Upgrading my graphic card, need your opinion

[Noshiz]

Hello community of Tom's Hardware.

I am thinking of upgrading my graphic card and I would like your opinion.

I currently have a GTX 660 and I am wondering if it would be better to buy another 660 and have an SLI (which would also require to buy a new motherboard that supports it) or buy a different card like GTX 780 (preferably the ASUS one with the DirectCU II cooling system, which is incredible) and keep the 660 one for PhysX (only for the games that support it).

My CPU is i5-3570k@ 3.8 OC and right now I know that GTX 660 is the bottleneck of my system.

Choosing the first solution would be a lot cheaper but probably won't give me the same horsepower as a GTX 780, what do you suggest?

Does the extra cost worth it? Is the difference between 660 SLI and the 780 that big?

Thanks in advance for all your answers, and please don't start the all time classic war about the 2 companies.

 

[crisptofuring]

well really, two 660s in SLI should actually outperform a 780 by a little bit. The downsides would be much higher power consumption and maybe higher cost (depending on what the new motherboard you will have to get would be). Also gotta make sure that your case is big enough to handle it (as long as it's not mini-ITX, it probably can) and chekc your power supply. If your power supply is under 750W i would suggest going with the 780 because you would also have to add the cost of getting a higher-wattage PSU on top of the new motherboard and the new GPU.

In summary, the 660 is a better idea, but if it requires getting a new PSU and motherboard and you're obsessed with power consumption than go with the 780.

 

[Noshiz]

Thanks for the quick reply mate.

My case does support it so that's not a problem.

The problem now seems to be the PSU, it's 650W.

I'll do a research now and see how much more it would cost for both a PSU and a motherboard.

If the end cost is still less (or near of that of 780) then I think it worths getting the 660 SLI.

 

[crisptofuring]

actually can i see your specs for your PSU?
650W actually might be able to handle to 660s considering that you have a very small overclock (a lot less power consumed by CPU). If you have high energy efficiency certification on your PSU, 650W should be enough.

In this case, go with the second 660 for sure.

 

[giantbucket]

a 650W PSU should be just about doable. 150W for CPU (guessing here), 150W per card (or do 660s use less?), so you're at 450W. and that's with all 3 going all-out. another 50W for mobo junk, and another 30W for hard drives, and maybe 30W for fans. we're up to..... 150+150+150+50+30+30... i need a calculator...560W. you've got a bit of room, and assuming your PSU is running at 85% efficiency you haven't blown any circuits.... yet. but you're getting damn close. if your CPU and GPU aren't as power-hungry, then you're safer.

if you end up doing the 660+PSU route, then the PSU doesn't get obsoleted anywhere near as quickly as the other stuff. but, you have to account for PCIe bus limitations - running two cards will (almost definitely) cause each to run at x8 instead of x16, unless you get AMD's 990FX board, which means different CPU, which means pain-in-the-butt OS reinstall.....

 

[crisptofuring]

^^ he's right, you're cutting it close. However i think we've established his CPU power consumption. the 3570k has a TDP of 90W or something and never consumes 150W unless it's like a 5 GHz overclock. I think his 650W PSU will be fine as long as it's got about 85% efficiency (prob 80+ bronze level stuff)

 

[giantbucket]

yeah, ok, then that's better, frees up 60W from my quick-n-dirty calc. and 30W for fans might be much (but might be fair for water-cooling). so, 650W should be fine.

 

[Noshiz]

Thanks again for you answers.

It seems that i won't be needing a new PSU. Current one does have 80 PLUS and it runs at 85% efficiency. It's Cooler Master GX 650 80 Plus and according to the official site the above numbers are correct, plus it says that the max output is 780W, can this be true?.

The CPU Intel 3570k according to Intel site, has a max TDP of 77W.

The GTX 660 by ASUS (with the Direct CU II cooling system) has up to 150W power consumption.

So a total of 377W for both cards and the CPU, so i guess i am good with the current PSU then.

 

[giantbucket]

yup, you're good with the current PSU. you should add a few watts to your 377 for hard drives (roughly 10W per drive) and for the motherboard itself (probably 30W to 50W), but yeah overall you should be just fine.

by the way, what is the model of your motherboard? is your second PCIe-x16 slot at least an x8 slot or is it a x4 slot (electrically)?

 

[Noshiz]

Since i am getting a new motherboard now, to support the SLI, i am between this ASUS P8Z77-V PRO and this ASUS P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3, they have a difference of 100 Euro (at my country at least) so am thinking which one to get.

The current one is GIGABYTE Z77M-D3H, cheaper than the above 2 motherboards and it doesn't support SLI.

Both the ASUS above do support the stuff on the rest of my system, like RAM and the ofc the CPU.