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What card?

Nightglow

Nightglow

Nightglow

Soldato
Joined
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Suffering from Upgraditis, due to shortage of funds it's been nearly 4 years since I upgraded.:(

Had decided on buying a HD6950, but from what I've read on this forum, I'm tempted by Nvidia offerings.:eek:

Have a budget of £230, main use will be gaming, running 24" monitors, have two, but can get a third, I will also going over to i5 soon.

Had a look at 1: HD6950 2: GTX480 3: GTX560, any other cards worth considering.
 
Finding a 6950 to flash is becoming harder. OCuk are out of XFX 6950's rev 1 card.

Surveyor Intresting idea SLI, shame you have two cards for dual monitors, so AMD card have advantages, so what two Nvidia cards would you recommend for SLI if I stretched to £250, or would it be better just to buy a HD6970?
 
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Nightglow said:
Finding a 6950 to flash is becoming harder. OCuk are out of XFX 6950's rev 1 card.

Surveyor Intresting idea SLI, shame you have two cards for dual monitors, so AMD card have advantages, so what two Nvidia cards would you recommend for SLI if I stretched to £250, or would it be better just to buy a HD6970?
Click to expand...

For that money you'd be looking at 2 GTX 460's.

Here are the requirements:

http://www.nvidia.co.uk/object/3dv-system-requirements-surround-technology-uk.html

You need to make sure you have an SLI compatible botherboard.
 
The 550s are horrible for gaming. Sli 460s if you must but imo you're better off with a single 6950/560ti.

Are you planning to be gaming across 3 screens or is that just for desktop use? None of those cards will have enough grunt for that.
 
Nightglow said:
Surveyor Hadn't thought of doing that.

Would two of these card be a better choice, OCuk have them on offer at £113.99p.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=gx-154-ok&groupid=701&catid=1914&subcat=1576
Click to expand...

not as good a card as the gtx 460 1gb which can be had for £119.99 at ocuk.

review of an overclocked gtx 550ti:

http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-550-ti-review-msi-cyclone-ii-oc/1

if you're thinking of a 3 monitor setup for gaming then the resolution is going to be 5760x1080 so you need a fair bit of grunt and vram for that.

this will give you an idea of the performance of an ati hd 6950 over 3 screens:

sorry can't link to it.

summary:

aliens v predator 5760x1080 av. 19.7fps
just cause 2 5760x1080 av. 24.7fps
metro 2033 5760x1080 av. 14.5fps
f1 2010 5760x1080 av. 26.5fps
call of duty: black ops 5760x1080 av. 38.0fps

the above were run at the highest quality with plenty of aa and af. turn these setting down a bit and the frame rate will be higher.

this will give you an idea of what the performance of 2 gtx 460's is like over 3 screens:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/quad-sli-nvidia-surround-geforce-gtx-480,2745.html

All in all £200-£250 worth of graphics cards will just about work over 3 screens.

Custom PC did a review of 3 screen gaming in the May 2011 edition. Their conclusion was that it was a bit of a mixed bag with it working well in some cases and poorly or not at all in others.
 
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Joey1988 said:
Oh, that's not cool. Thanks for letting me know !

Which version should I be looking for then ?
Click to expand...

Well you can only unlock the 2GB card.

You might try a bit of Googling to see if the Asus ATI Radeon HD 6950 DirectCU II 2048MB is unlockable. Remember that this is a 3 slot card so if you wanted to Crossfire 2 cards in the future it would be more difficult.

These are the ones OcUK have in stock that are stated to be unlockable:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-119-MS&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1752

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-248-AS&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1752

You also have to consider that with ATI eyefinity you need 1 monitor out of the 3 to have a DisplayPort connection or you have to buy an adapter to connect the DisplayPort on the graphics card to VGA/HDMI/DVI on the monitor.
 
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