Need some advice on upgrading please...

[CRH7386]

Okay, so, I currently have two 8800 GTS 512's in SLI on a 780i motherboard. They still work decently well but Newegg is having a sale on graphics cards so I was looking into getting a GTX 460 or 470. I was leaning towards a 470 and would be using one of my 8800's for physx only. Now, I won't be upgrading my motherboard or processor at the moment. I have an e8400 overclocked to 4GHz and 4GB of memory. I will probably go to an i7 quad next year sometime but I was wondering what you guys think about just updating my graphics card for now? Is the 470 worth it over the 460 if I'm using the 8800 as physx? Or do you think the 460 is better cost/performance. I will also most likely be going to SLI the 460 or 470 when I upgrade to i7 next year. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks By the way, I play all sorts of games from Crysis to Civilization. Mafia II will probably be my next purchase though.

 

[CRH7386]

Oh and I currently game at 1680x1050 but will be upgrading to 1920x1080 once I upgrade my processor, motherboard & memory.

 

[someguynamedmatt]

Simple answer: Yes, the 470 is just a better card.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-460-gf104-fermi,2684-12.html

It's an excellent card, and can easily handle gaming at 1920x1080. Heck, according to that benchmark, one card can benchmark at 2400x1600 with 16x AS and 4x MSAA at around 40fps. SLI'ing it would take a little more power, but two 470s in SLI will be enough for any game you could possibly purchase. The 460 is an excellent card too, but the 470 is just... well... better. If you did go with it, it would help give you some extra time before you actually needed a second in SLI, too.

Just a suggestion...

 

[jrhii]

from what I hear, using an extra card for physx really doesn't show much more performance increase at all.

 

[CRH7386]

Thanks for the advice! I think I will go with the 470 I just wanted to hear other opinions on the subject. I'm not sure how the extra card will work for physics but if it does help, I'll use it, if not, I'll get rid of it. One thing I did notice though when I used the benchmark in the Mafia II demo, I put everything on max, even physx/apex and I got an average of 25 fps with my 8800's in SLI and when I turned off SLI and used one card for graphics and the other dedicated to only physx, I got an average of 29 so I thought that was pretty interesting. But then again, that most likely depends on the game and what's most important for it.

 

[jyjjy]

Honestly I would hold off for now. Except in games that don't properly use SLI the GTX 470 isn't going to be a huge upgrade. Overclocking will help it pull away but if at all possible I would just wait a bit until you can actually afford 2 GTX 460s or perhaps for the GTX 475 or HD6000 cards.

 

[sabot00]

2 8800GT's already beat a GTX 460/GTX 285, so I'm expecting 2 8800GTS 512mb's will tap the the GTX 470.