Asus GeForce GTX 670 DirectCU II OC or 760 DirectCU II OC?

[hikoPC]

Hi, I'm building my first gaming PC and I'm looking for a good quiet graphics card that will give high-end performance at 1080p (I won't be going any higher than that). I use my PC as a HTPC (but it's a proper, chunky full-tower desktop) so I need my card to be quiet during film viewing, but I don't really care if the fans need to kick in and make some noise when gaming. Basically I'm used to noisy gaming thanks to my XBOX360 .

Anyway, I've read that the Asus DirectCU II cards are pretty quiet, but now that the 760 has been introduced I'm kinda at a loss to determine which is the better card: The GTX 670 DirectCU II OC 2GB GDDR5 or GTX 760 DirectCU II OC 2GB GDDR5. I can get hold of the 670 for about £200 and the 760 for about £215.

Are there any other cards in the same price range that are quieter?

 

[Marcopolo123]

The gtx 670 is slightly faster...
I would get it !

 

[hikoPC]

The gtx 670 is slightly faster...
I would get it !

Thanks Marco!

Doe anyone know how much power the most powerful graphics cards of today use in SLI? I'm thinking of getting an 850W PSU to go with the new graphics card and I was just wondering if this will be fairly future-proof if I wanted to go SLI with higher-end cards a year or two down the line.

 

[cookybiscuit]

Provided you have a decent case that is able to get rid of the heat fast enough, both will be 100% silent under load, the Asus cooler is exceptional. Once you start overclocking though it will increase heat output to the point where you can hear it, but still extremely quiet.

You can run a 670 SLI and overclocked PSU system on a 600W PSU.

 

[hikoPC]

I think I'll be alright cooling-wise, I've got a Fractal Design Define XL and I've bought some Bitfenix Spectro Pro fans to replace the ones in the Fractal and shift more air (I read around and the spectro pro seemed the best from a silence + air flow viewpoint).

My plans are to basically get a GTX 670 for now and then upgrade to something more powerful a year or so from now when the next generation of games have settled in, I want to try and keep my PC high-end for 1080p gaming (I doubt I'll be going any higher in res in the near future as I do all my gaming on a projector).

I'm just wondering if an 850W PSU (I'm looking at the Be Quiet! Dark Power Pro 10 series) provides enough juice that it leaves dual SLI for cards like a GTX 690 or Titan later down the line, or would I be more future-proof with a 1050W? I'm a total ignoramus when it comes to power supplies so I don't know if a 1050W would be overkill or not.

 

[cookybiscuit]

If that is your intention I suggest buying used, 670's seem to have taken a nose dive in used price, check Ebay.

I would personally avoid BeQuiet PSU's, but thats just me. Corsair, Antec, Silverstone and Seasonic are all good, if possible buy from those. 1000W is massive, massive overkill, you can run any system out there on that. Really a good 700W or above will have you set for an SLI setup.

Titan and 690 are a waste of cash now the 780 is out, the 690 to a lesser extent but still. The Titan is 7% faster for a huge price gap, plus you are stuck with the stock cooler as Nvidia restricted manufacturers to only use that. That 7% is easily exceeded by factory OC 780's, and its not even like you can OC the Titan to be faster as the two cards share the same TDP (780 has one less SMX but a higher clock speed, so the two pull the same amount of power). The 690 is a similar story, 'only' 2GB (though if you plan to stick at 1080p this is fine), 20% faster than 780 for a large price gap. No overclocking headroom (as 690's simply overclock like crap), loud compared to aftermarket 780's, more power draw, and most importantly is a dual GPU setup already, so you can't add another if you felt the need (two 690's would make 4 GPU's, which only works in benchmark tests).

 

[hikoPC]

Interesting cookybiscuit, thanks. Regarding the PSU: I believe the Dark Power Pro 10 850W & above are Seasonic units custom made for BeQuiet. It seems like most companies are using the Seasonic X range for their top-of-the-range PSUs and there's some real problems with coil whine on the units making it a lottery as to whether you'll get a quiet PSU or not. So far the BeQuiet! DPP 10 range haven't seemed to have generated as much "coil whine" feedback online, but that of course could be because few people actually have them!

 

[cookybiscuit]

If you get coil whine just return it, but I can confirm that. I've got a Seasonic X-520FLII and had to do 2 RMA's before I got one that didn't whine, had a Corsair HX850 before that, returned it for whining too. Coil whine is pretty much luck of the draw anyway.

 

[Marcopolo123]

~ 700-750w psu is absolutly enough.

 

[hikoPC]

Great guys, thanks!

 

[edogawa]

Why would you buy a 670 over a 760 even if it's marginally faster, it's not worth the cost, an R9 280X(performs almost the same as a 770) would be a better choice at the price of a 670, which was about 300-400 last I saw.

For a single card system a 550+ watt power supply is more than adequate as long as it has enough amps on the 12v rail.

For a multi-GPU system you're best off with around 750-800 watts if you're getting beefy graphics cards, most of the time though you can get away with lower, but it depends on the graphics cards.


All of these cards have a 30A and a 500W PSU minimum power supply requirement; a quality power supply from Seasonic, XFX, or one of Corsairs higher end units would all be fantastic choices for power.

GeForce GTX 760

Radeon R9-280X

GeForce GTX 670


Try to avoid used cards on eBay. Who knows what shape the card really is in, and no manufacture warranty.