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7900GTX SLI (x2) to GTX 260 OC 216

Dodgey

Dodgey

Dodgey

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12 Mar 2009
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13
Hi peeps. Been out of the PC game for 16 months (traveling). Got back, grabbed GTA IV and Far Cry 2 and now it seems I could do with some more graphics power.

GTA IV plays fine(ish) - around 24fps average during the day, but at night with water on the road it chugs a fair bit. I can crank down settings a bit more but to be honest, I don't want to! Running mainly Medium with the odd high, and 21 / 18 as my draw / detail distance.

FC2 runs fine until I'm in a vehicle. Also get some chug on foot occasionally.

Running a 1280x1024 panel, on a Dell XPS 700 (Nforce 590i), 2Gb ram, E6700 2.67 Ghz proc. With two 7900 GTX cards in SLI (512Mb)

I've done a load of reading and it seems the GTX 260 is a good choice and price point. I get the impression it's about 2 times faster than my current SLI setup (running ONE 260). It's hard to judge as benchmarks for the 7900GTX are usually run on older games and versions of 3D mark, and benches of the 260 are run on newer games, so hard to compare. But I've got a good general feeling.

The 260 OC cards (640 clock and upwards) seem a good choice as they seem to grab about 5 to 8 FPS over the standard cards and come close to the stock 280. I want to avoid doing the OC myself as I've got put off by trying with limited success with my SLI setup. The extra shaders/pipes? on the 216 cards seem to make very little difference, though at the higher clocks the 216 spec seems to come as standard.

Does what I've worked out sound about right?

Also, I've been running 4:3 panels for years (I have 20" NEC) and I get the impression that since I've been away everyone has gone widescreen. Are the games now supporting them natively? With all this new power form the 260 maybe it's time I went wide. Is there a "standard" resolution people tend to go for?

I'm on a budget, so Upgrading the card, and possible a new screen are my main options at the moment (motherboard is next to impossible to upgrade on the XPS 700 - proprietary BTX)
 
Thanks for the links (screen looks nice) - I'm more curious if I'm on the right track regarding performance. I can find the cards no problem.
 
The GTX 260 (216SP) would do you nicely and should give you approx the 2x increase your are looking for since:

2 x7900 ~ 8800
2 x 8800 ~ GTX260 / 280

Definately a significant upgrade though I wouldn't pay to much extra for a factory overclocked card. They all have virtually the same cooler and with tools like EVGA precision it really is very easy.

Also the cards with the most issues on here seem to be factory clocked so it's not a guarentee that the card will be stable at that speed, more that they will swap out the card if it isn't. They often expect you to pay postage to them and you're without the card while it goes through.

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Id get the 4870 1gb out of those, as even though they are both on par performance wise, the 4870 is a fiver cheaper, and it has more memory. :)
 
Excellent! - that answers my question. Thanks

(p.s. I think I'll stick with Nvidia - From what I've read so far, it seems overclocking the ATI card doesn't seem to result in real world FPS increases of any substance)
 
I dunno, I've had that ATI cooler as well as a 280 and they both made about the same amount of noise.
 
not sure if the GTX260 makes the same noise as the GTX280, but ive also had both and the 4870 cooler was a fair bit louder tbh. a vry good card, but a tad bit louder.
 
Eh, the 4870's pretty much silent at idle. At load, it does spin up a bit, and at load I'd say it was louder than my old 8800 GTS 320MB (personally that's not an issue as at load I'm wearing a headset). This is with the side of my case off, actually, I never run with the side on as I don't have the damn thing!

This is at all stock settings, since I'm not overclocking the card (no point, everything runs fine at whatever settings I dictate anyway), and the fan profiles haven't been tweaked at all, so the card runs pretty warm (77C idle, 83C load), but oh well, it's under warranty.

I think that the 4870's main problem is the blower fan, they're inherently inefficient and the 4870 does indeed generate a fair bit of heat to get rid of. I notice that ramping the fan up a bit (above about 35% it starts to get fairly noisy) cools the card down significantly (to about 53C idle). I think attaching a standard case fan to the cooler would cool the card down quite significantly.

That said, whilst I've not tried a GTX260 or 280 personally, a few review sites seem to show that objectively speaking, a GTX260 or 280 is noisier than a 4870.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Zotac/GeForce_GTX_295/29.html
http://techreport.com/articles.x/14990/15
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/evga-geforce-gtx285ssc_5.html#sect0

But then noise is really more relevant as a subjective measure. Those're just the first few links that I came across that had noise measuring benchmarks featuring the two cards in question. As it happens, not that many sites actually seem to do noise measuring in their tests.
 
rounddodger said:
Regardless, I'd have the 260 over it any day tbh, esp for fiver diff.
Click to expand...


Exactly, the 4870 was a better buy when it was much cheaper, now it isn't much cheaper. So the 260, the better card overall is the better buy.

Performance is very similair, but the 260 is quieter, runs cooler, and has better driver support.
 
Your cpu is almost certainly holding you back in GTA4, at 2.67ghz and with only 2 cores it will really struggle (my 3.15ghz C2D / GTX280 rig gets annihilated by people with quad core and a 8800GTS). I suspect you would get a minimal performance increase from ditching 7900GTX-SLI. My recommendation would be to set the draw/detail distance to 1 as that will boost your fps a bit.
 
Funny actually. I played with the draw detail distance and I've found that where it is now (21 from memory - not near my PC right now) - gives me nice visuals and ok performance during the day and night. It's just night Plus rain that hurts big time.

During the day, 1-21 distance setting has 2 or 3 fps impact at most.

If I drop down to 1 then night + rain is ok - but I can live with the minor inconvenience. I just play around doing doughnuts and shooting people when it rains at night :-)

Will report back in about 2 weeks to tell how the switch to the 260 affects things- PC is in the post to Italy - I'm moving there next week so bought the 260 as it is a lot pricier over there, that and the strong Euro.

Will look at CPU upgrades, though I'm fairly sure my XPS 700 is fairly limited in upgrade options. WIll have to start building a new rig I guess. SHame as the XPS case is a thing of beauty, and the cooling is near silent at idle and not bad at all under load.
 
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