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What Graphics card should I run?

Last response: in Graphics & Displays
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Hello everyone, I am new so take it easy on me!

Here is my dilemma that I hope all your other techies can aid me with. I am building a new system, this is going to be my first water-cooled system. Before I go too far I will post the specs of my build so far so you know what I am working with.

i7-2600k
8Gb G.Skill DDR3 1866MHz sniper series
OCZ 700W PSU
P8Z77-VPRO mobo
I am running everything on a 27" 1080p res monitor

My question is for you guys is I currently have a MSI N560GTX Twin Frozr II card, so far I have been impressed with the cooling capabilities of this card and don't really see the point of water cooling it because frankly I dont think I will see much of a performance increase when overclocking it. I am looking for a new/used card that I can water cool to put in my rig. I have been looking at GTX570's as I have read many good things about them. I know it is going to be very similar to the card I have now but that's okay I am only going to be playing SC2, BL2, and Diablo 3...I would like to run all of these at maximum settings. I plan on running a 420rad to keep this cool.

Any help on what I should get or if you guys have anything for sale let me know! :D 

PS. I like the idea of running an SLI config....I know it is typically not worth the extra money for most scenarios but part of this build is to have fun with water cooling while getting good performance. Let me know your thoughts on that as well!

More about : graphics card run

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I don't see much of a point to upgrade to a GTX 570 from a GTX 560. If I were you I'd go for at least the GTX 660 ti, it's got similar performance to the GTX 580, and it's more power efficient. And considering your monitor is 1080p, you won't need much more than that.

If you DO want a little more beef than the GTX 660ti, consider going for the GTX 670 (which, with a slight overclock can perform like a GTX 680).
Graphics card Master

I disagree with regard to the statement ....

Quote:
I know it is typically not worth the extra money for most scenarios


I'm hard pressed to find instances where it's not worth it. In fact two of your 560's at a cost of $420 for two in them in their heyday, was $80 cheaper than a 580 which it outperformed by 40%. The twin Frozr is a bit hampered by it's VRM, while MSI did put a 6 phase VRM in their which is much better than the 4 phase reference VRM, the big overclockers had 7 or more.

The 570 reference cards were problematic when OC'd as the VRM's sometimes went up in smoke when OC'd.

http://www.overclock.net/t/929152/have-you-killed-a-570...

The 8 phase models did not suffer from this problem. If ya gonna upgrade, I'd strongly suggest the 6xx series.

For example, the 560 Ti gets 60.1 fps in BF3 whereas the 660 gets 104, 32.8 for the 560 and 52 fps for the 660 in Ultra

As to water cooling, while I won't argue against it for the fun, with today's chips, it's hard to argue a "bang for the buck" scenario.

http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_conten...

Quote:
It's almost ironic that [air] coolers like this are becoming available just as processors transition to designs that may ultimately render them unnecessary; even overclocked to 5GHz, an Intel Sandy Bridge 2600K doesn't need anywhere near this level of cooling.


Withe GPU, at 72C under max load, with 90C being the point of concern, again, where's the need ?
http://www.guru3d.com/article/asus-geforce-gtx-670-dire...

Graphics card Master

The first question that comes to mind is...Why? From time to time, I've thought about water cooling. Fortunately, each time, I either remember or read more tales of woe; how someone's WC loop took a leak in his case, or how expensive it was, etc. You might get a few degrees C, and/or a few hundred MHz, but the performance differences aren't likely to matter.

Onus said:
The first question that comes to mind is...Why? From time to time, I've thought about water cooling. Fortunately, each time, I either remember or read more tales of woe; how someone's WC loop took a leak in his case, or how expensive it was, etc. You might get a few degrees C, and/or a few hundred MHz, but the performance differences aren't likely to matter.



Like I stated already, I enjoy building and I have never done a water cooled system before so thought I would give it a try.
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