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Alienware Aurora R1 Video Card Upgrade from GTX 260

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I have a 2 years old Alienware Aurora R1 with a GTX 260 and I would like to upgrade the GPU to a newer Nvidia card like the 500 or 600 series or anything that is compatible with my current hardware and that will improve performance since newer games (AC3, Black Ops 2, etc.) are lagging a bit when maxed out with newer effects and texture filterings. Could you guys recomend me a good one (preferably Nvidia in the 500 or 600 series); my budget goes up to around $600. These are the specs:

Mother Board: Alienware 0H869M ( 1 PCI-E 2.0 x16 in use by Video Card; 2 PCI-E x8 and 1 PCI-E x4 not in use)

CPU: QuadCore Intel Core i7 920 @ 2800 MHz (21x33) (CPU Alias Bloomfield)

RAM Memory Installed: 3x2GB and 3x1GB (total 6 sticks- 9GB) Unbuffered DIMM DDR3-1066 (533 Mhz) SDRAM

Power Supply Unit: not much info on this but I know it's a 875w PSU (at least that's what Dell representative told me when I gave him the product tag) and I see that it has four 6-pin-power-connectors (P14,P15,P16,P17), with only P14 being used by the current video card (the P16 and P17 have a little sticker that says that these are not active on systems using 525 W PSU- not sure if it's important). Also at the end of P15 and P17 there is an extension cable that has a 2 pin connector.

Current GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 260, 1792MB GDDR3 of dedicated video memory (total memory:4095 MB) , PCI Express 2.0 x16,

GPU Processor: Graphics clock: 518 MHz; Processor clock: 1080 MHz; Memory Data Rate: 2016MHz; Unified Shaders: 192 (v4.0)

If you need any more info about hardware spec, let me know right away. Thanks in advance ;) 

More about : alienware aurora video card upgrade gtx 260

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samuelspark said:
I would get a 7850. The best price/performance GPU atm. I wouldn't really go with nVidia in the lower range, 660 ti and lower because the limited bandwidth hurts it in 1080p with AA and such. If you can afford a 670 or 680, go for it. If not, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...


Hi, thanks for the rapid response, I have been looking at these cards: would any of them be compatible, and if they are which one could give the best performance?

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/ite...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

I have also noticed that the 670 and 680s are PCI Express 3.0, the memory type is DDR5 and that the processor's speeds are higher than mine- would this mean that they are incompatible?
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Graphics card Master

The 7870 is by far the better price / performance ratio.

That being said, a 670 or 680 would WORK in your computer, but it would be fairly severely bottlenecked. PCIe is totally backwards compatible, they use Gddr5, which is video ram and has nothing to do with the system, and why would the processor speed on the gpu make it incompatible with that on the CPU?

I'd go with the 7870, especially at the resolution you're playing with.
Graphics card Expert

DarkSable said:
The 7870 is by far the better price / performance ratio.

That being said, a 670 or 680 would WORK in your computer, but it would be fairly severely bottlenecked. PCIe is totally backwards compatible, they use Gddr5, which is video ram and has nothing to do with the system, and why would the processor speed on the gpu make it incompatible with that on the CPU?

I'd go with the 7870, especially at the resolution you're playing with.


a PCI-Ex16 2.0 port would not bottle any of the current gen graphics cards..... If the GTX 590 (which is based on pci-e 2.0 specs) can run unimpeded on the PCI-Ex16 2.0 slots, There is no way in hell that a gtx 680 would be bottlenecked.

GTX 590 > GTX 680

People and their misconceptions on the bandwidth that graphic cards actually use lol.

killerhurtalot said:


People and their misconceptions on the bandwidth that graphic cards actually use lol.


I know. There is a benchmark on some site I can't be bothered to look up, but even at 2.0, a top video card is barely bottlenecked at 8x on the a 2.0 bus, nevermind 16x at 3.0. 3.0 is nothing but marketing right now as no current cards can even fully saturate a 2.0 bus at 16x, and most run fine down to 8x or 4x even with very little fps drop.

I think I have narrowed it down to these GTX 670 but I can't decide which one is better for the price:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

I have also seen a few overclocked 660ti that are cheaper (~$60 cheaper) and have roughly the same core and boost clock speed but the only difference is that they have 192 bit memory interface instead of 256 in the 670s. Is this a big difference in performance?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

Hi, thanks for the prompt response and all of the good input, and sorry for taking so long to reply, I have been terribly busy.
I went for the EVGA GTX 270 FTW and it's working well so far (although temp is running a bit high- ~55's °C with PCI fan at 58% and card fan at ~60% and higher). I can now run some of the latest games with very good average fps.
My only complain about performance is the very annoying screen stuttering in the majority of the games (Sleeping dogs and far cry 3 specially). I tried to update to the latest drivers and turned off (also tried turning back on) enforced v-sync in the game and in nvidia panel settings and it kept doing it, especially when rotating camera horizontally to left/right. I have all settings maxed out in the games with ambient occlusion (tried different ones and it didn't fix it) and all other texture filtering and effects (turning them down diminishes the stuttering but doesn't eliminate it). I'm playing at 1360 x 768 (60hz refresh rate).
I know this is a bit offtopic from the thread but do you guys know how to solve this, or do you think that the card is not powerful enough for these games?
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