Need a little help here...

[SWAT Strachan]

Having recently built a luvverly new gaming rig (i7 at 4.2ghz, 6gb Corsair Dominator, Gigabyte G1 Assassin, Corsair AX1200 PSU, 64gb SSD), I added a 3D monitor last week and so far it's great

. However, running games in 120hz mode (mainly BF:BC2) does make the frame rate suffer and it's a little juddery on my KFA² GTX480 Anarchy, so I am considering another upgrade (also in preparation for BF3

), but, do I go for another GTX480 and SLi them, or ditch it and get myself a 580?

I get the impression that two 480s will kick the arse of a single 580, as long as the cooling is adequate (which shouldn't be a problem, plenty of fans in the HAF-X and the heatsinks on the GFX cards are huge!), and power certainly shouldn't be an issue with a 1200w PSU. However, finding another GTX480 Anarchy at a reasonable price is proving difficult.

What do the great and good think?

Oh and does anyone know of a cheap source for another KFA² GTX480 Anarchy, if that is the better option?

 

[SmoulderingCircuits]

If you really can't find another of your 480, then get a 460 for PhysX or wait for the 680/ 690

 

[SWAT Strachan]

If you really can't find another of your 480, then get a 460 for PhysX or wait for the 680/ 690

If I'm struggling to find a 480 at a price I like, I doubt I'll be able to afford a 680

. However, I have managed to find one company that stocks the 480 at what I would consider to be a reasonable price, but it's a firm I've never heard of before, and they are selling the card at a significantly lower price than anywhere else, which also makes me a bit suspicious.

HERE's a link to the site in question, has anyone had any dealings with them in the past?

 

[Scoob]

Hi,

Performance-wise a 2nd 480 would make one very powerful machine...a friend of mine is running a pair of 480's under water in his rig and they generally perform the same as my two 570's at the same clock - some tests I win, some he wins...pretty much even though.

As for getting a 2nd KFA - nice card, but isn't that a tripple-slot cooler on it? That'd make it really really tight fitting a pair of them potentially unless you can space it out better.

Any 480 should work as a 2nd card, my understanding is that they'll drop to the speed of the slowest card. GTX 480's do seem in shorter supply these days though - a couple of places did have refurbed ones available at around £170 a little while back with a years warranty, think they're all gone now. If you can find one, maybe one of these with a better cooler on it would do the business?

For the record I have 2x GTX 570's but both are different designs (PCB and cooler) and from different manufacturers (Palit and Inno3D) let they work well together.

Cheers,

Scoob.

 

[SWAT Strachan]

As for getting a 2nd KFA - nice card, but isn't that a triple-slot cooler on it? That'd make it really really tight fitting a pair of them potentially unless you can space it out better.

That's the one, but space really shouldn't be an issue in my system, the Assassin is a quad-SLi capable motherboard, and the Haf-X case is a 9-slot design, I think it'll fit

. Having said that though, I do have an X-Fi sound card in there as well, so I think I'd better double-check the spacing...

Good to know that performance-wise it'll be sufficient though

.

Cheers Scoobs

.

 

[SWAT Strachan]

Balls...

Just checked the spacing, and yes, I can easily fit another Anarchy card, but it'll mean losing my soundcard and having to go back to the hissy on-board audio

. I wonder, is the increase in graphics performance going to be enough to make up for the loss in audio quality... Great, another conundrum.

I suppose my other option is to get two 580 cards, and use the 480 to upgrade my internet rig... and then use the 285 from that one to upgrade my media rig, and then use the two 8800GTX cards from that one as bookends

. This is going to get expensive!

 

[SWAT Strachan]

Sod it, I got the two 580s

.

Cruel thing is, as soon as I got home and unboxed the cards, I got called out on a job that involved a 200 mile round trip, I've only just got home so too late to fit them now

. Oh well, it'll give me something to do tomorrow

.

 

[Scoob]

Sod it, I got the two 580s

.

Cruel thing is, as soon as I got home and unboxed the cards, I got called out on a job that involved a 200 mile round trip, I've only just got home so too late to fit them now

. Oh well, it'll give me something to do tomorrow

.

Damn! That's karma evening things out for you getting a pair of 580's you lucky git!

Lol. Reckon you'll try to shift your old 480 on here, or pop it in another rig? Would've thought you'd get reasonable money for one of those 2nd hand still. Might make your impulse purchase sting a little less lol.

Enjoy those 580's - when you get back!

Cheers,

Scoob.

 

[SWAT Strachan]

Might make your impulse purchase sting a little less lol.

I'm actually selling up one hobby to pay for another, I have a sizeable collection of airguns that I'll be shifting, and a frankly obscene amount of airsoft guns too

. Needs must though, and they're not getting used any more.

As for the 480, that will be going in to my internet/graphics rig. I do a lot of photo work, and the extra oomph of the 480 will help out, especially as that rig has two 23" screens. The 280 that's in there at the moment will move down to my media rig in the office, then I can retire the two 8800s that are currently being tortured by being forced to play 1080 videos. It always seems to work out that way, I buy something up-to-date, which gets fitted to my best machine, then it cascades down through my other rigs until something crap falls out the end

.

 

[SmoulderingCircuits]

I'm actually selling up one hobby to pay for another, I have a sizeable collection of airguns that I'll be shifting, and a frankly obscene amount of airsoft guns too

. Needs must though, and they're not getting used any more.

As for the 480, that will be going in to my internet/graphics rig. I do a lot of photo work, and the extra oomph of the 480 will help out, especially as that rig has two 23" screens. The 280 that's in there at the moment will move down to my media rig in the office, then I can retire the two 8800s that are currently being tortured by being forced to play 1080 videos. It always seems to work out that way, I buy something up-to-date, which gets fitted to my best machine, then it cascades down through my other rigs until something crap falls out the end

.

I'd still sell the 480 if it was me.

 

[Scoob]

I'm actually selling up one hobby to pay for another, I have a sizeable collection of airguns that I'll be shifting, and a frankly obscene amount of airsoft guns too

. Needs must though, and they're not getting used any more.

As for the 480, that will be going in to my internet/graphics rig. I do a lot of photo work, and the extra oomph of the 480 will help out, especially as that rig has two 23" screens. The 280 that's in there at the moment will move down to my media rig in the office, then I can retire the two 8800s that are currently being tortured by being forced to play 1080 videos. It always seems to work out that way, I buy something up-to-date, which gets fitted to my best machine, then it cascades down through my other rigs until something crap falls out the end

.

Cool, I do the same when I upgrade.

Interestingly I had a 8800GT in my media box, and now it's in this (my gateway) machine, and it copes just fine with 720p and 1080p videos...so much so I debated putting the GTX 275 from the media box into this PC and the 8800GT back in the media box...

Also, I have an old AGP nVidia 6200 in an older machine, the card supports HD video accelleration too so plays stuff back just fine. This old system is an AMD 4200x2 and used to be my media box ages ago with an ATI 1950 Pro card in there. However with this card the CPU would be hammered when playing back video so I changed the whole machine (Q6700 + 8800GT) and the CPU never broke a sweat as the GPU did the work. Now that old AMD 4200x2 with the old 6200 AGP card in plays HD stuff just fine - wish I'd known just changing the card to one that supported video playback was all I needed to do! lol.

Anyway, I went a little off-topic there

Scoob.

 

[SWAT Strachan]

Also, I have an old AGP nVidia 6200 in an older machine

You think that's bad, I still have my old Voodoo2 kicking about somewhere... The awesome might of that 12mb card still makes me Quake in my boots, at about 5 frames a second

.