Graphics Card Upgrade :)

[Sebby]

Hi everyone

Im looking to upgrade my graphics cards and go with 2x SLI MSI GeForce GTX 570 Twin Frozr III Power Editions. Hopefully it would give me a decent performance boost over the crossfire HD 6850 that i have now. It would cost around $350 on top of what I paid for the 6850s so I dont think its too bad. I also quite like the look of a dual card solution and the performance per dollar it brings. The other option would be to get a single gtx 580 and have an option of upgrading later. Would really appriciate any comments or advice

Cheers

 

[Josh Weston]

May I ask, what resolution do you game in? If it's just 1920x1080/1200 then the SLI set-up is the better choice. If, however you're gaming on some behemoth of a single display or a multi display set-up then the extra memory of the 580 may be more beneficial.

Also, and many others have said this before me, hence why I'm saying it, but 90% of people who buy one card now with a plan to buy another one for SLI/Crossfire later don't follow through with their plans.

 

[kilobravo]

Why dont you get a single hd7950,at 400$ a piece it would be my choise.

 

[KING_OF_SAND]

Unless they have more than 1.2gb, don't. You will be disappointed with more modern games that use close to or more than 2gb of vRAM.

 

[Master&Puppet]

I agree with the posts above, you are better off getting a single top notch card and then considering xf/sli.

From the experiments on this forum vram usage is on the up although there seems to be a trend of games wanting to fill up spare vram with common textures that it might need even if it wasn't using them at the time (a form of buffering). I wouldn't get anything less than 2gb now to give you some headroom for the future.

For the price range you are looking at the 7950 is the best card.

 

[Lauralarry]

670 ti comes out next week :/ along with the 690

 

[Pr3d4t0r]

If you want best performance per dollar in a CF/SLI config then the 7xxx series is the way to go, unlike previous dual gpu cards the 7xxx really takes the advantage of the cf and almost doubles the performance of the first card when in cf.

id still persoanlly go with a single card solution something like 6950 flashed to 6970

or even somthing like 7870

but thats just me :]

 

[Sebby]

May I ask, what resolution do you game in? If it's just 1920x1080/1200 then the SLI set-up is the better choice. If, however you're gaming on some behemoth of a single display or a multi display set-up then the extra memory of the 580 may be more beneficial.

Also, and many others have said this before me, hence why I'm saying it, but 90% of people who buy one card now with a plan to buy another one for SLI/Crossfire later don't follow through with their plans.

Im at running at 1080p and im looking at running most of my games like bf3 and crysis and max settings without having to turn down to much. I do have a dual monitor set up but i usually just use it for productivity while doing uni work. So i need something that supports dual monitors, not for gaming, using dvi and I will probably take the advice of people here with going with a single card seeing as I have a sound card as well which definately doesnt benefit from being stuck between two hot gpus. So for the extra video ram and the great performance i might go with the MSI GeForce GTX 580 Twin Frozr ii which is at quite a good price at the moment.

 

[Sebby]

cheers for all the advice everyone

 

[demonking]

erm just been looking and you can get a 680 for about (give or take a few quid) the same price as 2 x 570's

just thought i would throw that out there

 

[demonking]

or even somthing like 7870

was also going to suggest this

sorry for the double post