SLI'd GTX 260 to ??? $350 max

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MrMitch

Spinning Drives Rule!
Joined
Dec 13, 2004
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I'm looking to upgrade guys, my primary game is iRacing and the SLI'd 260's do fine for that, but I'm gonna buy SimCity and Bioshock infinite here soon, and honsetly I'm just itching to upgrade.

Radeon 7950? GTX 670? Help me out. Is it going to be a sizable upgrade?

Rest of specs

Core i7 @ 3.2ghz (sckt 1366 old school)
6GB Ram
180GB SSD

so hopefully I won't bottleneck a new card.
 
I would find a 7950 for $299 and save the rest. Plus you get a nice bundle of games, can't beat that.
 
Hi MrMitch,

What resolution do you play at? If it's 1080P, any high end single GPU will suffice. Might want to upgrade the RAM too :)
 
any current mid performance(650Ti or above or 7850 or above) will be more powerfull overall.

Radeon 7870GHe, 7870LE, or 7950 is what I would recommend
or if you prefer Nvidia, GTX650Ti boost, 660Ti or 670.

The best $/performance overall though happens to be the 7870LE known as sapphire 7870XT or powercolor 7870 Myst among others.(basically a 7900 series card) or the 7950(with the right models)
 
I'd shop around for a GTX 670 and wait till you can find a good deal on it. You can get it for 300 now with rebate and I'm pretty sure within this month you'll be able to find it for 300 without rebate.

260's sli should be able to hold you over for the few shop around weeks.
 
step 1) sell GTX 260's for around $80ish
step 2) combine that money with aforementioned $350
step 3) get a 7970 or 680
step 4) i would put profit here, but you are spending money, so un-profit

you'll have to go for a little while without video cards, but it'll be worth it
 
MrMitch said:
I'm looking to upgrade guys, my primary game is iRacing and the SLI'd 260's do fine for that, but I'm gonna buy SimCity and Bioshock infinite here soon, and honsetly I'm just itching to upgrade.

Radeon 7950? GTX 670? Help me out. Is it going to be a sizable upgrade?

Rest of specs

Core i7 @ 3.2ghz (sckt 1366 old school)
6GB Ram
180GB SSD

so hopefully I won't bottleneck a new card.
Click to expand...

I have a similar system:
Xeon 3520 (Equiv of i7-920) on an x58 board
8GB RAM
128GB SSD + HDD

I recently upgraded to an HD 7950 and DO NOT REGRET IT!

If you're looking to buy BioShock Infinite, then there is NO reason to buy nVidia, because you get BioShock Infinite for free (plus crysis 3, which you can keep or sell as you please) with the purchase of an AMD card.

A single card will net you better stability, but you could drop down to 2x AMD HD 7870 LE (Has same GPU as the 79xx series) for crossfire. I'd still suggest a single HD 7950 or 7970 though.
 
I would still go AMD route, more performance at cost of power use.
7870XT-7950(MSI or Sapphire)-7970GHe all of these overclock very well, all depends on the cost factor, my 7870 at stock clocks is easily matching a GTX580 in most everything, which is easily a match for dual 260s no matter their clocks, overclock it this really throws things for a loop.

Again, depends on your $, its what you feel comfortable in paying, all mentioned(or equivalent) are quite powerfull.
 
When I "sidegraded" from SLI 260's, a 6950 was basically the equal....so you can figure from there, most anything new is a step-up, it just depends on what you want to do with it and whether or not you like playing with graphics settings. ;)
 
I'd say go with the 7950 and enjoy the performance and games. You'll even be under your budget.
 
The new GTX 650 TI Boost is pretty nice card and it's cheap. You can pick up a nice OC'd GA version at the egg for $170

The rest of your specs look fine for a gaming rig. Unless your running a huge resolution (single multi-monitors) stick with a single GPU.
 
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