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Which upgrade route ? :/

Greeny93

Greeny93

Greeny93

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4 Jul 2012
Posts
142
Hi, I'm currently running a GTX 580 on a 1080 monitor, mainly used for playing starcraft & occasional fps.

Recently ordered a 1440 monitor ( should be here within the hour ;o )

Would i be right in thinking a gtx 580 won't cut it with a 1440 on high/highest settings?

Began looking at SLI options for the 580... But the power consumption is mental, looking at 750+ plus total system power draw...

Would i be better trying to sell the 580 & going 680/sli 660 route? or a fatter psu?

System specs are - i7 3820, 750w psu, p9x79pro & 16gb ram...

Cheers !
 
it depends on how much money you want to chuck at this. 580 SLI is still great and perfectly up to date, and a PSU upgrade will cost maybe £100 plus perhaps £150 for a second hand 580, so £250, but a 680 or 660 SLI setup will be futureproof for a little longer as it is a generation newer, and it will draw less power, but of course it will be in the region of £400.
 
I would never recommend 1440p+ on less than a dual GPU setup. After all, the resolution implies that you do care about eye-candy and would not wish to lower settings too much.

It's worth baring in mind that the HD 79xx series scale better in crossfire whereas Nvidia's 6xx series have decreased microstutter.

7950 crossfire is the best performance/£ of the new generation.
 
680's are currently overpriced

if you want to stick with nvidia, a 670 is 95-99% of the performance for less money

a single 670 will just about handle most games at 1440p on high settings but not quite maximum, you will be dropping things like MSAA... 670 SLI is a little bit overkill for 1440p but also gives some room for future game improvements

660 SLI I think will tend to get limited with AA settings due to the lower memory bus so it won't really give you big increase over a 670

personally I would search out a good deal on a 670 with a view to adding a 2nd later, or upgrading to 7** series when they come out (or both)

7950's are cheaper again, but from the user reports on here regarding overclocks and minimum FPS's I personally would stick with a 670 given the choice all over again
 
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Thanks for the replies.

I think i'm fighting a loosing battle getting 580's sli so... options are -

660 x2 = £340 ish - £150 from the 580 = £190

or...

a 680 at £360...

or...

a 670 at around £300, with the idea of sli'ing them in the near future.

Is a 680 worth £60 more than a 670? ( both fairly oc'd )

cheers
 
imo, no, they are around 16%-20% more expensive for at best 5% more performance or at worst 2% more

one user review I saw had a windforce 680 vs. a windforce 670, both very good overclockers and the actual FPS difference in games was around 1-2FPS

the only time it starts to get to say 5%-10% more performance for the 680 is if you are comparing a reference 670 to a top of the range OC 680, but then the price difference is even greater

configure your trust (click the trust button at the bottom of one of your own posts)
 
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Sell the GTX 580 and get GTX 660 x2

however there are no future upgrade routes with this option.
 
gregster said:
Bad idea.
Click to expand...

I know what you are saying, buying a setup that will perform worse than a single GTX 580 in applications that have poor or no SLi support would not sit well with me either.
The other two nVidia options would be buy a second GTX 580 or try a single GTX 670 with the intention of adding another one in the future as needed
 
Thanks for the feedback guys ...

Based on this, it looks like it's either going to be

A. a 670 (£320 ish)with the vision of sli'ing in the near future

or

B. a 7970/50 (similar price) again with vision of crossfire in the future.

Which ones best?! ;p they seem v similar in cost, and perfromance terms.
 
SkodaMart said:
Sell the GTX 580 and get GTX 660 x2

however there are no future upgrade routes with this option.
Click to expand...

Terrible idea - the performance drops off a cliff on these cards with the 192 bit bus.

dave_beast said:
I'd go with the 7950 or 7970 as you're gaming at 1440p and the extra 1gb of vram will future proof you a bit longer than 2gb.
Click to expand...

Always running out of GPU grunt before VRAM at that resolution anyway so the VRAM argument is a moot point.
 
Seems like with the 7950's you get far more bang for buck.. Thinking i'll be going down this route...

Last issue - If i was to get two 7950's, would 750w be sufficient or not?

Thanks.
 
Greeny93 said:
Seems like with the 7950's you get far more bang for buck.. Thinking i'll be going down this route...

Last issue - If i was to get two 7950's, would 750w be sufficient or not?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

Tough to say - SB-E uses more power than an Ivy equivalent (i7 3770K). It'll probably be relatively closeish if you overclock them all to the max. (which you should! :))
 
:/ Don't the PSU's efficiency drop massively at near to full load, too ?

Hmm... !

The CPU is oc'd to around 4.2 ghz, with 3x 30w delta fans in there too, along with 4 hdd's & a psu powered sound card ... ;p
 
Rusty0611 said:
Terrible idea - the performance drops off a cliff on these cards with the 192 bit bus.
Click to expand...

What do you base this statement on?

Whilst it is true that performance with both the GTX 660 and GTX 660Ti drops off above 1920 x 1080, surely the entire point of SLi is to run large resoultions?

Are you seriously suggesting that a GTX 660 SLi combo would not run 2560 x 1440?

This is all I can find, but it confirms my theory:

http://www.techhum.com/benchmarks-single-gtx-670-vs-gtx-660-in-sli-at-2560-x-1440/
 
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