Small 470/480 Questions

[IllustriousValor]

I plan on building a Computer soon, would be first ever build. Anyhow, I have a couple of questions, hope it is alright.

Is a Single GTX 470 good for gaming right now? Such as the current games and upcoming ones.

Next, are they planning on making other 470's/480's that have bigger fans on them?

If I do get a 470, does it come with the SLI bridge thing? Sorry, totally new to all this.

In your opinion would a single 470 do right now, then maybe dual 470's later?

I may try out some Video Editing and Image Editing.

Considering the 480 is much higher then the 470, which is more recommended?

As for the 470, there is some that are Regular the Super Clocked. Could I get a regular then try to Overclock it myself?

 

[shadow187]

1.
Yes.

2.
I wouldn't think so. The stock cooler on Fermi is very nice, and it'd be hard to beat it.

3.
Yes.

4.
That would work fine.

6.
Any card will do those just fine.

7. The 480 is a waste of cash at its pricepoint. The HD5970 is a better buy, or an HD5870 TOXIC/2GB

8.
Superclocked is only 25mhz higher..it's easier to OC it yourself.

 

[WR2]

A single GTX 470 is good for gaming right now and for the next year or two at least. It's roughly between the HD 5850 and HD 5870 in gaming power.
If your video and image editing software is CUDA enabled a GTX 470 would get you some GPU acceleration for those programs.
You can overclock a 470 yourself. After market type custom coolers usually follow the reference model cards a few months later if it looks like there is a demand for them.
Your motherboard should have the SLI bridge in the accessory pack since not all motherboards have the PCI-e x16 slots set up the same distance apart.

 

[jonnyboyC]

1+^

but some board malefactors are going to come out with non stock solutions, i saw a pic somewhere that has 3 92mm fans i believe, something like that, so in a few months they're be out, but nvidia has really done a pretty good job with it's heatsink this time around to coup with the heat issues

 

[IllustriousValor]

Wish I could choose more then one best answer. Everyone helped very much. The reason I was asking about SLI is that some where I read that it has better scaling than crossfire, which I guess means it uses more of the second card.

Does anyone know any new AMD boards? The FX series that could handle SLI?

One of the boards I was considering is:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128441

 

[hunter315]

SLI and Crossfire both scale similarly, there are some games where SLI does better and others where crossfire does better, they are pretty much equivilent.

The only boards that support SLI are X58 and P55 chipsets for intel CPUs, there are no good AMD boards that support SLI, there are some with nVidia chipsets but those have not earned themselves a good reputation.

If you are considering an AMD build, go for an ATI card, the 5850 performs similarly to the GTX 470, uses less power, and costs less. You might want to price out an intel build that supports SLI with a GTX 470 and an AMD build with a 5850 just to see if there is a significant difference.

 

[WR2]

If you want to brush up on your AMD based SLI tech knowledge you can look over a review the guys
@ TechReport did on the Asus M4N82 Deluxe NVidia 980a SLI motherboard .

If you want the short version - there is this quote:
"However, the 980a is new in name only. It's the same silicon as the 780a, now with a BIOS update to support Socket AM3 CPUs."

 

[IllustriousValor]

Best answer selected by IllustriousValor.