GTX 460s vs 470s SLI w/ i7 950

[Spirograph]

Just a question about bottlenecking: I'm working on a new build right now, but I was curious if its worth spending the extra money on a pair of GTX 470s over GTX 460s. As of right now, the specs look like this:

Core i7-950
ABS 1050W PSU
Antec 300 Illusion
50 GB OCZ Vertex 2
G.SKILL 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3 PC1600
Cooler Master Hyper N 520 CPU Cooler
2x GTX 460s or GTX 470s (?)
Asus Sabertooth X58 Mobo

I've also got another 370 gigs of spinning drive space that I'll be pulling from another machine. The plan is for at least 1920x1080 gaming, with a high probability of 2560x1600, soon as I pull together the cash for a new display

So, any input on the 460s or 470s (or anything else for that matter)? (I'm open to AMDs as well, just haven't spent too much time looking in that direction just yet).

Overclocking is fine, I'm looking mainly on newegg, and ideally I'll be purchasing within the next 6 months.

 

[bystander]

470's will give better performance, especially at 2560x1600, but they are noisy underload.

460's would be enough for 1080p and they will be a lot quieter.

CPU bottlenecks with an i7 system are kind of misleading. The i7 will give enough power for almost any game to reach 60 FPS. 60FPS is all that is needed to max out the hz of most displays. If your CPU is bottlenecking, all that means is you could have higher FPS than most monitors would be able to display, so it's pointless to worry about.

The monitor is the determining factor here. If you have a high resolution, you need more GPU power. If you get a resolution of 2560x1600, you will need the extra power of the 470's (or higher) as well as the video ram of the 470's or more to allow you to turn up the settings.

Personally, I'd get a single 580 for the 1920x1080 display, and if you get the 2560x1600, I'd get two 470's or better. And if you went with ATI, I'd make sure what ever cards you go with have more than 1GB of v-ram each if you go for the 2560x1600 display.

 

[Spirograph]

Best answer selected by Spirograph.

 

[Maziar]

This topic has been closed by Maziar