Nvidia Video Card Budget Upgrade

[Slipshot]

Hello Community,


I am looking to upgrade my video card in my system. My Nvidia 8800GTS has served me well over the last four years, but it is now becoming a bottleneck with the games I play and the multimedia media of 3D rendering I do/learning to do. Therefore, I am somewhat on a budget of around $300, and was looking at couple options that I would like to get some feedback on. The choices I was looking at doing were either to go with two Nvidia GTX460SE's on a SLI configuration or go with one GTX570. Would it be better to go in an SLI configuration of an older GPU model or one card of the new GPU chipset?

The links to the cards I am looking at are below.


SLI CONFIG:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130597


Single Card:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130613


To help with this matter my system specs are posted below:

Thermaltake Full Tower Case (don't remember the model though):
Corsair TX750w 750Watt Power Supply (12V Rails@60A)
ASUS P7P55D-E Pro LGA 1156 Intel P55 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
Intel Core i7-860 Lynnfield 2.8GHz LGA 1156 95W Quad-Core Processor
COOLER MASTER Hyper 212 Plus RR-B10-212P-G1 "Heatpipe Direct Contact" Long Life Sleeve 120mm CPU Cooler
CORSAIR XMS3 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model TR3X6G1600C8 G
2 x LITE-ON 24X DVD Writer Black SATA Model iHAS424-98 LightScribe Support
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit


Now, I have read the reviews, articles on Tom's Website and other forum posts on here, but I would value your opinions more if I can get some more feedback from the community on what I am looking at possibly doing. Also, I know some do not recommend going with the GTX460's due to their speed and to go with ATI. I hate to say this but I am not an ATI fan and never have been since I have had a lot bad experiences with their hardware and their software/drivers. Nevertheless, I will keep mind open since maybe things have changed.

Overall, any advice in helping me make my choice will be greatly appreciated. Thanks for your time in reading this post, your help/advice and look forward to hearing back.


Slipshot

 

[Supermuncher85]

I'm not a huge fan of sli/crossfire. There's always issues with it lagging or not working in some games, or not giving the performance you want. Personally I prefer to just buy one more expensive card. The GTX 570 is a solid albeit if somewhat expensive card. Alternatively you might also be interested in looking into a 560ti if the 570 is just too expensive.

What resolution are you gaming at?

 

[4745454b]

The GTX460s you picked are junk. Even the 768MB 460s are better. If your programs can use CUDA you should stick with Nvidia. Otherwise you might as well go AMD as they usually provide more frames per dollar. Nothing wrong with the GTX570, the AMD card like it is the 6950. The 6970 might be the card, I'm not sure.

Why are you running 3x2GBs of ram on a dual channel board?

 

[Slipshot]

I'm not a huge fan of sli/crossfire. There's always issues with it lagging or not working in some games, or not giving the performance you want. Personally I prefer to just buy one more expensive card. The GTX 570 is a solid albeit if somewhat expensive card. Alternatively you might also be interested in looking into a 560ti if the 570 is just too expensive.

What resolution are you gaming at?

Well for most things I am running at 1920 x 1200 and for those games and applications where I lag in the FPS I usually have to crank down the resolution and some graphic settings

 

[Slipshot]

The GTX460s you picked are junk. Even the 768MB 460s are better. If your programs can use CUDA you should stick with Nvidia. Otherwise you might as well go AMD as they usually provide more frames per dollar. Nothing wrong with the GTX570, the AMD card like it is the 6950. The 6970 might be the card, I'm not sure.

Why are you running 3x2GBs of ram on a dual channel board?

The answer to your question 47454 is because at the time I built the system this RAM combination was on sale and 2 x 4GB sticks were around $330 to $400 when the 3 x 2GB sticks were $170. Cost and budget became an issue so I had to sacrifice some RAM which I know was a mistake. RAM prices have come down since then which I will be looking at swapping out at later this year.


As for your suggestions, thanks for your input. I'll take a look at the AMD cards.

 

[jyjjy]

Yeah, forget about the GTX 460 SE. It's not a good card and is weaker than the GTX 460 768mb. The GTX 570 or a highly overclocked GTX 560 Ti would be your best choice if you want to stick with Nvidia. This would be a good choice;
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127578
It has the best cooling available on the GTX 560 TI and with the core at 950mhz it is very close in performance to the GTX 570 and should match it if you are willing to OC more on your own.

 

[shrkbay]

1GHz 560Ti will reach 570's levels, but not come close to it's OC, also the SE's are bullsh*t, 570 would beat them hands down, also you probably use programs that use CUDA, so going for AMD, which would save you some cash and probably give a bit more performance, is pointless imo

 

[ethel]

If your budget can stretch to a little more than 300, here's a 6970 for $315 after mir:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127554&cm_re=6970-_-14-127-554-_-Product

 

[Slipshot]

Best answer selected by Slipshot.