5punk

I want more FPS with my games, especially in preparation for Beef3. I think the rest of my setup is fine, i7 910 CPU and 6GB DDR3, but wondering whether a new gfx card will make a significant difference. Currently I have one of these: BFG GeForce GTX 275 OC 896MB

I'm looking at something in the GTX 4xx or 5xx range and want to spend below £200. Any ideas what'd be good and if it's actually worth it?

(I'm getting a bonus at the end of the month and I don't even work in banking!)

I did a bit of research on this just this week actually and I got settled on a GTX 560 ti 1GB

I'm no expert, but I know how to scour the web for every review and comment to make an informed decision (I hope).

I also decided EVGA would be the best make to go for with thei upgrade program, but the only place I could find it was Scan. I don't like Scan.

I then decided I can't afford it

Oh and as for if it's worth it, see above no expert comment. I'd imagine DX11 is though?

Yeah I've just been looking at the 560Tis. They're around the not outrageously expensive £200 mark. Lots of people seem to have the 460, which seem cost-effective, but I don't know whether it'd be a worth while update from what I have now.

Perhaps a 480 at £200 - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... ubcat=1750

I guess my informed decision broke down when I chose to just focus on the latest generations. Guess that comes off the back of buying the most basic i7 when it was just as good as the hyper-expensive Core 2 ones.

Anyway, having looked at the 480, the low power draw and cool/quiet reference cooler on the 560 is still appealing. I'm not a performance freak, so as long as it can handle the latest stuff and will last for a few years it's fine.

I'd suggest having a good nose around hardocp and suchlike, that'll give you an idea of best bang:buck.

I don't bother keeping up to date right now, the 4870x2 in the gonk handles everything I chuck at it currently.

The 460 1GB is what I have and it's not bad, but I'd second the 560 TI if you can. It's about the best sweet spot card out there at the moment.

To be sensible I'll wait until I need the extra power I think. Just before BF3 comes out. Hopefully the 560 (or maybe even the 570) would have come down in price by then.

I was also reading about using an older gfx card as a dedicated PhysX card, although it doesn't sound like it's worth doing. There's few games that make proper use of Physx so it's not worth the bother.

Here's a question, if your motherboard runs the pci slot at 16x but only 8x in sli, would that still be 8x if you were just using the 2nd as a dedicated PhysX card? Just ordered a new card and was thinking about slapping my 9800 in for that since I have it.

Akiakaiu wrote:Here's a question, if your motherboard runs the pci slot at 16x but only 8x in sli, would that still be 8x if you were just using the 2nd as a dedicated PhysX card? Just ordered a new card and was thinking about slapping my 9800 in for that since I have it.

I hope I'm understanding the question right here but - it'll only go down to 8x on both in SLI mode so no, you will still get the independent speeds i.e. 16x for the new card + whatever the other slot operates at for the old one for physx.

Akiakaiu wrote:Here's a question, if your motherboard runs the pci slot at 16x but only 8x in sli, would that still be 8x if you were just using the 2nd as a dedicated PhysX card? Just ordered a new card and was thinking about slapping my 9800 in for that since I have it.

I think that depends on the motherboard. I doubt you need the full x8 bandwidth for PhysX, so you'd probably be better off with the x16 for the GPU and the x4 (typically, could also be x1)

WereRabbit wrote:
I hope I'm understanding the question right here but - it'll only go down to 8x on both in SLI mode so no, you will still get the independent speeds i.e. 16x for the new card + whatever the other slot operates at for the old one for physx.

Yeah you got it right, that's what I was asking and I kinda thought. I'll have to poke about a bit to see if I can set it or if it goes "hey he's got a card in each slot" and automatically sets them both to 8x. Never really mucked about in dual video card land.

I was worried my factory-OC GTX280 was going this week and looked at alternatives, but it turned out to be a power issue and swapping some cables around has fixed it for now. It's been great and copes with everything I chuck at it, so the exercise was only academic for finding out what would be roughly equivalent, albeit at half the price I paid for the card at the time.

I decided that a high-end GTX480 worked out better than a low-end GTX560, the x8- being part of the premium range on release with the x6- usually being a tuned-down cousin. Anything less than £200 didn't even compete with my current card, so I'd question whether an upgrade from a GTX275 at that price level was even worth it at all.

~£400 spent on a GTX580 would give you something that would piss all over everything for a couple of years, and cope admirably for several years after that, but you're better off "coping" with the solid card you have and getting that 580 for 200 notes in a year or two.

That makes sense, thanks for that. I think it was DA2 that got me thinking about this, but I think the inconsistent FPS is the games fault, not my hardware. Most other games are fine with high-ish settings, that one chugs along whatever settings I use.