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Yet Another Upgrade Suggestion Thread

F

FelixRussia

Weaksauce
Joined
Aug 24, 2011
Messages
72
I'm looking to do an upgrade on my main gaming machine here in the next month or so, but all I'm really looking to do is upgrade my video card. Unfortunately, I've got two options that I can go with, both are at about the same price range, only real difference is that one involves a little bit more work than the other (not a big issue though). For a bit of background info, I'm currently running one GTX 660ti, I game at 1920x1080, and I'm not really looking to add any additional monitors anytime soon, at least not for gaming, I just want a little more horsepower to even out some of the rough patches. Here are my options:

1) Get another 660ti, however, this would require that I get a new Motherboard as well. I have an MSI 890fxa-gd65 currently, but it doesn't support SLI.

2) Get a GTX 670 or 680. After reading up on the two, I understand that that the 670 is a better value card, but I wasn't really sure if I would see too much of a difference between the 670 and the 660ti, which is why I was leaning toward the 680.

If I go the 680 route, it would be a little more expensive than getting another 660ti and a motherboard, but the question is, do the extra resources on the 680 make it worth it? I know that two 660ti's in SLI stomp a single 680 in terms of raw performance, but what I'm worried about is the stutter (Bad experience with Crossfire). My PSU has enough juice to handle SLI, so if there's no significant stutter, I'd consider running multiple video cards again. This is where I'd really like some feedback/opinions/experiences.

Like I said, this is an upgrade I'd like to do in the next month or so, so I'm just looking to get some feedback at the moment. I live pretty close to a Microcenter, so I might get lucky with a random sale here or there, otherwise, most of what I'm looking at hasn't had any significant drop in price anytime recently.
 
Just wait for nvidia to release their new cards. Supposedly it's this month.
 
Skillz said:
Just wait for nvidia to release their new cards. Supposedly it's this month.
Click to expand...
^^ This as option 3.

Option 1 is not good since it will require you to switch to an Intel CPU and motherboard as Nvidia stopped making chipsets for AMD motherboard quite awhile ago. Since Nvidia never licensed SLI tech to AMD chipsets, SLI and AMD is a no go. Even when there were Nvidia motherboards for AMD, they basically sucked, at least the high to mid-range models. Their reliability and stability were worse than native AMD and even their south bridge performance was relatively bad. The only saving grace they had was SLI support. But since Nvidia has completely dropped support for Nvidia chipsets on AMD motherboards, that means that there won't be any future long-term support which may be needed with newer GPUs configs and such.

Option 2 simply does not provide enough of a performance increase to justify the price.

However, just to make sure we're not missing anything, what case, PSU, and CPU are you using now?
 
Danny Bui said:
^^ This as option 3.

Option 1 is not good since it will require you to switch to an Intel CPU and motherboard as Nvidia stopped making chipsets for AMD motherboard quite awhile ago. Since Nvidia never licensed SLI tech to AMD chipsets, SLI and AMD is a no go. Even when there were Nvidia motherboards for AMD, they basically sucked, at least the high to mid-range models. Their reliability and stability were worse than native AMD and even their south bridge performance was relatively bad. The only saving grace they had was SLI support. But since Nvidia has completely dropped support for Nvidia chipsets on AMD motherboards, that means that there won't be any future long-term support which may be needed with newer GPUs configs and such.

Option 2 simply does not provide enough of a performance increase to justify the price.

However, just to make sure we're not missing anything, what case, PSU, and CPU are you using now?
Click to expand...

I'm a little confused here.... There wasn't support for SLI on the 890fx chipset I know that for sure, but there is on the 990fx chipset now. Most 990fx motherboards are advertised as SLI/Crossfire compatible, so unless everywhere I've seen is wrong (Including the manufacturers that produce the hardware), I should be fine sticking with AMD for now. I figure Intel probably has better support for it than AMD, however, that's extra cost that I don't necessarily need to spend if I go the SLI route, at least not right now.

As far as my current setup goes, I'm currently running:

Case: BitFenix Outlaw
MB: MSI 890fxa-gd65
PSU: XFX 750w
CPU: FX-8120
RAM: G-Skill Sniper Series 1333
And then a few fans and the system drives, heat sink, etc...
 
FelixRussia said:
I'm a little confused here.... There wasn't support for SLI on the 890fx chipset I know that for sure, but there is on the 990fx chipset now. Most 990fx motherboards are advertised as SLI/Crossfire compatible, so unless everywhere I've seen is wrong (Including the manufacturers that produce the hardware), I should be fine sticking with AMD for now. I figure Intel probably has better support for it than AMD, however, that's extra cost that I don't necessarily need to spend if I go the SLI route, at least not right now.
Click to expand...
My apologies: You are indeed correct that the 990FX supports SLI. My mistake.

With that said, I'd still recommend option 3 as there may be new Nvidia GPUs that would provide enough of a noticeable performance increase while costing less than the price of a second GTX 660Ti and 990FX Motherboard.
 
Like I said, I'm not looking to pull the trigger for another month or so, unless a great deal pops up that would be silly to ignore. If the speculation is correct, perhaps I will hold out to see if the GTX 700 series pops up in the next few weeks. I'll do some digging to see if I can dredge up any info on that...
 
I hate to rezz a dead thread, but I figure this may be more preferable than opening a new one. So hopefully someone sees this, otherwise, I'll just open a new thread o__o

Moving on!

My situation has changed a bit. I recently made the jump into Haswell from my old FX-8120 setup, so I'm now rocking:

Motherboard: MSI Z87-65GD Gaming
CPU: Haswell i5-4670K

I now have the ability to run SLI! Now, I'm still split between either going SLI with my 660Ti, or make the jump into the GTX700 lineup. My living situation has changed as well (recently got engaged, so I've got to save for a wedding), and so if I can save money, I will to make it more justifiable. As I've said, I really just want to smooth out my gameplay without sacrificing eye candy.

Now, where I'm stuck: The 660Ti's are roughly the same cost, if not more than the new 760s, but the 760s offer better performance. If I wait on getting another 660Ti, I might get lucky and find one for less than the 760s are currently, but that's a bit of a gamble right now. If I go for a new 760, that should round out some of the rough spots, plus I could get one that matches my motherboard. Theming, I like theming. Currently, the only thing in the 660Ti's favor, is I can get the same card I currently have at Microcenter, whereas if I go the 760 route, I'd have to order it from newegg or elsewhere.

Anyone got any further input?
 
Wait for a deal on the GTX 660 Ti for SLI. The GTX 760 isn't fast enough as an upgrade from the GTX 660 TI to justify the costs.
 
Yeah, that's kinda what I was thinking. I know I could just google this, but, will SLI work between a 2gb version and a 3gb version? Still kind of an SLI n00b, so I figured I'd ask.
 
FelixRussia said:
Yeah, that's kinda what I was thinking. I know I could just google this, but, will SLI work between a 2gb version and a 3gb version? Still kind of an SLI n00b, so I figured I'd ask.
Click to expand...

Yes SLI will work between a 2GB and 3GB but the VRAM on the 3GB card will be limited to 2GB in order to match the 2GB card.
 
Excellent, maybe I'll try to get the necessary posts together so I can start scouring the For Sale threads. Or I'll just wait for a sale to pop up.
 
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