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Going from Sli XTX 460 to Single GPU?

kPATm

kPATm

kPATm

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Greenock, Scotland
Hello. So I recently bought another GTX460 to go SLi. Im actually happy with it for the most part but as usual heat is my enemy. Now I have been thinking of going single GPU but I dont know what card to get that would be comparable/better than my SLi GTX460's.

I have the 1gb models so I would definitely be looking foe a 2gb card. Budget under £200 but I would consider a second hand card. Nvidia or AMD.

The rig you see in my sig will be updated soon to

Asus Maximus IV Gene-Z/Gen3

8gb G Skill RipJawX

i5 3570k

Thanks
 
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Hi, if your still happy with your sli can you not improve your case cooling, you could try to fit a 120mm fan so it blows air between the gap of your GPU's. This should solve your heat problem a lot cheaper than buying another GPU.
 
I have just bought a Cooler Master HAF 912 advance. I just waiting on ram and a kind soul from these very forums is sending me a Sandy Bridge CPU so I can update my Gene-Z mobo bios to allow Ivy Bridge.

I dont know about temps yet as obviously the PC isnt built yet but from what Iv read it may get rather toasty?
 
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Cool Breeze said:
No it would be a huge step up, your e8400 however would become a bottle neck at some point.
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Really :confused: The 460 is still a fairly capable card and I doubt 2 of them in SLi would be that much slower than a 660ti, certainly not the "huge step up" you're implying.
 
Cool Breeze said:
Having owned both I can assure you it is.
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Let's see some benchmark figures then. Prove it to me :p

Here's some quick benchmark comparisons taken from Anandtech.

As far as I can tell a GTX 660ti is comparable to a 580GTX dependant on games - link.

460 SLi is comparable to a 580GTX and you could argue the 460 SLi is slightly ahead, dependant on games of course - link.

Again not the huge leap you seem to indicate. Granted a 660Ti will obviously run cooler and quieter, but unless a game doesn't support SLi very well then the 460's should be fairly similar in terms of performance.
 
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I switched from sli gtx 470's to a single gtx 670. It wasnt a massive increase tbh, pretty much on a par in average/max fps, once oc'd though the 670 pulls ahead a bit. Minimums were a lot better though, and i can run with higher levels of aa as im not hampered by vram limits in games i play. The major plus points were a reduction in heat, noise and power usage.
 
SLI 460's are still a decent set-up, even if a little old now. Not something you'd go out and buy but you need to make sure an upgrade is an upgrade.

Depending on the game SLI 460's will be in the ballpark with a GTX660TI

The GTX660TI will be cooler, allow more AA due to increased memory and supports latest DX11.1

A GTX670 with decent OC would make a nicer upgrade

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2xGTX 460 is something like GTX 660. It depends on model you've got, I've got 2x MSI Hawks which are o'c-ed by manufacturer and they are a bit faster than single, stock GTX 660 - I've compared it to some guy here who've done such upgrade.

So to avoid disappointment minimum single card is GTX 660Ti or Radeon HD7950. Single card would give you nice minFPS boost as 460s are 1GB only, so less "spikes" will appear during gaming. More AA (and faster AA modes, as new AA technologies mean lower FPS drops), less power consumption, heat and whoosh = it's too obvious to repeat. GTX 6xx cards seem to have better memory management over 5xx series, so small improvements can be seen in BF3 as I've read.
 
coupe69 said:
Let's see some benchmark figures then. Prove it to me :p

Here's some quick benchmark comparisons taken from Anandtech.

As far as I can tell a GTX 660ti is comparable to a 580GTX dependant on games - link.

460 SLi is comparable to a 580GTX and you could argue the 460 SLi is slightly ahead, dependant on games of course - link.

Again not the huge leap you seem to indicate. Granted a 660Ti will obviously run cooler and quieter, but unless a game doesn't support SLi very well then the 460's should be fairly similar in terms of performance.
Click to expand...

The trouble is the 460's are gimped on vram and bus width, so if you play at 1280x1024 then yea great similar performance, at 1080p however SLI 460's are just a bottleneck.

And clocked a 660ti performs within a nats **** of a 670 but I will agree the smart money would be to buy a 7950 .
 
It upgraded my finances PC from 2x Gigabyte GTX 460 OC 1GB SLi to MSi GTX 660 TwinFrozr OC 2GB, and she actually gained a bit better performance in DX 10/11 games at 1920x1080. 3Dmark11 and Heaven 3.0 scored were actually a few percentages better than the GTX 460 SLi, and Crysis 2 also seemes to have a higher minimum frame rate - maybe because of the greater memory buffer.
 
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