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GTX 480 - upgrade to?

Vegeta

Vegeta

Vegeta

Soldato
Joined
6 Nov 2004
Posts
5,803
Hi I've got a Nvidia GTX 480. Got it about 6 months back maybe. The card run's a bit hot for me. I'd like to replace it with a card that is more economical and has better power. What is the best upgrade option bang for buck? My system has 8gb ram and a I5 2500K @4.4ghz so the rest of my pc is still ok? Thank you.
 
Is the rest of my system considered ok? How much would I get for my 480 realistically?

Sorry to sound stupid but PC hardware moves on very quick if you don't pay attention for a bit you lose track of what's good and what's not.
 
The rest of your pc is absolutely fine. For bang for buck, you might consider a 7950. If you want to stay with Nvidia, you might take a look at the gtx670 which will be released later this month iirc.
 
Ok how do the Nvidia 670 and Ati 7950 compare in performance between each other, compared to my 480 and their price ranges? Thank you.
 
The 480 is still a damn fast card and there is still nothing massively faster on the market. The 680 is quite a bit quicker bench wise, but I doubt you'd really notice it in many games considering the 480 rips through everything you throw at it. It will take years for the power saving to pay for the upgrade. I have no plans to upgrade my 480 yet anyway.
 
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You could put a custom heat sink on it if you don't need any extra grunt. I went from sli 480gtx to single 480gtx due to a card dieing and I never even noticed the difference in games.
 
I've got a customer Zalman cooler on it with a dual fan. Performance wise it is more than enough but I just don't like how much it heat's up my tiny room and I don't like the idea of something that power hungry stressing out my PSU etc or the heat it's producing around all the other components. It's not about saving money just more convenience and a new card with a performance boost wouldn't be a bad side effect. The 7950 look's the most promising I'll wait for the GTX 670 and see how that is but most likely I'll go for the AMD unless there is a reason to avoid it?
 
I have to agree with the guys saying stick with your 480 a little longer. I have mine running under WC, and it still chomps through anything I want to play. I wanted to get Kepler cards but I just cant justify the performance for the price compared to what I currently get atm.

So with that in mind I can hold on a little longer to my trusty 480 :D
 
I don't want to sound like a total **** but the money really is not a issue I'm a grown man with a job so the thought of saving that bit of money doesn't really bother me. How hot the card is bother's me and I just like thing's hassle free I don't want to waterecool my system or anything like that. Which would be the best 7950 to get with a good cooler? There are a lot of the cards with 1 fan setups at £299.99 except the VTX3D HD 7950 X-Edition 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card - AMD 3 for FREE Promotion which has a dual fan setup, a higher clock all for the same price. There is an array of other cards at £330 with slightly higher clocks (easily achieved myself I'm sure) but with dual fan setups. Which would be the best out of them or are all the dual fan setups basically the same? Should I just wait for the VTX3D card at £300?
 
Is that the one fan setup? I'd prefer a 2 fan setup. I'm leaning towards the Sapphire as it has the highest clock along with the Asus at 900 Mhz for the core however it only requires 2 slot's rather than 3 of the Asus although I assume this would make the Asus a better cooler marginally.
 
The edition X version.

I've got of the 7970, the 7950 is the same

GX-007-VX_400.jpg
 
IvanDobskey said:
The 480 is still a damn fast card and there is still nothing massively faster on the market. The 680 is quite a bit quicker bench wise, but I doubt you'd really notice it in many games considering the 480 rips through everything you throw at it. It will take years for the power saving to pay for the upgrade. I have no plans to upgrade my 480 yet anyway.
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+1
 
Vegeta said:
I've got a customer Zalman cooler on it with a dual fan. Performance wise it is more than enough but I just don't like how much it heat's up my tiny room and I don't like the idea of something that power hungry stressing out my PSU etc or the heat it's producing around all the other components. It's not about saving money just more convenience and a new card with a performance boost wouldn't be a bad side effect. The 7950 look's the most promising I'll wait for the GTX 670 and see how that is but most likely I'll go for the AMD unless there is a reason to avoid it?
Click to expand...

Will you be putting it on the members market then? I kind of miss having 480gtx sli even though I'm not sure how much I need it. Currently in the process of an RMA with my current 480GTX. It's possible that if I get something like a 570GTX back we could just swap if you wanted as a 570GTX is of no use to me.
 
I bought a 7950 to check how it performs @ 2560x1440. Put it at 7970 speed and altough it uses about 300watt less from the wall and doesn't stutter i am pretty disappointed by it's performance in bf3. My SLI gtx 480 is much faster. Think i should've done more homework. SLI is going back in there! I'll upgrade to gtx 680 4gb after my holiday:)
 
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