SLI or new card?

[nirrtix]

Which would be a better plan? I guess for performance and cost. I currently have an Nvidia Geforce GTX 670 would I be better going SIL with another 670 or getting a newer much better card?

 

[TechyInAZ]

Definantly a newer card. A GTX 970 would smoke both gtx 670s in SLI.

 

[nirrtix]

might be worth looking into... I would like to tri monitor someday, but I think for that I will need a much better rig.... I guess I need to keep working to get my A+ certifications

 

[doubletake]

No need to go replacing everything, your current build would be more than adequate for high-resolution gaming after a simple GPU upgrade. However, for optimal performance, you'd be well advised to overclock your CPU as high as you can as well as your RAM (~2133MHz should be doable).

 

[TechyInAZ]

No need to go replacing everything, your current build would be more than adequate for high-resolution gaming after a simple GPU upgrade. However, for optimal performance, you'd be well advised to overclock your CPU as high as you can as well as your RAM (~2133MHz should be doable).

Just adding onto the RAM part:

There are two ways to overclock RAM, 1 is to incresae the clock speed, and the 2nd is to lower/tighten your timings. Or do both. Both ways work well, but from what I've seen on benchmarks, tighter timings will make a big majority of programs a tad faster where as higher speed RAM only benefits memory intensive apps.

 

[mapesdhs]

nirrtix, can you run Firestrike, 3DMark11, etc. and post the URL results? I've recently tested a 970, already tested 980s, and 580s. Would be interesting to see how a 670 fits into the stack. The gap between 580 SLI and a 980 is often not that much (eg. 80 vs. 114fps for Unigine Heaven @ 1080p, Quality = High, Tesselation = Normal, 4x AA, 8X AF, NCP = Quality), so I suspect the difference between 670 SLI and a 970 could be surprisingly narrow in some cases (depends on the game, resolution, features used, etc.) I have some results here (not added the 970 data yet); Unigine and CoJ are GPU-heavy, the rest are CPU variant, with X3TC being totally CPU dependent. Not yet written pages for all the 3DMark data I've gathered (under construction).

 

[nirrtix]

sure I can benchmark it

 

[nirrtix]

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/10835614?

there is the benckmark

 

[mapesdhs]

Sorry for the delay!

Well this is embarassing, I thought I'd run Firestrike on the system I was building (a 3930K/970 setup for my brother), but turns out I only ran 3DMark11. Here's the result:

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/10863876

Can you run 3DMark11 instead?

I'm slightly annoyed with myself as 3DMark11 is more susceptible to CPU performance, but never mind, still something to which you can compare.

 

[nirrtix]

i can in a few days sorry been staying at my dads... his system is similar but not quite the same.... while my skills in the PC stuff is fairly advanced he always thinks when I install games they cause his quickbooks to mess up (shrugs)

 

[mapesdhs]

Hehe, no prob, I look forward to your reply with 3DMark11 info when you can get to it.