Need help choosing an Nvidia card solution

[thebski]

I've been faced with somewhat of a dilemma. My friend's 8800 Ultra finally quit on him and he now wants to buy my GTX 275's to replace it. I told him that was fine as I could help him out a little bit and it would give me an out with mine and an opportunity to upgrade even though I maybe wasn't looking to at this particular moment. I'll lay out the basics of my system:

i7 920 @ 4.0 ghz
6 gb ram @ 1600
Seasonic M12D 850W
1920 x 1080 monitor
HAF 932 Case

I'm considering the following different solutions:

2 x 465's
2 x 470's
1 x 570 (with a second coming within a couple months)

I guess I'm mainly taking suggestions on what other people (presumably more knowledgeable than me) would do in my situation. Also, how much are my 2 BFG GTX 275 OC's worth? I told him around 250 for the pair, but that I'd let him know for sure. I'm 99% positive on an EVGA card, and I'm 85% sold on the SuperClocked version of whatever I get. If it's 465's or 470's I'll just buy both now. If I go with the 570 solution I'll have to wait for the second one (I couldn't live with dropping that much in one day on graphics). If I wait two months for the second card how much do you guys think the prices will drop on the 570's? Are the 570's worth the money? The 470's seem to be at a pretty good price right now, but I've noticed the 570's have a lot of features (vapor cooling, more power) that make it a considerably better card. The 465's get awesome reviews, especially in SLI, but I'm kind of thinking I'd like more than a 10 FPS (in Crysis) increase if I'm going to go to the trouble of upgrading. I would consider a single GTX 580 and be done, but I at times power more than 2 displays, so eventually SLI will be necessary. Dual 580's are too much money and simply unnecessary (maybe 570's are too). I'd have to swap power supplies for dual 580's as well, and I'm not willing to do that. I'm taking any and all advice. Thanks.

 

[thebski]

Surely someone out there has an opinion...

 

[17seconds]

Since you can upgrade to SLI later, I would go for the GTX570. It is a much more refined card, with a very quiet cooler and GTX480 performance. When you SLI a GTX570, reviews have shown that they only register a minimal increase in heat and temperature. For the GTX465/470's in SLI the impact on heat and noise is very noticeable. One GTX570 will allow you to max out any game with your system, and an upgrade down the line will only make it better.

 

[thebski]

Thanks for the reply. That's kind of what I'm leaning toward at this point.

Anyone else agree or disagree?

 

[rolli59]

GTX570 makes sense!

 

[Digital Dissent]

Just stay away from anything below the nvidia 400 series or the ati 5000 series. That is when they started to use dx11 and lets just be blunt, the era of dx10 alone is over. The era of dx11 has now truly begun.

 

[17seconds]

Just a little reading to tide you over until you are able to get the full SLI setup going:
http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-570-sli-review/

 

[cheesesubs]

to be honest, if your psu can push 8800ultra then there would be no problem handle a gtx 580. gtx 580 is now consider to be kng of hill.....a single gtx 580 is pretty much able to destroy quad sli 8800 ultra(if possible..)...


also any further sli/cf setup are consider waste of money as most of game don't support multi gpu correctly and may find plenty of bug later on..

 

[JackNaylorPE]

I would go for the 570 but beware .... if ya card is unable to maintain it's so called guaranteed factory overclock, EVGA will not solve the problem ..... BTDT .... son has one of their FTW factory over clocked cards. It's only been able to run stable at 10% of the difference between the reference clock and factory OC.


He's RMA'd it 3 times and each one does the exact same thing with only offer from EVGA being to RMA it again and again. And yes, it stays well below any temperature in an Antec 1200 w/ 10 case fans.

 

[thebski]

That was my next question. Should I stay away from the overclocked version? It has good reviews on Newegg, but I definitely want the thing to work...

 

[Digital Dissent]

That was my next question. Should I stay away from the overclocked version? It has good reviews on Newegg, but I definitely want the thing to work...

Well I just bought a gtx 570 after one of the longest reseach processes of my life (gauging it against the 6970, they are so damn close!) and read more than once to stay away from the evga overclocks, given that apparently they dont like to go almost any higher than the clocks they are sold at. In fact at this point I would stay away from overclocks in general unless you dont know how to do them. The one I got is the msi model, which has no overclocks stock. I prefer to do it myself manually anyway.

 

[17seconds]

That was my next question. Should I stay away from the overclocked version? It has good reviews on Newegg, but I definitely want the thing to work...

I have never heard of the issue Jack mentioned, but that would be a nightmare if it happened.

One line of reasoning is that factory overclocked cards have higher binned chips, meaning that they are selected under a testing process to perform under higher levels of stress. If true, then a factory overclocked card uses higher quality chips. With that said, most will tell you it is not worth it to pay more for a factory overclock when it is very simple and safe to overclock yourself. Since Jack has a FTW card with problems, the highest binned chip, it just goes to show that any card can have problems, regardless of the price.

 

[thebski]

I would go for the 570 but beware .... if ya card is unable to maintain it's so called guaranteed factory overclock, EVGA will not solve the problem ..... BTDT .... son has one of their FTW factory over clocked cards. It's only been able to run stable at 10% of the difference between the reference clock and factory OC.


He's RMA'd it 3 times and each one does the exact same thing with only offer from EVGA being to RMA it again and again. And yes, it stays well below any temperature in an Antec 1200 w/ 10 case fans.

Jack, if I were to buy the SuperClock and it were to start failing, could I not RMA it for a standard clock version? Surely they would do that. I'd tell them to keep the damn change as long as it works.

 

[thebski]

I ended up ordering the SuperClocked 570. Out of nearly 50 reviews on Newegg only one reported issues with the overclock. I guess I'll take my chances and hope they'll exchange it for a reference clocked card if there's issues. Thanks for the reassurance and input guys.