GPU Advice
So I have room in my budget (sort of) to upgrade my video card. It is by far the old piece of hardware in my rig. Currently I am using an Nvidia GTS 450.
I have around 250 bucks for a budget so I started looking at the benchmarks and I was kind of leaning toward Nvidia GTX 660 Ti for $235. But then after scanning their Price Performance list I see that the Nvidia GTX 560 Ti is actually the highest ranked in essentially bang for buck, and I can stretch the budget a little and buy two of them at 140 each ($280).
Now I have read before that running SLI/Crossfire doesn't actually net you the full benefit of a second card, I think I heard somewhere that it was 30% increase or something. I don't know a ton about hardware, pretty much just enough to be able to set up a new rig and get it to run (most of the time, FSB tends to mess me up). However I know some of you actually work in this area and I would like some advice.
Firstly is it worth going with SLI in this case, or would I be better off with a single card? I would save a little money with the single card, not to mention power load and cooling, but I might net a significant increase in performance with two cards. I don't tend to play super graphically intense games, I spend a lot of my time Comfy Trucking and playing MMOs and indie games.
Secondly I am a slightly Nvidia fanboi, but that is only because I have never bothered with Radeon. If I get a Radeon at similar price/performance is there any major simplified pros/cons when compared to Nvidia. I understand both have their nuances and target audience so I don't really need a complex breakdown of when/how/where one is better than the other, a general list would be sufficient.
I have around 250 bucks for a budget so I started looking at the benchmarks and I was kind of leaning toward Nvidia GTX 660 Ti for $235. But then after scanning their Price Performance list I see that the Nvidia GTX 560 Ti is actually the highest ranked in essentially bang for buck, and I can stretch the budget a little and buy two of them at 140 each ($280).
Now I have read before that running SLI/Crossfire doesn't actually net you the full benefit of a second card, I think I heard somewhere that it was 30% increase or something. I don't know a ton about hardware, pretty much just enough to be able to set up a new rig and get it to run (most of the time, FSB tends to mess me up). However I know some of you actually work in this area and I would like some advice.
Firstly is it worth going with SLI in this case, or would I be better off with a single card? I would save a little money with the single card, not to mention power load and cooling, but I might net a significant increase in performance with two cards. I don't tend to play super graphically intense games, I spend a lot of my time Comfy Trucking and playing MMOs and indie games.
Secondly I am a slightly Nvidia fanboi, but that is only because I have never bothered with Radeon. If I get a Radeon at similar price/performance is there any major simplified pros/cons when compared to Nvidia. I understand both have their nuances and target audience so I don't really need a complex breakdown of when/how/where one is better than the other, a general list would be sufficient.
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Comments
2) Not too much of a difference, these days, imo.
3) My recommendation: 7950, especially if you don't have the games in the 3 game pack:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202026
AMD Pros:
Display port
Free games
Support Threckx
AMD Cons:
Driver support just doesn't seem as good (but I have nothing concrete to back this)
It's been great so far, although I do feel like sometimes it refuses to come out of sleep mode. Still, that's pretty rare and I kind of want to blame Gigabyte.
I'd go away from SLI/Crossfire. It's complication and relying on drivers to perform optimally and requires a better PSU. But hey, I'm simple folk. Some people have fun with tweaking/optimizing/and etc.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202026
http://www.3dmark.com/pcm7/692843
compared to
http://www.3dmark.com/pcm7/544926