Gtx 480 or??

[Deleted member 362816]

Hello sold my gaming laptop today and I am going to build a W/cd dekstop again. Would like to know I can pick up 2 brand new evga gtx 480's for 150$ each. For 300$ is this the best route for performance. Or is a single card better.

 

[Deemo13]

I would go with a single card. They use less power, generate less heat, and have less stability issues.

Especially with the GTX480's. They generate ALOT of heat and use ALOT of power. And when I say alot, I mean alot. The 7950 is a very good choice at that price.

 

[Deleted member 362816]

The power is not a issue, I will be watercooling them so that is not also. But for the same price I can get 2 gtx 480s vs 1 7950, Im sure 2 480's will be faster? Am I wrong here?

 

[Deemo13]

Well, a 7950 can play any game out there right now, and then you can get another 7950 later instead of having to change everything when you need a new card.

 

[badtaylorx]

agreed...... unless you want to max out a 1000w psu.....go with the newer cards....

even sli'd the 480s wont handle tessalation as well

 

[loops]

I can not think of any card with more value for performance and a new 480 at 150 bucks. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107-7.html

OC 480s in SLI would be powerful thing. The problem is still about the power used to get there. A 7950 also OC very well and adding a 2nd down the line seem like a safer bet. Coming from a laptop to a 7950 should also feel like a good upgrade.

 

[bmyton]

I bought a 480 for $175 a while back and I still have not regretted it. Just to be clear, there are SIGNIFICANT drawbacks, but if you are aware of them and plan accordingly then you won't be disappointed.

Cons
-Heat (countered well by water cooling, although it will put a strain on your radiator capacity)
-Power (countered by a larger PSU and if you already own a beefy PSU you aren't adding cost to the system, just operating cost)
-Aging Chipset (at some point in the future the majority of popular titles are going to rely on the newer computations that the 480 was not designed to excel at)
-Expandability (investing in SLI means that your next graphics upgrade will be a complete setup, not just one more card)
-SLI Concerns (some titles do not play well with SLI)

Pros
-Performance / $ (right now I am not aware of any graphics solution more cost effective than a $150 GTX480)
-Performance (this card is still a workhorse and is excellent even on modern titles)

 

[luciferano]

Actually, some 7850s can go down as far as $160-180 each and can overclock better than 480s can, so if you really want two cards, two 7850s would be better. They also have much better scaling and two 7850s use less power than a single 480, so power is no big deal with them. For a single card, the 7950 is king when overclocking is considered and you want to keep costs down and with overclocking, can actually beat two 480s if you choose a good model, so not only would it have the advantage of being a single GPU setup, much lower power consumption, and better future-proofing with more modern feature support and twice as much memory capacity per GPU, but it could also be faster at about the same price. Not even water cooled 480s will beat some air-cooled 7950s.