What is better??

[Nosher]

2 x Nvid 460 OC (1024 mb - GDDR5)

or

1 x Nvid 580 (1536 mb)

I play Arma2 and RFactor and am upgrading for the first time in 4 years!!!

Cheers
Nosh.

 

[reflux]

2x 460s are marginally faster, but bear in mind driver headaches, power consumption, heat etc. and you'd be better off with 1x 580.

 

[Rroff]

As above while the 460 setup would potentially be mildly faster theres no good reason really to take it over a close performance single card - especially one that has more VRAM (unless the setup is considerably cheaper than the single card).

 

[Mr. May]

single 580 all day long as it will be easier to sell on or upgrade it to 580 sli

with 2 460's they will be a harder to sell both quickly and no upgrade path

 

[Freddie1980]

It's all very well and easy 'get the 580 as to avoid any potential headaches' but by getting 2 460's the can save the OP 136 quid and personally I don't think the premium of a single fast video card is work an additional 62% outlay.

Go with 2 460's in SLI, on the whole both AMD and Nvidia both do a good job of supporting new games with compatible drivers and regular updates (less so Nvidia) and SLI profiles and you don't have to look far for issues with computer that use just one video card.

 

[Blue160]

SLI 460's work very well I've had zero problems with compatability and the performance is epic at 1080p.

I have the SLI setup because I bought one card at a time though. If I was spending the money all at once, and the cost difference wasn't a factor, I'd be tempted by the 580 for noise, temperature and power consumption.

 

[Nosher]

OK, so another What is better thing.......

Gainward GeForce GTX 580 "GOOD Edition" 1536MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card

MSI GeForce GTX 570 OC FrozR III Power Edition 1280MB PCI-Express Graphics Card

.............and there is almost £80 difference between the two.

Is it worth spending the extra money??

CHeers
Nosh.