Upgrading Video, need advice

Pcie 3.0 is generally not utilized really at all yet, and they're all backwards compatible to 2.0 so don't let that be a deciding factor in any way at all.

Holy god don't buy a GT 640. They are SIGNIFICANTLY worse than your current 460s. You'd probably need two 640s just to equal the performance of one of your 460s.

If you are looking to spend ~$150, buy an AMD 7870 or an Nvidia 660, either of those will roughly double the performance of a lone 460

edit - Alternately, you really aren't going to find a significant upgrade over SLI'd 460s for ~$150

i7-950 is 5+ year old tech, I'd upgrade to a current cpu/mb first. Sandy/Ivy bridge was a big step forward in architecture and we're already a generation past those. And indeed, never buy anything less than x60 nividia cards, they're crippled parts that will not keep up with current titles for long (if ever).

Yeah, you can't look at the general number of an Nvidia card and just assume that higher is better.

The first number on a video card is the generation

4xx
5xx
6xx
7xx

Then, the numbers following that actually relate to relative power

Thus a 660 is going the be the 2 generations newer equivalent of a 460, with a 560 being in-between the two of those.

You can also assume that going up 1 generation is (usually)not as big of a leap as going up 1 power level. i.e. going from a 570 to a 660(up 1 generation, but down 1 power level) would actually be a step backwards in performance.

So in your 460 to 640 scenario, you're going 2 generation newer, but back 2 levels of power. Not good.

Lambourne_sl said:

i7-950 is 5+ year old tech, I'd upgrade to a current cpu/mb first. Sandy/Ivy bridge was a big step forward in architecture and we're already a generation past those. And indeed, never buy anything less than x60 nividia cards, they're crippled parts that will not keep up with current titles for long (if ever).

Click to expand...

Yeah, I don't really agree. Comparing a i7-950 to an i5-2500 on Bench and there's not a huge difference in performance in CPU limited situations:AnandTech | Bench - CPU

Unfortunately if you change the comparison from the 2500 to a 3xxx or 4xxx series they don't have any gaming benchmarks. But comparing the 950 to the 2500 in very cpu limited conditions, the difference is around 10%. Up against the newest generations, it might be 20-25%. As soon as you start raising the resolution and upping the quality settings, that will disappear as just about any modern game is GPU limited. His 2x460's in SLI is slower than a single 760, by about 20-30%. It might not be justified to upgrade to a 760 as the jump won't be huge, but going to a 770 would up his gaming performance by 50% or more, for about the same price as upgrading his CPU, mobo, and possibly RAM which would yield next to no improvement.

AnandTech | Bench - GPU13

I did the comparison to a 580, because a single 580 was about the same as 2x460's in SLI back with an older version of Bench. I remember cause I had the same setup in my HTPC until I upgraded to a 670.

If someone is looking for some bang for their video card buck, Tigerdirect.com has 660Ti cards right now for $159 after rebate. You could SLI 2 of them together for $320 and get a net results that probably puts on par with a lone 780 (that's a $500+ card)

Galaxy GeForce GTX 660 Ti GC 66NPH7DV6VXZ Video Card - 2GB, GDDR5, PCI-Express 3.0(x16), 2x Dual-link DVI, 1x HDMI, 1x DisplayPort, DirectX 11, SLI Ready, Overclocked at TigerDirect.com

Basically at standard 1080p/1440p resolutions the dual 660Tis might actually outperform a 780. Where the 780 is going to shine would be at resolutions significantly higher than that(multi-monitor gaming that would actually use 3-4gigs of vram)

I just ordered a 2nd 3GB 660Ti myself(They're slightly more, $189 each, but I already had 1), 2 of those should last me another year at least. possibly 2.

don't SLI, just buy whatever good card is around $250-300 and upgrade again 2 years later. its always the best option for general gaming, you only need to start dealing with SLI if you are going to run 3+ monitors in a eyefinity/surroundscreen setting, if you have some esoteric 4k needs, or if the only thing you want to do is bitcoin or run benchmarks. A single GPU can handle 3 monitors just fine if you run games only off one.

While I generally agree, you currently won't find anything in the $300 range anywhere near the power of SLI'd 660Tis. I honestly stick to the exact plan you listed, buy a new $300 video card every other year(and I bought my first 660Ti last year for $300), but I decided instead of plunking down $300 again sometime in the next 6 months, I'd go this route since they are on an incredible sale at the moment, and maybe delay that purchase another year+ now.

It's a pretty good deal if you're buying all new cards right now, it's a HELL of a deal if you already happen to have a single 660Ti.

I wouldn't even have considered buying a 2nd card if they were still priced in the ~$220-$250 range like they had typically been lately. For that price I would have just plunked down $300 instead for a single-card upgrade.

Sooo anyone know of any GTX770 black firday sale?