GTX 470 upgrade to what

tigertank · 11 Jun 2011 at 01:22

Hello i have a MSI twin fronzr 470..i was wondering what GPU i would upgrade to from a 470? nothing wrong with it..just what i would upgrade to when the time comes.

Thank you in adrance

robin66 · 11 Jun 2011 at 01:45

If you have SLI on your motherboard, you might want to think about adding another 470. 470's are nice and cheap at the moment.

Doing the above should give you a nice boost until new cards are released.

Lelouch · 11 Jun 2011 at 02:00

Agreed to what robin66 has said. If your motherboard can support SLI, then it's best to get another GTX470 for SLI configuration. It will give you a performance greater than a single GTX580.

If your motherboard doesn't support it then I'd recommend getting either of the following

HD6950, HD6970, GTX570 or GTX580.

stevie_vee · 11 Jun 2011 at 06:06

I'm in the same situation. What would be the minimum PSU requirement for twin 470's? I have a corsair 750w at the mo.

robin66 · 11 Jun 2011 at 09:22

stevie_vee said:
I'm in the same situation. What would be the minimum PSU requirement for twin 470's? I have a corsair 750w at the mo.

You should be fine with that PSU, it's a good quality brand also.

Here's a link for you to make a comparison.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-470-2-3-way-sli-review/23

Marine-RX179 · 11 Jun 2011 at 10:28

I would say try overclocking your GTX470 to around 800MHz+, and it will be around as fast as GTX480.

Marvin · 11 Jun 2011 at 10:34

I would leave it as-is for now and wait until Q3/4 - all the taxing looking games are coming out then, as well as the new GPU series from AMD and Nvidia.

As Marine said, overclock it - it's a Twin FrozR, so you should have plenty of headroom.

tigertank · 11 Jun 2011 at 11:19

Never OCed a gpu before

so don't know what to touch :/.

And my Mobo isent Sli board, its a P7P55 LX Intel P55 Express.

Michaeljcox24 · 11 Jun 2011 at 13:25

I'm in the same boat, my board only supports crossfire. However, the current batch of games run very well on the card and with an overclocked 470 at 850Mhz, there is very little justification to upgrade to anything else unless you win the lottery and splash on a three 120Mhz NVidia 3D surround rig. For one monitor, upgrading from 470 at the moment would be a bad decision.

To overclock it, download MSI Afterburner and Unigine Heaven benchmark, unlock voltage control, and increase the core clock speed by 20Mhz. Then run the benchmark on loop for 1/2 hour. If you dont crash, go back to your desktop and increase it by another 20Mhz.

Eventually, you'll get to a stage where it crashes out. At that point, you can increase the voltage. Stock voltage is 950mV, and you can go up to 1087mV. You should increase it in increments of 10mV each time, then re-run the benchmark to see if the increase in voltage has stabilised the card and prevented the crash.

With an VF-3000F cooler on the card, you can max out the voltage and run at a very high overclock. I've benched mine at 900, but for games it runs at 850, the only problem being if I increase AA in a game I soon get fps drops. With AA on low though, I'm pleased with its performance and wont be upgrading till the 6000 series cards come out.

Randomface74 · 11 Jun 2011 at 13:32

At the moment you'd probably get a 570, you wouldn't see a massive performance leap - but you'd have better acoustics and thermals.

Marvin · 11 Jun 2011 at 15:12

billysielu said:
At the moment you'd probably get a 570, you wouldn't see a massive performance leap - but you'd have better acoustics and thermals.

Not with the Twin FrozR that he has.

rolypolyman · 11 Jun 2011 at 16:39

Michaeljcox24 said:
I'm in the same boat, my board only supports crossfire. However, the current batch of games run very well on the card and with an overclocked 470 at 850Mhz, there is very little justification to upgrade to anything else unless you win the lottery and splash on a three 120Mhz NVidia 3D surround rig. For one monitor, upgrading from 470 at the moment would be a bad decision. '

You could try 6870CF for £250, that setup eats a 580 for breakfast. I've been considering my options as I'm due to upgrade my Mb\Cpu\ram, however as I only surf and game on my computer I wouldn't see a great improvement, even going SB 2500K, so was thinking improving the graphics is the way to go.

daveash · 11 Jun 2011 at 16:46

I'd agree with what has been said. OCing your 470 can give you a 20%ish performance boost for the time being (and with MSI Afterburner it's very easy) and then upgrade when the next bath of cards come out.

Marvin · 11 Jun 2011 at 18:20

rolypolyman said:
Michaeljcox24 said:

I'm in the same boat, my board only supports crossfire. However, the current batch of games run very well on the card and with an overclocked 470 at 850Mhz, there is very little justification to upgrade to anything else unless you win the lottery and splash on a three 120Mhz NVidia 3D surround rig. For one monitor, upgrading from 470 at the moment would be a bad decision.

Click to expand...

You could try 6870CF for £250, that setup eats a 580 for breakfast. I've been considering my options as I'm due to upgrade my Mb\Cpu\ram, however as I only surf and game on my computer I wouldn't see a great improvement, even going SB 2500K, so was thinking improving the graphics is the way to go.

The major issue with 6870 CF is VRAM, though that's probably mainly due to me using 2560x1600, whereas at 1920x1200 or below it's less of an issue.

rolypolyman · 11 Jun 2011 at 18:31

Yeh, someone needs to come up with a way for both graphics cards vram to be accessable to prolong the life of 1Gb cards in sli\cf. You would have thought they'd(techies) have solved that problem or is there a very simple reason that I'm not aware of. :confused:

tigertank · 11 Jun 2011 at 18:40

thanks for the sugestions! I still have a AMD xfx 6870 since it came out..wasent keen on it..so i went for the 470 when OCers had it on offer lol :s..but liked the 470 more

Marine-RX179 · 11 Jun 2011 at 19:17

You really have to look into overclocking the GTX470...running it at stock speed and not overclocking it...it is almost as bad as running Q6600 at stock speed and not overclock it

tigertank · 11 Jun 2011 at 19:55

i will look in to it...i have a i5-760 since last year and its sitting nicely on 3.6ghz..

Marvin · 11 Jun 2011 at 22:00

rolypolyman said:
Yeh, someone needs to come up with a way for both graphics cards vram to be accessable to prolong the life of 1Gb cards in sli\cf. You would have thought they'd(techies) have solved that problem or is there a very simple reason that I'm not aware of.

I think there needs to be a higher bandwidth link between the cards to allow them to share memory. It would be good if newer series of cards allowed for sharing of VRAM rather than duplication, or maybe alternate line rendering, which might give a similar effect (half the vertical lines per card). Perhaps this could be achieved by a higher bandwidth link between the cards besides an SLI/Crossfire bridge (maybe a PCI-E x16 link on/between the cards).

Michaeljcox24 · 11 Jun 2011 at 23:00

If I was to upgrade graphics, it would be to a 3D Vision monitor and high end card with more Vram than the 470 has to offer. I can live without AA, and the 470 overclocked maintains a steady 50 - 60 fps in the games I go on at the moment. If there was a game out there that demanded a 580 or higher (in future), it's a no brainer, but with all the console ports at the moment, it aint worth it.