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upgrading from a 8800gts 640mb > ?

Soldato
Joined
8 Mar 2005
Posts
4,094
Location
London, UK
I was planning on upgrading my current gpu last autumn but nothing released really took my fancy.
so... I'm now deciding whether now is a good time to revisit..

I mainly (or would like to) play games at 1920x1200 and generally speaking if we exclude crysis, only empire total war seems to be stressing my system. (I'm assuming it's the current gpu limiting the performance.)

Which leads to few factors I need to consider, will the gpu fit in the case? And would a sx38p2 have enough power?

Any suggestions/advice, much appreciated

Cheers, Paul.
 
well theres the 260gtx which will a massive difference compared to the GTS

there 10 n half inchs long

and the 4850/4870 are a bit shorter
 
Hmm, ok, would I really expect a "massive" difference with a 260? I mean if so, I'm sold.
Is it worth even thinking of a 275/285+ (although all moot if they can't fit in the case)
 
Shortest decent GPUs at the moment are the ATi Radeon 48xx series. Bear in mind though they require two PCI-E power plugs that plug in at the end. What is amperage output on your PSU?
 
275 is not much faster than the 260-216, which is the trouble with all these cards, theres only a couple of frames or so between them all, yet the price difference is around £50+, so if it were me, id just get a 260-216 to save some money as its the cheapest, and overclock it to get the extra few frames or so the next card up is faster by. :)
 
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Looks to be a moot point, although not a definitive, shuttles own site does not list any of the 2xx series as compatible (although how upto date these lists are I have no idea).

Regarding current draw from the 8800gts, I cannot rightly recall whether it was 450watts or higher, although I know the silent-x psus on the shuttles are very robust.

Might do some web searches to see whether anyone else has tried it.

Cheers, Paul.
 
from nvidia either the 250, 260 or 275. the 250 is shorter than the other 2 by around 2.5cm & needs only 1 pcie connector, but only beats the 8800gtx by about 25%. But for saying the earlier gts series wasnt much to stand up to the 8800gtx in the first place would be an understatement (no offence).

If you have the room/power supply go for the 260.
 
Aye, some clown managed to get a 280 in the case but only after some serious modification with the shroud. To hell with that!

I'll see whether a 260 is a viable non-mod method.

Cheers, Paul.

EDIT, evidently not, they both use the same shroud. Hey ho..
 
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275 is not much faster than the 260-216, which is the trouble with all these cards, theres only a couple of frames or so between them all, yet the price difference is around £50+, so if it were me, id just get a 260-216 to save some money as its the cheapest, and overclock it to get the extra few frames or so the next card up is faster by. :)
Agreed, even bumping up the Core clock on the 4870 got a nice boost in one Crysis review's I read the other day, worth a shot and save some cash.
 
275's clock easily to be as good if not better than a 285 so i'm very tempted by these.

Though 260 216's are good too.

I dunno. Bit of a minefield at the moment the graphics card market!
 
I went from a 8800GTS-640 to a GTX280 and at 1920*1200 and the difference is greater than I expected, well worth it.

I was also thinking about the size, what I did was cut out a piece of paper the size of a GTX280 and used that to fit it into my case and it fit, the only thing that was annoying was that two SATA ports were blocked.
 
260's dont make 275's pointless, the performance gap is actually pretty large considering its "just" a 295 hacked in half.
275's make 285's pointless, OC's easily to way above reference 285 levels and offers similar to better performance at this speeds.
 
260's dont make 275's pointless, the performance gap is actually pretty large considering its "just" a 295 hacked in half.
275's make 285's pointless, OC's easily to way above reference 285 levels and offers similar to better performance at this speeds.
Doesn't the GTX275 have less memory bandwith than a GTX285 so in bandwih limited games a GTX285 would still have an advantage?

Or is the memoryspeed of a GTX275 much higher to compensate?
 
Yeah theres slightly less RAM and mem B/W, but from my experience so far it runs a hell of a lot cooler and can be OC'd by quite a large ammount faster then the 285.
Currently my 275 is running idle @ 40% fan speed (silent) at 24 degrees while OC'd to the same shader, mem and core as the 285.

Case airflow probably has a big part to play however, but anyone buying such a card probably has acceptable airflow to OC to these levels.
According to benchmarks it puts the 275 to equal in most, upto 5% worse in some, then the 285, for one hell of a lot less cash.

-edit-
Not to mention, at stock its equal to a 280 in my setup or so it seems.
 
40% fan speed (silent) at 24 degrees while OC'd

Well my 280 idles 45'ish and tbh idle temp means little, whats your full load temp? As from what i've read on this forum + reviews; the 275 gets quite toasty, on average about 70c under load...
 
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@ Sean UK
65 degrees full load when OC'd .. fan seems stuck on 40% though? Either that or its not supposed to kick in untill much higher temps.

If i manually set fan to 65% (Which is loud but no worse then my case fans) it drops to ~55-57 degrees.
 
@ Sean UK
65 degrees full load when OC'd .. fan seems stuck on 40% though? Either that or its not supposed to kick in untill much higher temps.

Hmm, well for comparison my 280 hits maximum of about 75c when gaming, and the 285's I've installed within a few systems were about the same, 55nm made knaff all difference to load temps, most likely due to the missing back plate.

So if what you say is correct ;), then yes the 275 runs a lot cooler under load.
 
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