Kepler and Me..

[jinxpad]

Hey guys,


So as you can see in my sig, I'm currently running a single 480 under water and am very happy with it. I did want to get a second one back when they were readily available for around £200, and then all of a sudden the price hike happened and I found myself not wanting to pay pretty much near 580 prices.

So with the refurb cards that OCUK have released the opportunity is back. But it's a few months further down the line from before and Kepler is due in 2012.

My question is, should I;

a) Grab another 480 while they are nice and cheap, watercool it, and then wait for 2nd gen Kepler cards.

b) Just wait for 1st gen Kepler cards and upgrade then depending on the performance increase from my 480.

c) SLI 480's and possibly skip Kepler all together.

d) Just wait for 2nd gen Kepler cards.

From what I understand of the nVidia roadmap, Maxwell GPU's are planned for 2013, and if I go down the Kepler 2nd gen road I might SLI those, and the performance jump from Kepler to Maxwell is apparently not as big as Fermi to Kepler (although I'm no super tech guy so I could be completely wrong >_<) so I think I'd be quite happy to skip Maxwell if I went SLI Kepler.

I'm planning to play the following titles for the most part of 2012 as I can see:

Battlefield 3
Diablo 3
Guild Wars 2
and more Starcraft 2

Those are the titles which will be taking up a majority of my time, so taking into account these titles as well, what would you guys suggest of the options above.

I'll be watercooling Kepler as well if I do go down that route, and I'll probably grab a meaty 1200w corsair AX PSU at some point down the line as well.

Cheers all!

 

[Yamahahahahaha]

I'd be surprised if a high-end Nvidia or AMD part arrived any sooner than Q2 2012.

Assuming you're playing at 1920 x 1080 resolution:
Battlefield 3 specs are the same as Battlefield: Bad Company 2 - no reason to upgrade.
Diablo 3 - name one Blizzard game which has pushed hardware? WoW only does because it's poorly written.
Starcraft 2 doesn't really need more than a 480.
Guild Wars 2 has no recommended specs.

In summation, maybe wait for the Guild Wars 2 recommended specs to come out, but otherwise I don't think you need a second card.

 

[Mr. May2]

i would say go A but then you'll need a new psu if you planing on overclocking to them specs

 

[harmony]

I'd say it pretty much depends on the remaining capacity of your PSU, radiator and pump.

If you believe adding in another GTX480 wouldn't cause any trouble, then I'd go for it, and see how the 1st gen Kepler flagship performs (and likely to skip 1st gen).

Keep in mind that the GTX580 is not sifgnificantly faster than the GTX480, therefore I wouldn't care much if they are sold for similar prices, especially water-cooling eliminates the noise problems.

GTX480 SLI is still a very strong setup - you only lose the halo effect of showing off it to newbies "look I have the shiny latest hardware!"

 

[Incinerat0r]

If I were you I'd wait, I have a 6970 which is around the same performance level as a 480 and went and bought a second for crossfire but frankly was disappointed (I ended up selling it). The only thing I gained was the ability to turn up the AA in a few of the highly demanding titles such as Crysis and Metro and have fluid FPS. The trade off for me was heat, noise, power consumption and having to turn Crossfire off for a lot of older titles I play as they would crash/glitch a lot, it was more trouble than it was worth.

Obviously it's up to you, I don't know what res you play at but I'm running 1920x1200 and one 6970 is enough for the games of today. Personally I can live without a little eye candy for the sake of smooth FPS if it's needed in the soon to be released titles, if having all the eye candy is what you want and the epeen that goes with it then by all means go ahead!

 

[Flashheart]

The only thing stopping me from sli'ing 480's is the fact I need to spend at least £100 on a new PSU.

It becomes less of a great deal then. At the moment I have a 480 at 840mhz and it chews through everything at max settings at 1900x1200.

The only reason I want another one is because they are so cheap

 

[1kiwi]

I've been thinking about doing the same. Even if you got the 480 for £200, then it's also another £50 for the block.

I think it's just best to wait for the beta to start (Sep 25th) and then go from there.

 

[jinxpad]

Some really good points fella's much appreciated.

The way I see it, if I'm paying for a PC gaming rig I would like it indeed to run as at high a quality as I possibly can. I'm sure this applies to all of us, but where we differ is how much we're willing to spend / have available to spend.

