Sorry I didn't post more in depth earlier. Got this Fallout addiction haha.
OK. SLI 460 is a no no with your kind of cash balance. The lightning is the fastest single GPU card around right now. It's expensive but worth it. However, if you wanted to save £60 or so and get very close to the performance this
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-134-OK&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1750
With this
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-050-ZA&groupid=701&catid=57&subcat=787
Basically gives you a Zotac 480 Amp !. It's the same cooler though IMO a better colour. The fans light green too I'm pretty sure. If you don't fancy fitting an aftermarket cooler then the lightning is the better card. However, if you don't fold this is the fastest single card (though admittedly dual GPU) card around.
http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Comp...raphics+Card+?productId=41105&source=googleps
Do bear in mind though that Quadfire is about as useful as a chocolate teapot so you are going to have to decide if you want to end it there. It's obviously cheaper than the lightning but I suspect it is the faster single card (though dual GPU...)
Again that can be custom cooled (Arctic triple) which would basically give you the special one that Sapphire did (Toxic IIRC). But then that's going to run you almost £500 all in.
SLI 470 would be blisteringly fast and all in with shipping would set you back £400. However, please take note of the following.
One 470 is fine alone. They cool OK but are loud. Idle with the adaptive performance driver will give you 38-43c which is absolutely fine. However adding another one below it even if they are spaced out with two slots in between them would mean serious serious heat and even more noise. I can not recommend SLI 470 *unless* you custom cool them both which as of right now is a complete con. The same £35 cooler that I showed you above for the 480 (the green one) costs
fifty five pounds for the 470. I don't quite understand why and it absolutely takes the piss but you are going to be looking at well over £110 to get them to behave. That means an outlay of £510+ which is just too much. Again you will be at the end of the road.
My advice to you is to get the stock 480 with the Zalman cooler. At least then in the future you can add another one. If you go SLI 470 you are going to be stuck. If you add a 5970 you are going to be stuck. The only option you have of making anything faster down the road is to go with a 480 but DO NOT use a stock cooled one as they're bloody awful.
You can hold off for the 580 but I will absolutely guarantee to you right now that your £600 will be gone in one big gobble. The 6970 or whatever the bloody hell AMD will call it will also command right around the same pennies. That's around about what the 5970 cost at launch. Buying *any* launch card is usually never worth it unless you want the bragging rights. Put quite simply two months down the line it will be worth considerably less than you paid. Even with £600 to play with sense MUST enter into this and the 4 series are very sensibly priced at the moment. Too sensibly priced to ignore (in my humble opinion of course). And that leads me to the next part of this.
SLI and Crossfire are a pain in the arse. Yes the performance gains are fantastic but there are a couple of things that really peeved me about it.
Crossfire needs profiles. It always needs profiles. This means on launch your game will run like crap and end up being a coaster until AMD pull their finger out of their backside.
SLI is even worse. Again it's a case of waiting around for a driver. The reason I got a 470 was because in the end I grew
so tired of having to wait around for a profile. Not only that but in quite a good few cases the profiles simply didn't work. I would play a game on my 5770s and think "God this doesn't run very well" before realising it was only using one card.. And then I would have to faff and fiddle with the settings and god knows what else just to be able to play a ruddy game.
If all of that fiddling and tinker time sounds like fun? then by all means go with Crossfire or SLI. But, if you just want a machine you can power on and play games with without all the hassle then get a single card.
