Upgrade from a GTX480

[Swordfish125]

I've just purchased a new System, FX8320, 16gb Ram, Running on a sabretooth board.
Currently I have a GTX480, which I feel is still pretty decent, but it runs hot and eats my electricity. I still only game at 1680x1050 as I have dual monitors that I like and If I dual my screens have to match and I cant afford to change them.

I am on a budget of approx £300 tops. Im After better performance than my 480 with the aim of getting a new monitors in the future with higher resolution, perhaps in 6 months.

Any ideas on what to get? I have had both ATI and Nvidia in the past and have no preference with either, I have found nvidia to be slightly more reliable driver wise for some reason however.

So just looking for opinions and ideas, I'm doing plenty of reading, but I get bored!!

Thanks

 

[Sliver]

If you could manage an extra £20 then this would be a great upgrade. (hey what are credit cards for )

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-202-MS&groupid=701&catid=1914&subcat=1750

 

[wellibob]

Always get the best you can afford. Is the upgrade worth it, if you want more fps and everything on max. Absolutely.

 

[mjones1]

I would honestly hold out till the new AMD cards, it's not like you reall need the extra performance.

 

[Marine-RX179]

I would honestly hold out till the new AMD cards, it's not like you reall need the extra performance.

^This

If you are not getting the new monitors for another 6 months, you might as well wait for next gen cards.

To be honest, I don't think your GTX480 is actually used fully 99% usage for 1680 res, unless it is the more demanding games.

There's a few things you could do for cutting down the heat and power consumption on your GTX480.

1) Cap your frame rate to 60fps using MSI Afterburner etc, that way the GTX480 won't be rendering frame beyond 60fps (highest your monitor can display), thus cutting down the unnecessary load on the graphic card

2) Downvolting and downclocking your GTX480. Again, you can do this with MSI Afterburner. You can set up multiple profiles, with for example lower clock profiles for the less demanding games, and higher clock profiles for more demanding games.

 

[Duff-Man]

As others have said - if you're not looking to upgrade for a few months then you should wait until closer to the time.

In six months I'd expect 20nm cards to be pretty close to appearing, and 20nm will bring a serious jump in performance (probably ~70-80% bump over ~GTX780 levels). Wait until you need the extra GPU grunt and then get the best card at the time.