I'm upgrading for BF3, but I don't know which direction to go.

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jonmon6691

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So here's the skinny; I built my PC last august and it isn't bad but I want the cream of the crop when BF3 drops.

Here's the basics:
Palit GTX460 2gb <- This is where I'm looking to improve
Intel i7 930 - 2.8Ghtz (I've over-clocked to 3.5, any more and its not very stable)
6Gb DDR3 Corsair (Not dominator)
Asus P6x58d Premium mobo
Adata SSD

I can't decide on how to go about upgrading the video card. Basically, Its between getting a GTX570 and selling the 460 slash using it for running a TV or something, OR buying another Palit GTX460 2gb and doing SLI.

The SLI option is $100 cheaper, but I've heard a lot of bad things about Palit cards not scaling very well with SLI. On the other hand, I've also read an equal amount about how 460 SLI > 570 and maybe even 580 with the drawback of low memory (Not a problem for mine with 2gigs each)

I'm hoping someone here has some real experience in the matter because I'm tired of all the "I heard this" and the "I read this" crap that seems to be floating around the forums lately.
 
So here's the skinny; I built my PC last august and it isn't bad but I want the cream of the crop when BF3 drops.

Here's the basics:
Palit GTX460 2gb <- This is where I'm looking to improve
Intel i7 930 - 2.8Ghtz (I've over-clocked to 3.5, any more and its not very stable)
6Gb DDR3 Corsair (Not dominator)
Asus P6x58d Premium mobo
Adata SSD

I can't decide on how to go about upgrading the video card. Basically, Its between getting a GTX570 and selling the 460 slash using it for running a TV or something, OR buying another Palit GTX460 2gb and doing SLI.

The SLI option is $100 cheaper, but I've heard a lot of bad things about Palit cards not scaling very well with SLI. On the other hand, I've also read an equal amount about how 460 SLI > 570 and maybe even 580 with the drawback of low memory (Not a problem for mine with 2gigs each)

I'm hoping someone here has some real experience in the matter because I'm tired of all the "I heard this" and the "I read this" crap that seems to be floating around the forums lately.

I don't think you can go far wrong with either. All the BF3 demo's you have seen are using one single GTX580. So you know the game is going to work very well with them series of cards. Also, it is a known fact that they are doing plenty of SLI testing if the developers tweets are to be believed. So expect a game that is also SLI optimized.

One of the slides on a BF3 PowerPoint at a developers conference stated that they don't want to require anymore than 1gb of VRAM. Whether this holds up is anyone's guess. But i imagine it will. So i wouldn't worry about the memory front too much either (Think how many cards have 1gb or less, you already have 2gb in a single 460).

I also know that one 580 does not run the game on maximum settings. Whether that is expected in retail or just because it's unoptimized alpha code is unknown, but i doubt that will change too much.

Hopefully there is some information there than can help you make a decision. Me personally ? I'd go for a single GPU card. I don't like the idea of the SLI not working properly, too much heat, extra power requirements etc.
 
I would go for a single GTX 580. Probably the ASUS card...it's supposed to be greatly overclockable with its superior cooling...however, that would be the expensive option. A less expensive option is the ASUS GTX 560ti Top...there were some reviews where it had actually passed the 570 in fps of some games, but about $100 less..
 
I think I'll go with the single fast card then. I only have a 650W power supply and I'd rather not have to worry about power issues, plus I'd have to use ugly molex converters for the second card. I'll do some more reading about the 560Ti vs 570 because cost was really the biggest drawback here.

Thanks guys!
 
A little bit of follow up to make this thread a little more useful, Gigabyte has one of the best examples of a 560ti (Newegg.com - GIGABYTE Super Overclock Series GV-N560SO-1GI-950 GeForce GTX 560 Ti (Fermi) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card)

And here's a really good review of the 4 big names in GTX560Ti's : NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti Roundup: ASUS, EVGA, Gigabyte & MSI

The gigabyte outperforms the 570 in a few places for $100 less and they only pick the high testing cards for the SuperClock series so you know they'll overclock even more.
 
I originally suggested the ASUS model because it was just slightly lower than the Gigabyte one, but had much lower temperatures and less noise (and price). I don't think it's worth sacrificing those for just a little more fps...
 
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