Time for a new GPU

Budget £160

Preferably Nvidia

Please select from either

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/

http://www.microdirect.co.uk/Home/?source=AffiliateFuture

Or amazon.

It will be folding 24/5.

I will be playing Cod mw2, Bad company and hopefully some newer games.

I have 2 cards in mind, but what was wondering what you guys can come up with.

 

The overclockers don't have much of a choice on GTX260's which is in your money sweet spot and neither does microdirect. I'm an eVGA man so I can't comment which of those is better but they're all relatively the same, you'll have to do the homework on noise and heat.

BTW, if you OC the card, whichever one you get, to around 1500 shaders, then you should get ~7K PPD. I am quite surprised at the lack of choice at the two aforementioned dealers.:confused

EDIT: Oh, the GTX260 needs a pair of 6-pin power connectors, 12V rail w/36 amps for PSU.

 

Thats one of the cards i had in mind, OCuk has 8 versions of the 260...

I think if my budget permits i will get the 1792mb edition, do you think this is worth the extra £20?

My PSU (Corsair tx650) has 2 6+2 connnectors, so thats no prob.

 

Another question, i am new to SLi'ing and crossfire, do you receive the sli bridge with the GPU, or is it supposed to come with the motherboard?

 

Some come with the video card, some don't. My 9800GTX+ didn't come with a SLI bridge, my HD5850 came with a Crossfire bridge. I know at Newegg you can look at the images they have, there is one showing everything that comes in the box.
Haven't read in any motherboard description of one coming with a SLI or Crossfire bridge

Sam

 

hi

I got one with a mobo a while ago it was an Nforce mobo Sli and also got one with my last vid card CF 4870x2.

I would also make sure that the psu you mentioned you have can handle those 2 gpu`s with what else you have in your system.

eg. If you have full tower 6+ hdd`s 2 opticals couple expansion cards (tv tuner, raid card) and a few usb devices in at the same time (printer/all in one, modem, hub) then then psu would be maxed out.

Remember that the max draw of the psu is a little less than than the stated max peak draw. Just saying I`ve read of others running into this wall and having to buy a new psu after spending over $500 so research research and then research

Ps. Goodluck burrell and have fun But don`t foget we want to hear about it when your sli`n all over the place.

 

ATI 577 HANDS DOWN ON THIS
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150462\
stay AWAY FROM NVida \set ati_fanboi 1
the 5770 will stomp the GTX260 and it has DX11 and GDDR5

 

Oh, absolutely! 800 pipes vs 216 higher clock etc. A good board for gaming and hopefully a good one for folding soon.

 

I only have 2 HDD's and one CD drive, to other devices, so i should be ok.

Agreed, But the ATI cards PPD are pathetic.

I hope the card i get has one, my old 9600GSO didnt come with one either.

 

Ha there burrell

Just out of curiousity what resolution will you be running at 1024p 1050p 1080p 1200p?

Amd/Ati drivers are really good now I just finished bioshock2 and alien v predator both twice and the graphics were faultless but for a little mess with water in bioshock2 (running under water falling was somtimes corrupting the water but not other times).:major

Oh yeah you should be ok with cf/sli but if you do I would`nt put any more HDD`s in, I`ve got 850 watt psu butt it`s not enough for another 4870x2 but ones enough for now.

 

1680x1050.

 

Ah ha

1050p cool I suppose it comes down to s3d and physx or slightly better performance dx11 off the bat. Hard chioce.

I`ve been off the nvidia band wagon for over a year now but I`m now getting a little more interested in them with s3d and the second gen 120Hz Monitors just hitting the market (all two of them yah):cry My next rig will most probably be nvidia based.

My current rig is awesome though so it`s still got a bit of life left in it.

Either way you go it`s going to be a beast of a system.

 

Right, i've pretty much made my decision, i'm gonna go with the GTX260, (This one i think) in the hope of sli'ing it by summer.

Something just popped into my head though, would my AMD Athlon 620 Quad (currently at 3.2Ghz) Bottleneck this? And would my DDR2 1066 RAM bottleneck?

Thankyou for the plentiful replies BTW.

 

Hi

What mobo are you running?

Unless your running an i5/i7 the cpu and by connection the memory bus will bottleneck any gpu`s of this calibre in sli/cf no matter, but not by much with your system. Certainly not enough to notice ingame.

I just had a thought that your running an amd chipset and amd now own ati so I don`t no maybe the ati cards will run a bit better because of this?:confused

 

Currently - ASUS - M4A78-E

In the next few months - ASUS - M4N82 Deluxe

So, yes ATM i am running an ATI chipset MB, but NV soon.

That's one of the reasons i chose the 260 over ATI competitors.