stuck....what card to use

[lee20010]

I was just about to order a 6950 when a thread regarding the 7 series came to mind. The jump between say 6850 and 6950 isn't massive. I don't know what to do. Get a 6950 now or find a cheap 460 and run sli. Then sell them both for a 7 series card. Question is, would 2 460's run ok. Also could I use a 1gb version with mine?

 

[Surveyor]

You can't SLI a 1GB GTX 460 with a 768MB GTX 460.

Is your motherboard even SLI compatible? Most AMD boards aren't.

 

[mickyflinn]

Two GeForce GTX 460 1 GB cards in SLI or Radeon HD 6850s in CrossFire beat down a single GeForce GTX 570 or Radeon HD 6970 most of the time. While the performance potential of these solutions is very high, keep in mind is that resolutions beyond 1080p may require more than 1 GB of on-board memory for unconstrained frame rates, especially when using high levels of anti-aliasing.

Take a look at the article it may help

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-performance-radeon-geforce,3018-5.html

 

[lee20010]

Yes my mobo supports sli and crossfire. Well would 2x 460 768mb run well?

 

[rolypolyman]

They would run well....but....768mb of Vram is not a lot depending on your resolution.

 

[lee20010]

I assumed 2x 768 would = total vram as 1.5gb? I play at 1600x1024 but would like it at 1080p. What's your thoughts?

 

[arc@css]

No, two 768mb cards will still amount to only 768mb. That said, I think you'll be fine at your res, providing you don't expect high levels of AA, demanding mods etc.

 

[iostream]

As arc@css said, you'll only have 768mb of vram to play with. Since the cards are rendering the same objects, they need to have identical copies of information in the vram. Think of it as a RAID 1 (mirror) array rather than a RAID 0 array

 

[rolypolyman]

I assumed 2x 768 would = total vram as 1.5gb? I play at 1600x1024 but would like it at 1080p. What's your thoughts?

If you want 1080p then 768mb will not be enough in some games.

 

[lee20010]

What should I do....

 

[arc@css]

How do you find the performance of your 460 generally? If you're quite happy with it then I would buy another. Perhaps consider second hand.

 

[lee20010]

With some games like dead island its fine. But playing the witcher 2 or dues ex...it wasn't great on medium/high. The upgrade is needed for BF3 and Skyrim