us any info? In addition to the CPU question, what will this computer be doing? OS? Resolution?

I would go for the 280 and 3GBs assuming the resolution is high enough and you play video games. If you don't game, or play RPGs/sim games, then the 6GB (assuming a 64bit OS) idea is probably better. The problem is if you don't game, you don't need the GTX260. In short, give us details so we can suggest what to do.

 

[spanner_razor]

If you read the post title then you'll see it's an i7 920, the other points are valid (mind is a bit frazzled, too much looking at parts) It's a gaming machine with 22" screen so 1680x1050 with Anti-aliasing,etc. At that res the reviews I looked at for a stock 260 (216) suggested it almost beat a 280, so with the oc I think it would beat the 280. 64 bit OS yes.

 

[c_l_roberts]

Add more RAM to your system. Don't bother with that 280 card since having more ram in general helps system performance overall. I am getting an I7 920 myself and look forward to the blazing speed. BTW: Are you getting the MB that has 12 GB max of Ram or the one that lets you have 24 GB? And of course your are using a 64 bit OS since more than 4 GB of ram is pointless without a 64 bit OS.

 

[spanner_razor]

This fella is the one I'm going for:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Gigabyte-GA-EX58-UD3R-Intel-X58-Express-S1366-PCI-E-20x16-DDR3-1333-SATA-3Gb-s-SATA-RAID-ATX

the most basic board available but not a problem as this is designed to be a first time intro thing not overclocking. I know the i5 boards are supposed to be more budget oriented but they're not out yet (UK at least)

EDIT: Have changed to this board instead as same price but full ram slots:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/MSI-X58-PRO-Intel-X58-1366-PCI-E-20(x16)-Triple-DDR3-1066-1333-1600-SATA-3Gb-s-SATA-RAID-ATX

2 less USB, worse audio and no PCIx4 but the system will use a dedicated card anyway and the x4 slot is unnecessary

 

[djcoolmasterx]

The difference bettween 3GB and 6GB isn't going to be very big at all, just adding RAM doesnt scale performance perfectly.

12GB of ram will not be nessisary at all for I7 let alone 24GB.

For games especially the difference between at GTX260 and a GTX280 would be much greater.

 

[runswindows95]

I would go with more RAM.

 

[spanner_razor]

A post to some benchmarks that prove the big difference between them would be helpful djcoolmaster as the one I saw doesn't do the 280 much favour:

http://ixbtlabs.com/articles3/video/gt200-4-p4.html

Never more than 5 fps difference and unlikely to be too much cpu limitation as the sli variant still show big gains.

 

[spanner_razor]

More reviews: slightly better for 280 and these tests are with oc 260s so that will be more helpful, just need some 6gb vs 3gb 1333 with similar gpu benchmarks

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3408&p=2

http://www.elitebastards.com/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=654&Itemid=27&limit=1&limitstart=2

The second review doesn't give the 280 as a competitor but it does use an i7 board with 6gb ram.

http://www.geeks3d.com/?p=1394 - claims 280 is 1% faster

http://hothardware.com/Articles/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-260-Core-216-EVGA-Zotac/?page=6 - maybe 10 fps difference at most and that's at a higher res than planned

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/655/12

So overall it seems that the 260 (216) is under 10fps slower in almost everything but the ram test is crucial. The corsair review shows big gains but I feel that test is somewhat cpu bottlenecked so ram will have more of an impact.

 

[spanner_razor]

http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/1746/8/3gb_vs_6gb_memory_performance_analysis_on_x58/index.html - shows very little difference

Generally speaking I'd expect more ram to give smoother minimum fps but not much higher however I remember upgrading from 1 gig to 2 gig of ram when playing battlefield 2142 and the 2 gig really made a big difference vs the graphics card. But Vista requires double the xp amount of ram I would say so 4 gig would be perfect.

I'm more convinced by the lower graphics and more ram as the ram won't change too much anytime soon whereas a new generation of gpu can't be far off.