Personally I don't mind spending a fair bit, I'm past the days of upgrading with practically every iteration of graphics cards. I really even only got the 480 because it was priced very well and my GTX260 died

Now I kind of want to get something that's going to last for a good while, at least for another year or so. With the performance of SLI doing very well I'm looking to possibly go down that route at some point.

My watercooling loop I can upgrade later on if I need to, and I see this as an investment as I can use it to cool future upgrades anyway, the PSU as well as I'd like to get an AX1200 to futureproof myself (my enermax Galaxy has served me very well for over 4 years now). These components I know will last a long time.

But as we all know, graphics performance is a whole different matter.

the BF3 alpha performed very well, but it's still that, an Alpha build. I guess I can wait for the beta to start next month, but with the fluctuating prices I'll be gutted if I find myself wishing I bought the second card.

Arrrrrgh decision decisions, I guess I'd have to indeed get another block so I'd be essentially paying £240~.


With that in mind, I'm really stuck haha >_<

 

[Duff-Man]

Now I kind of want to get something that's going to last for a good while, at least for another year or so. With the performance of SLI doing very well I'm looking to possibly go down that route at some point.

If you're happy with what you have for the time being, then waiting for the next generation of high-end cards (either AMD or Nvidia) is probably worthwhile. The 28nm manufacturing process should allow some fairly large jumps in performance.

 

[1kiwi]

Something else that I'm thinking about is whether a second card will actually improve my min frames. To my mind that's all I care about given that the difference between 70&100fps is not that noticeable, I just want to avoid any sudden drops in frames at the point when I really need them. I could be wrong but crossfire and sli typically don't improve min frames that much over a single card.

EDIT: Seems that it does:

 

[jinxpad]

i totally agree, It's the minimum framerates I want to remain at 60+. I run all my games at 1900x1200, and I love being able to select it knowing I wont have to turn it down etc.

EDIT:

After reading all the posts here, and weighing up a few other factors, I think I might stick with my solo 480 for now and possibly wait till second gen Kepler. In the meantime I'll upgrade the core components which will not need to be upgraded for a long time i.e.

* Getting a 240 radiator fitted into my case
* Getting an AX1200

This way I'll be ready for whatever route I choose in the future.

 

[dazzerd]

Some really good points fella's much appreciated.

The way I see it, if I'm paying for a PC gaming rig I would like it indeed to run as at high a quality as I possibly can. I'm sure this applies to all of us, but where we differ is how much we're willing to spend / have available to spend.

Personally I don't mind spending a fair bit, I'm past the days of upgrading with practically every iteration of graphics cards. I really even only got the 480 because it was priced very well and my GTX260 died

Now I kind of want to get something that's going to last for a good while, at least for another year or so. With the performance of SLI doing very well I'm looking to possibly go down that route at some point.

My watercooling loop I can upgrade later on if I need to, and I see this as an investment as I can use it to cool future upgrades anyway, the PSU as well as I'd like to get an AX1200 to futureproof myself (my enermax Galaxy has served me very well for over 4 years now). These components I know will last a long time.

But as we all know, graphics performance is a whole different matter.

the BF3 alpha performed very well, but it's still that, an Alpha build. I guess I can wait for the beta to start next month, but with the fluctuating prices I'll be gutted if I find myself wishing I bought the second card.

Arrrrrgh decision decisions, I guess I'd have to indeed get another block so I'd be essentially paying £240~.


With that in mind, I'm really stuck haha >_<

Hi m8 I was in the same boat as you when I was doing an upgrade to a new case and managed to pick up a new 480 for 150 squid. Great upgrade im solid 60fps in every game I throw at it with silly amounts of aa. Really impressed as I was worried about moving to sli.

Regarding PSU I originally has a corsair ax750 (fabulous psu) but moved up to an ax1200 (great psu, but noisy compared to ax750) so sent the ax1200 back and got an ax850 it is solid as a rock and as quiet as the ax750.

I also run two pumps, 14 fans and 7 hard drives from this psu and doesn't miss a beat. If I were you I would save some cash and get an ax850 and save yourslef a fair bit of cash, it has more than enough ooomph unless you plan on going tri sli in the future.

 

[jinxpad]

Wow now that's interesting to know. Im running a fair bit less than you in only running 4 HDD and a single pump. Hmmm if the AX850 Can run all that then I think id be fine with the galaxy 850. gahh I still think though I might wait till second Gen kepler though.