Looking at buying a GTX 260

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Royaltramp

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Jun 22, 2008
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Well, I'm wanting to upgrade.. I'd been looking at the 9600GT for a while, was thinking of getting one. Then my eye turned to ATI, but I decided I'd rather stick with Nvidia. More recently I was looking at the 9800GTX and the 9800GTX+, was pretty sure that's what I wanted, until I noticed how the GTX 260 had dropped in price.

I can get an Inno3D GTX 260 (with GRAW2 and COH) (575/2000) for £200, which seems a pretty good deal to me.

Any thing I should know before getting this card? I'm using a £19 casecom case and it's not cooled too well, it's also a mid-tower, and I'm not sure how well it'd accommodate the 260.

Edit: I use a 19" monitor, 1440x900.

-Matt
 
It is 10.5 inches long, so measure from the expansion slot to your hard drive bay

You may have to adjust hard drive locations to get it to fit, but having the power plugs on the side of the card instead of the back saves a lot of room.
 
Yeah I'll have to move one of my hard-drives, which I happen to have placed directly in line with my graphics card (don't ask why).

If I'm getting 50*C stock temp and 85*C load temp on an 8600GT which most people are reporting at 40*C stock, 60*C load, will I have cooling problems with the 260?

-Matt
 
I would imagine not, my brother got a 260 and while his computer is well-ventilated, his room is hot as hell, and his has never gone >75C on Furmark.

Even then, you are safe into the 90s, once you approach 100 though things could be a problem.
 
I would recommend you get a GTX 260, it's a damn fast card at a good price. But also check out the EVGA version as they have the Step-Up program and a terrific warranty and customer service. I recently traded up from an EVGA 9800GX2 to a GTX 280 and couldn't be happier with its performance. Overclocked, a GTX 260 can run right along with Nvidia's finest:cool:
 
As long as it can fit, the 260 should work fine for you. Remember, the 8600gt card you have is a single slot card and they can run hot, while the 260 is a double slot card with better cooling and will dump the heat outside the case.

I just talked about this in my topic. My case only has one outake fan and no intake fans so it isn't a great cooling case. I just bought the EVGA GTX 260 FTW card and at idle it is 48c and under full load it is at 79c. I hope that info helps.
 
I should also add that I went through the same thing as Royaltramp. I needed a video card upgrade and looked at the 9600gt, 8800gts g92, and 9800gtx. I almost bought the 9800gtx but I am glad I spent the extra money for the gtx 260. For the approx $100 more money (for the vanilla 260) it not only performs better in todays games, but I won't need to upgrade it anywhere near as fast as if I had bought the 9800gtx.

There is nothing wrong with the 9800gtx at all, it's just that the 260 will obviously last longer.
 
Also, because it's 10.5 inches, if your Asus is anything like mine, the GTX 260 is gonna block your sata ports, you might want to invest in several low right angle or left angle sata cables.
 
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