New System

[C3PO]

Hi - I've had my i7 950@4Ghz since 2010 now, so a bit long in the tooth but still going great. Last year I married it up to a pair of 2GB GTX 680 cards and I run triple screens at 5760 x 1080.

Next year I'm considering this option (but with 16GB):
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BU-180-OE

and to be bought with the new nVidia Maxwell cards. I am hoping not to have to go SLI immediately but still see a 40% boost to my FPS over my current 680s. I understand the new top of the range GTX 880 cards will have 5GB VRAM and at least 3,000 CUDA cores, which are more than double the combined number on what I have now. Plus the memory bandwidth will be 512GB/s.

My question is whether this will be sufficient to see the FPS increase? I run mainly racing sims (rFactor 2 / Project CARS / iRacing) and very occasionally BFx and MWx.

Thanks for any advice / input. Happy with SLI now, but it's not cheap and hopefully the new tech can deal with the load on a single card.

 

[DaleTheWhale]

Well, we don't know anything about the new Nvidia cards, they may or may not be what they say they will be. After all the 7XX series has only just been released.

Heading down the 4770k route will benefit your system, and will bump your FPS nicely, however cannot comment on next gen cards.

I'm going to be SLI'ing 2 680's myself soon and know that these slightly clocked can beat a 780 & a Titan in some sittings. (However driver tweaks can change the benchmark results)

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/766?vs=764

So come the GTX 880, performance could be equivalent to SLI 770's etc.

My advice: Upgrade to a 4770k which will help performance of the GTX 680's as well.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i7-4770K 3.50GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £239.99
1 x Gigabyte Z87X-OC Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £158.99
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan ORANGE 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLAD38G2400HC11CDC01) £65.99
Total : £475.76 (includes shipping : £9.00).



Looking at not wanting to SLI, you could sell the 680's and grab a 7990?

 

[C3PO]

Thank you!

I'm tempted by the OC-ed bundle being offered here .... that i7 @ 4.6GHz is v tempting.

Probably going to hold off until the spring finance-reasons why, but will be selling my (very well looked-after) 680s then.

AMD cards are not an option for me -- they run badly in the racing sims I use.