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Gpu upgrade

xXBlackxFangXx

xXBlackxFangXx

xXBlackxFangXx

Associate
Joined
25 Oct 2013
Posts
9
Hi all i am looking to up upgrade my gpu and have a few ideas

at the moment i have a gtx 680 zotac 2gb and with the release of the r9 290x it look like a impressive card

so should i get a 680 for sli, r9 290x,780, or a 7990 i cart decided and help would be appreciated

Thanks:)

Adam

PC spec
4770k
gtx 680
16gb ram 1333
 
do you struggle with any games currently?

The 680 is a great card, so much so that nvidia just rebranded it to a 770.

sli is not a bad idea but would be pointless at a lower res such as 1080p also you need a psu capable of powering both cards. 800w minimum at a guess.
 
there are no games out at the moment that i cart run above 60fps.
Apart form games like crysis 3 but i am thinking about future proofing my pc.
Sli is a no brainier but i have herd about people not being able to get it working.
M brother has a 4gb 680 and i tried to sli that with mine but it didn't work.
my guss was the memory size

But yes i have a 1000w psu(overkill i know) and i do game at 1080p.
but when assassins creed 4 and all the next gen games come out i think it will struggle abit
 
Yep - 7990, silly me.

You will be limited to 2gb vram with another 680. Not sure how sensible that would be. I think I would prefer a 3gb card going forward. A 780 would be perfect but they are still overpriced by around £50-100 in most cases. Maybe wait to see how the 780ti/290/290X affects 780 prices in the next few weeks?
 
that makes sense lol.

You are right i will wait a bit to see if the price drops i no i need more than 2 vram now but will wait it out for a few weeks see what happens price wise

Thanks for your help.

Will post back what i decide to do been thinking for about 2 mouths now :)
 
xXBlackxFangXx said:
budget is i would say is a 7990 price range but would go up to a gtx 780 price if most think that's a viable option
Click to expand...
you could pay £500+ for a single GTX 780 which will give you much less FPS then a SLI GTX 680 setup
Or you could pay around £240 for a second GTX 680 to SLI with your GTX 680 ...

Here some benches to help you choose...;)
GTX 680 vs SLI GTX 680 http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/772?vs=766
GTX 780 vs SLI GTX 680 http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/827?vs=766
HD 7990 vs SLI GTX 680 http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/766?vs=813
 
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i know but sli is a wired one 1.

like i said i have read a about people have problems getting them to work

my mate has 2 gtx 660 in sli took us about 5 hours to get them to work .

i have had sli befor and x-fire.

but you have a point as well :)
 
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xXBlackxFangXx said:
my mate has 2 gtx 660 in sli took us about 5 hours to get them to work .
Click to expand...
5 hours :eek: ..What was the problem your mate was getting ?

I had SLI 7800gtx,SLI 8800gtx,SLI gtx 275 and SLI GTX 580 setups and I never really had any problems with SLI
apart from a few games which don't scale very well with SLI
 
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chaparral said:
you could pay £500+ for a single GTX 780 which will give you much less FPS then a SLI GTX 680 setup
Or you could pay around £240 for a second GTX 680 to SLI with your GTX 680 ...

Here some benches to help you choose...;)
GTX 680 vs SLI GTX 680 http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/772?vs=766
GTX 780 vs SLI GTX 680 http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/827?vs=766
HD 7990 vs SLI GTX 680 http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/766?vs=813
Click to expand...

what i find interesting about those benches is how they appear to disprove that VRAM will limit you at higher resolutions... unless the 680 used was a 4gb variant of course.

I've a single 2gb 670, and am intending to upgrade to a 290 or 780 in the next couple of weeks (monitor is 1440p) - but would have gone down the sli route a month back if I hadn't of realised my mobo is an 'le' variant which doesn't support sli.

Now it seems commonly accepted that 2gb cards are not enough at this resolution, and sli is off the table.. unless someone corrects this assumption :D
 
we pu it in and nothing it was picking up the card but no sli option.

then we realised he had to plug in a power cable for sli and still nothing the last thing we tried was swapping the cards around so the bottom card was in the top and top in the bottom slot and then it worked it was a nightmare to get working and i tried my brothers 680 in sli but his was a 4gb so it didn't work so not to sure if i buy one and i cart get it to work its a wast of time

can any one confirm that it was because his was a 4gb card?
 
xXBlackxFangXx said:
can any one confirm that it was because his was a 4gb card?
Click to expand...
I wouldn't recommend trying to SLI two GPU's with different almounts of memory... (To much hassle)

Can I mix and match graphics cards with different sizes of memory?

When purchasing a second graphics card, you should try to match the memory size so that you are ensured full value and performance from your purchase. However, while it is not recommended, NVIDIA does offer the flexibility to run graphics cards with different sized memory by using CoolBits. Using CoolBits (value set to 18), you can force both of the cards to use the lower of the two memory sizes and operate them together in SLI mode. When dissimilar memory sizes are enabled to work together using CoolBits, the effective memory size for each card becomes the smaller of the memory sizes.
Click to expand...
http://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/sli/faq
 
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