760 SLI, the new value sweet spot?

geok1ng

2[H]4U
Joined
Oct 28, 2007
Messages
2,130
I "game" at 1600p. I mean that i have been playing LOTRO for so long after my daugther grew a bit and i had to stop playing The Witcher. Mostly i face CPU bound slowdowns during RAIDs in-game, but those were solved after i finally decided to keep my [email protected] 24x7. Still i can't RAID with high quality lighting effects in my 2GB 6950.

So i was facing hard upgrade decisions:

- There are no meaningful CPU upgrades in the near future for CPU bound gamers. Ivy Bridge-E or however is named the next Intel overpriced chipset may help GPU bound gamers, but CPU bound gamers will be about 18 months before something 20% faster than today's 2500k comes out below USD1000.

-For the the graphics updated things were worse still, because the market caught fire after NVIDIA realesed FCAT, that showed how AMD has been cheating in CF numbers for a long time.

For 1600p gaming i would rate the current minimum is a Tahiti LE 7870 and the "maximum" a 690. Number-wise if one is considering a 7870LE the next meaningful step is a 780. Or so it was until i saw today's numbers for the 760.

NVIDIA pulled down the price again, and now the value sweet spot crown belongs to the 760, with one great asset: 760s SLI well, while 7870LEs have terrible CF.

I will try to explain my gaming demands to help with upgrade path suggestions.

-I do not believe on advantages of having a "faster hardware" when FCAT minimum observed framerates are above the panel refresh rate. So don't bother me with "this setup does 90fps while that one only does 60". To me this is not a 50% better gaming experience, at least not on a 60Hz monitor.PERIOD.:mad:

- I don't see me upgrading this 30" to a Korean 120Hz 27". My future is most likely a 4k 32", unless prices and availability in brazil for 120Hz 27" gets better. This again means that 60fps is my performance ceiling .:(

- Most of the games i play are OK as long as minimum frames are above 30fps. And for me 2xAA @ 1600p feels plenty. Lighting effects improve visual quality for me more that insane AA levels. Actually in blinds tests no one in my house can discern between 4x and 8x AA in LOTRO :cool:

- I am yet to see true real gaming advantages of more than 2GB video memory at 1600p.

So, am i bound to 760 SLI? Should i wait for the CF fix AMD promises?
 
Back
Top