Upgrade... Take a look...

[shan1784]

I'm looking to upgrade my current system in my sig with the following. Why? The 4870's in crossfire haven't lived up to my expectations. The drivers are always buggy and with the past Catalyst driver update to 8.11 I've actually lost frame rates. Not to mention how loud they are when tweaked for adequate cooling (fan speed hack).


I'm looking for excellent gaming where I can run everything on high settings without breathing hard.. I want to go back to Nvidia and am looking at the following for a sli setup, let me know your thoughts (especially on choice of which vid card to go with).

2 x MSI N260GTX-T2D896 OC GeForce GTX 260 896MB 448-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Retail - $204.99

or

2 x EVGA 896-P3-1265-AR GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 896MB 448-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Retail - $289.99

and

ASUS P5N-D LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 750i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail - $134.99

 

[Evolv]

Well that P35 board only supports Crossfire, so you'll need a board that supports SLI instead.

 

[gurusan]

just go for a single core 216 and oc the heck out of it. Why change your mobo to a p35 though?

 

[shan1784]

Well that P35 board only supports Crossfire, so you'll need a board that supports SLI instead.

Doah, My bad, I updated it and went with ASUS P5N-D LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 750i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail

just go for a single core 216 and oc the heck out of it. Why change your mobo to a p35 though?

My current board won't do SLI, unless I'm wrong about that...

 

[Evolv]

He was just saying, why change your current motherboard a X38, to a lesser quality chipset like the P35. And like he said you could just get a GTX 260 core 216 and overclock the bejesus out of it. With it overclocked it will perform just as fast as a GTX 280. And you won't have to change your motherboard.

 

[shan1784]

He was just saying, why change your current motherboard a X38, to a lesser quality chipset like the P35. And like he said you could just get a GTX 260 core 216 and overclock the bejesus out of it. With it overclocked it will perform just as fast as a GTX 280. And you won't have to change your motherboard.

Oh, I see... Yeah that does make sense. I just want something with plenty of breathing room which is why I wanted to go with SLI setup...

What would be a good mobo for SLI if the one I specified isn't that great?

 

[Evolv]

If you want SLI, I would recommend either Evga 780i or 750i FTW.

 

[shan1784]

Ok, I like the EVGA boards...

I just read that you need a 1000 Watt PSU for running two of the gtx 260's. Is that true? I have the Corsair 750w, would that be enough to do it?

 

[Evolv]

The corsair 750tx will have plenty of power, no worries. 1000 watt is only necesarry if your running like Tri-SLI with GTX 280s.

 

[shan1784]

The corsair 750tx will have plenty of power, no worries. 1000 watt is only necesarry if your running like Tri-SLI with GTX 280s.

Thanks, I feel much better now...

I've been reading and can't seem to find a clear comparison between sli'd gtx 260 and xfired 4870's. Is there a big difference? I know you can overclock the 260 a ton but is there somewhere that a comparison has been done that I can read?

Also, my first post above shows two different video cards, the MSI GTX 260 and the EVGA GTX 260 Core 216. They both seem to have the same specs so I'm wondering what makes the core 216 $85 per card better? Can someone break this down for me?