Second GTS 250 or better card?

[BenD188]

Should I get a second GTS 250 and run in SLI, or get a better card? Budget would be like $300, but I could get a second GTS 250 for around $80 or $100. I would like it to play crysis 2 and some other new games. Heres my setup.

Dell 30" U3011 monitor
Intel i7-2600k processor
16GB Corsair RAM
600w Corsair Power supply (I know I would need to upgrade it)
ASUS SABERTOOTH P67 LGA 1155 SATA 6Gbps and USB 3.0 Supported Intel P67 DDR3 1800 ATX Motherboard

my card
XFX GS250XYDFC GeForce GTS 250 512MB Core Edition 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150357


Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.

 

[iam2thecrowe]

512mb ram doesnt cut it anymore, time for an upgrade.2 x gts250's would probably push equivelant FPS to a gtx560ti, except they have half the ram so high res textures and high res monitors would suffer. Get a gtx560ti or better. you could always use your gts250 as a dedicated physx card, or sell it.

 

[BenD188]

512mb ram doesnt cut it anymore, time for an upgrade.2 x gts250's would probably push equivelant FPS to a gtx560ti, except they have half the ram so high res textures and high res monitors would suffer. Get a gtx560ti or better. you could always use your gts250 as a dedicated physx card, or sell it.

How would that work with using it as a physx card? I don't have much knowledge on a physx card, or how they work.

 

[iam2thecrowe]

^ lets say you install a gtx560ti and a gts250 in another slot. In the nvidia driver you can select the gts250 as the physx card. now when running a game supporting hardware physx (there aren't many games that do) the load will be on the gts250 leaving the 560ti purely for 3d rendering. This will only be of benefit for games that support hardware physx accelleration.

 

[nforce4max]

A gtx 560ti is a nice upgrade over your current card but current gen fermi cards tend to degrade over time but each is different. Two gts 250 can offer plenty of bang for most games out there but it has already been pointed out that the vram isn't going to cut it. I got a 9800gtx+ in my collection and it is the same as your gts 250, getting a second isn't going to cut it.

 

[BenD188]

Alright, looks like I'm going to be upgrading in the near future. But just so I know, two 512mb gts 250's would = 1gb or vram total right? I've never actually had two cards setup in SLI before.

 

[iam2thecrowe]

no, 2 x cards in sli or crossfire still has the same amount of available memory as one card. The data in the ram of each card is mirrored so it contains the same data, so no, it is not added together.