Considering an upgrade from my 8800gtx, also saw interesting non reference gtx480.

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ellover009

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Hey guy I currently have a 8800gtx 756mb and I am thinking that it's time to upgrade to something nicer. I've been looking at a few cards, almost ended up with a 5870 when they used to be cheap near launch but decided to stick around to see what nvidia had to offer.

My friend is an big amd fan and keeps trying to push me to go amd this time around, he keeps mentioning something in the lines about how nv is loosing money from the rambus lawsuit, the mobile 8xxx series failure, loosing the intel 1366 license among telling me how great it would be to heat the house and how it's power consumption requires are insane.

I never owned an amd card so it makes deciding harder, I have heard the 6xxx series is due sometime possibly after October, and from some unproven benches should put the 6870 around 5970s speeds which is not too far off since the 5970 uses 5850s clock speeds and not 5870s.

I considered either dual 460s, or single 480.
I think I would prefer a single powerful card over 2 of them, this would keep compatibility with all games, and less likely to show rubber band effect or micro-stuttering.

I started looking at some 480's and I noticed some companies are starting to offer some non reference cooler designs. I noticed an new gtx 480 by sparkle that looks interesting.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814187117&cm_re=gtx_480-_-14-187-117-_-Product

Does anyone know if sparkle's lifetime warranty is any good?
I have heard that newer amd 5xxx do not get along with crt monitors, I have a sony fw900 and I am pretty attached to it, any truth to this?

I was considering either
sparkle tricooler 480
regular reference evga 480
or wait for the new amd 6xxx card.

What do you guys think?
 
I would wait for the 6xxx cards to come out for the following reasons:
see what happens to prices of NVidia cards and see what the performance is of the new ATI cards

Looking at your system in your sig (being that it is the one you are upgrading) and if you want to buy something right now:
I would get a GTX 470 and get some more ram. That would be a very nice system upgrade.
 
JacobC1983 said:
I would wait for the 6xxx cards to come out for the following reasons:
see what happens to prices of NVidia cards and see what the performance is of the new ATI cards

Looking at your system in your sig (being that it is the one you are upgrading) and if you want to buy something right now:
I would get a GTX 470 and get some more ram. That would be a very nice system upgrade.
Click to expand...


Sorry about that old chap, forgot to update my profile. These days I am running an i7 920 1366, 6gb ram.
 
I'm in a similar situation and am going for 2x 460's. I already have one and it tears apart every game I've thrown at it.

You would probably have to upgrade your PSU if you going that route or with the 480. Not sure about the amd cards.
 
Well I looked at the psu and my psu should be able to handle it, puts out 50amps and I have not o/c my processor yet, I been running it a little conservative.
On most of the reviews you gotta consider that actual power consumption may vary based on the unrealistic systems they use to benchmark.
Usually some sort of overclock i7 quad or 6 core processor, o/c ram, some of those benchmarks push the video card harder than any real world scenario, on some of those load test they go based on worst case scenario.

I am considering upgrading my psu but I was hoping on the video card first, and then worry about psu at end of year, maybe even one of those nice 1200w fully modular Corsair psu.

Btw if I understand correctly they should be using an oem version of the accelero xtreme cooler but it comes preinstalled and comes reasonably priced considering the cooler comes installed and you don't have to worry about messing things up.
 
Yep, the cooler is preinstalled and backed by Sparkle...

I would wait till the 6000s come out and Nvidia drops prices...
 
Anyone deal with sparkle tech support?

Im really wondering how that calibre card holds up, there's no reviews or anything on it since it's so new.

Choosing a video card is so much difficult than back in the day, there's so many flavors of the same things. Hopefully one day I will have some surplus capital to get one of those new upcoming dell u3011 or some sort of monster 30 inch lcd, don't get me wrong I love my crt but they can only get so big and so heavy.
 
If your still thinking about upgrading, just wanted to make a suggestion.

I just purchased this:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=6488429&CatId=3670
and that card is eligible for EVGA's setup up program. You can use it for 3 months, and if your happy with it you can just pick another one up for SLI if you wish, but if after 3 months you want you can also upgrade to a 480. The nice thing is they subtract the entire price of what you paid for your 460 from the price of the card your upgrading to at the time of purchase, so hopefully it will drop in price in 3 months and the difference will be minimal.
 
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