NEED EXPERIENCED INPUT

[Guest]

I'll make it short and sweet, just post a number, and maybe some input on why.

I have a 24'' 1920x1080 monitor, (Haier if it matters), and was wondering which card i should use for maxed gaming?
(and please leave a little bit of input about the difference between the sandy bridge i7 or i5 processor)

1. gtx 580 (x1)

2. gtx 580 (x2 SLI)

3. gtx 590 (x1)

4. Hd 6990 (edited in, seeing that it might be better)

Thanks for your time in advance

 

[Rustyy117]

Hey

One GTX580 will max out almost all games at 1080P, but not all (Metro2033, Crysis, BF3)

Are you not willing to consider HD6970 Crossfire? It'll be alot cheaper than GTX580 SLI, has more VRAM and not much slower than GTX580 SLI due to superior crossfire scaling.

An i5 2500K will be fine for gaming, Hyperthreading won't add much performance increase in the majority of games.

 

[FlintIronStagg]

^^ yup, what he said

 

[Guest]

Hey

One GTX580 will max out almost all games at 1080P, but not all (Metro2033, Crysis, BF3)

Are you not willing to consider HD6970 Crossfire? It'll be alot cheaper than GTX580 SLI, has more VRAM and not much slower than GTX580 SLI due to superior crossfire scaling.

An i5 2500K will be fine for gaming, Hyperthreading won't add much performance increase in the majority of games.

The thing is, this is part of a computer building project from Digital Storm, and I don't plan on buying it until Feb. or March so I'm trying to buy up a little bit. I plan on getting a 1200watt power supply, which should easily cover two 580's. But what the problem is, once I buy the 580, i'll have it for probably 3years due to $ problems. So I was either thinking the 580 so i can dual it down the road, or a 590 and dual it down the road (will clean my pockets....)

And when people say "GTX580 SLI" then only mean one 580 right? I keep getting confused on if they mean one or two.

(sorry for my poor knowledge on computers, I only have basic pre-knowledge since I'm still in high school)

 

[Rustyy117]

If your going to be buying in Feb-March then you might aswell wait for AMD's 7xxx series cards (should be out in roughly 6 months) especially considering your not going to be upgrading for along time

No fun spending £800+ on graphics cards only to be out done a week later...

GTX580 = 1 cards
GTX580 SLI = 2 cards
GTX580 Tri SLI = 3 cards
GTX580 Quad SLI = 4 cards

 

[illfindu]

A 1000 watt would be overkill for even two 580s, Hell I 1200watt is for quad fire or four way sli. SLI means two cards its the nvida term for letting two of there cards work together. I would go with the 580 three reasons 1. you don't have to go broke to play every game on almost max. 2. in a year or two you can get another one once the price comes down a bit and be back up to playing things on high or so. 3. I feel its some times a better idea to stick with the second or third best card and just keep upgrading regularly then to go over kill. The reason I say this is because its not just all about raw power think about direct x11 a few years ago you could have quad fired direct x 9 cards and maybe they would still be powerful right now in terms of raw cycles but because you don't have direct x11 you wont be able to use all the graphical features of new games.

 

[4745454b]

If you're not buying until then, wait and post then. A lot will change in that time including Nvidia's newest cards arriving. (in theory anyways...) Always ask before you buy, but not by 6mos.

 

[illfindu]

^+1 this just made me think we MIGHT be seeing HD7xxx series in the next 6 months I would 100% wait for that.

 

[4745454b]

7 series is supposed to be out before the end of the year. AMD has pushed the date back a couple of times however just like with BD. I'm starting to think we'll see both companies cards around the same time now.

 

[Rustyy117]

I expect we'll see low end 28nm before the end of the year, high end stuff Q1 2012

 

[Guest]

The thing is, i just don't want to spend 6months of working my ass off to not get the top performance on a 24'' 1920x1080 resolution monitor (might upgrade a tiny bit in a year or so). And i definitely won't be buying any new card series, because i know they'll be way higher than i would be able to afford.

So i should just be buying ->1x NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 1.5GB (Includes PhysX) (Overclocked EVGA Edition)

then buy another down the road and that should work for 2 years? And when i buy the 2nd one, would i be able to overclock it like digitalstorm can? (im having them OC my first one when i order my pc)


p.s. i have a VisionTek Radeon HD 3650 1GB AGP card that's brand new, not taken out of the packaging, any idea where I could sell it and how much i could get? i put in an offer for $60bucks on craigslist and im getting minimal bites. (not trying to advertise, just trying to get rid of something i wasted $100 dollars on)

 

[4745454b]

But when the new cards come out the prices of the old cards will change. And we aren't fortune tellers. None of us really know what the prices will be and what the best setup will be after AMD and Nvidia release their new cards. Come back when you have the $$$ and we can tell you. Until then its just my guess verses that other guys.

 

[Guest]

But when the new cards come out the prices of the old cards will change. And we aren't fortune tellers. None of us really know what the prices will be and what the best setup will be after AMD and Nvidia release their new cards. Come back when you have the $$$ and we can tell you. Until then its just my guess verses that other guys.

Thanks, i appreciate your help, and everyone else's. Atm I'm probably going with "illfindu"'s idea, because it was my main choice to begin with.

But again, i appreciate the help

 

[Guest]

Best answer selected by kllrfrk.