Back in late 2009 I was thinking of moving away from my PS2 and my generic £400 Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop for gaming, I looked around about building my own pc but found it a bit weird just finding nicely priced parts to buy and stick together. In the end I ended up searching around for pre built gaming computers obviously being new to it all Alienware was a cool idea but way out of my £1000 ish... budget so I decided to look on ebay for something, on page 17 I found an Alienware Area-51 X-58 (http://tinyurl.com/p86sv28) after finding this I went to see "Avatar at the cinema with some friends and came back to find my dad had put a bid in for me 
Avatar came out in the cinema around December 10, 2009 so it was around here.
Yea I bought a second hand PC from Ebay, sounds weird and risky but I got to go out with my dad for a day to check it out, the guy was really nice he had it up and running for us when we got to his house.
The specs "were":
MotherBoard: Asus P6T Deluxe V2
CPU: i7 920 2.66Ghz Bloomfield
GPU: two Nvidia GTX 260 "216 core" edition both 1792MB GDDR3 (in SLI)
RAM: 6GB (3x2GB) ELPIDA 2GB 2RX8 PC3-10600U-9-10-B0 DDR3 MEMORY RAM EBJ21UE8BDF0-DJ-F
HDD's: 2x 500GB in Raid 0
PSU: 750W unknown model/brand
It also came with a keyboard/screen/alienware headset/ alienware mouse matt and the origional Roccat Kone
Since buying in 2009 I have made a few minor changes:
Added:6GB Triple Channel DDR3 Corsair Vengeance Memory Kit (CMZ6GX3M3A1600C8)
Added: 3TB Seagate Barracuda
Added: Blueray Read/RW
Added: second monitor 2005 Dell FPW
Added: Logitech 5.1 mini speaker system (90 watt or so)
Upgraded to: Roccat Kone XTD
Upgraded to: Roccat Taito Mid-size/3mm
Upgraded to: Sennheiser RS110 II RF Wireless Headphones (using Alienware headset as desk mic for past 4 years..)
Now onto the actual topic...
My Dad has been worried/moaning about the electric costs of my PC for about a year now.
My GTX260's are obviously outdated and probably not worth the current cost to run for the performance I'm getting anyway
I have looked online and read various wattage pulls for GTX260's most say 25Watt on idle and 182Watt on max, I read somewhere about transistors(?) wearing out and using more energy.
I have two of those running on a 750Watt PSU.
Also they run very hot, with just chrome open and two screen at the moment one is at 61 Degrees Centigrade and the other at 47 Degrees Centigrade, I know one of them has a tiny wobble in it's single fan.
Those cards cause my room to get unbearably hot at times.
Question time
Q1. Would I get more performance out of a 2GB GTX 770 than two 1.8GB GTX 260's? (This is one card running two screens remember)
This is the charts for the performance of the 260 compared to a 770 www.tinyurl.com/qzyujfv
Q2. Would I be able to run a GTX 770 on this 750Watt PSU I have?
Using Tom's Hardware's GTX 770 graphs for power consumption it uses 17Watts on idle with 3 screens and 246Watts on a Torture test.
souce: http://
Q3. If i'm in a game at the moment with my GTX 260's when are they both working combined over 246 watts? (making them use more than the single GTX 770 on full load)
Q4. Do all games make use of my two GPUs?
Q5. Are both my GTX260's always using the more than Idle power in games that do not support SLI like League of Legends? Or is one just sitting there doing nothing wasting power?
Q6. The GTX 770 with cooling by Asus is advertised as very quiet, will it be quieter than my dual 260's pretty much 100% of the time?
I'm thinking of buying this card off of Amazon as it is on sale for £242.90 at the moment which seems reasonable. http://
I was also worried at the moment as now the new consoles are out in the next year or two will games companies start porting PC game that will always require the new GPU's at the time, aka will this GTX 770 be "outdated" quickly because of this apparent "rise in game quality"
Thanks for reading just try to help in anyway you can!
Any Recommendations are welcome, different cards Etc...
(I'm looking to play games like Skyrim with graphics on max with mods!
This another reason I'm looking for a performance upgrade.
Avatar came out in the cinema around December 10, 2009 so it was around here.Yea I bought a second hand PC from Ebay, sounds weird and risky but I got to go out with my dad for a day to check it out, the guy was really nice he had it up and running for us when we got to his house.
The specs "were":
MotherBoard: Asus P6T Deluxe V2
CPU: i7 920 2.66Ghz Bloomfield
GPU: two Nvidia GTX 260 "216 core" edition both 1792MB GDDR3 (in SLI)
RAM: 6GB (3x2GB) ELPIDA 2GB 2RX8 PC3-10600U-9-10-B0 DDR3 MEMORY RAM EBJ21UE8BDF0-DJ-F
HDD's: 2x 500GB in Raid 0
PSU: 750W unknown model/brand
It also came with a keyboard/screen/alienware headset/ alienware mouse matt and the origional Roccat Kone
Since buying in 2009 I have made a few minor changes:
Added:6GB Triple Channel DDR3 Corsair Vengeance Memory Kit (CMZ6GX3M3A1600C8)
Added: 3TB Seagate Barracuda
Added: Blueray Read/RW
Added: second monitor 2005 Dell FPW
Added: Logitech 5.1 mini speaker system (90 watt or so)
Upgraded to: Roccat Kone XTD
Upgraded to: Roccat Taito Mid-size/3mm
Upgraded to: Sennheiser RS110 II RF Wireless Headphones (using Alienware headset as desk mic for past 4 years..)
Now onto the actual topic...
My Dad has been worried/moaning about the electric costs of my PC for about a year now.
My GTX260's are obviously outdated and probably not worth the current cost to run for the performance I'm getting anyway
I have looked online and read various wattage pulls for GTX260's most say 25Watt on idle and 182Watt on max, I read somewhere about transistors(?) wearing out and using more energy.
I have two of those running on a 750Watt PSU.
Also they run very hot, with just chrome open and two screen at the moment one is at 61 Degrees Centigrade and the other at 47 Degrees Centigrade, I know one of them has a tiny wobble in it's single fan.
Those cards cause my room to get unbearably hot at times.
Question time
Q1. Would I get more performance out of a 2GB GTX 770 than two 1.8GB GTX 260's? (This is one card running two screens remember)
This is the charts for the performance of the 260 compared to a 770 www.tinyurl.com/qzyujfv
Q2. Would I be able to run a GTX 770 on this 750Watt PSU I have?
Using Tom's Hardware's GTX 770 graphs for power consumption it uses 17Watts on idle with 3 screens and 246Watts on a Torture test.
souce: http://
Q3. If i'm in a game at the moment with my GTX 260's when are they both working combined over 246 watts? (making them use more than the single GTX 770 on full load)
Q4. Do all games make use of my two GPUs?
Q5. Are both my GTX260's always using the more than Idle power in games that do not support SLI like League of Legends? Or is one just sitting there doing nothing wasting power?
Q6. The GTX 770 with cooling by Asus is advertised as very quiet, will it be quieter than my dual 260's pretty much 100% of the time?
I'm thinking of buying this card off of Amazon as it is on sale for £242.90 at the moment which seems reasonable. http://
I was also worried at the moment as now the new consoles are out in the next year or two will games companies start porting PC game that will always require the new GPU's at the time, aka will this GTX 770 be "outdated" quickly because of this apparent "rise in game quality"
Thanks for reading just try to help in anyway you can!
Any Recommendations are welcome, different cards Etc...
(I'm looking to play games like Skyrim with graphics on max with mods!
This another reason I'm looking for a performance upgrade.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram