Another 660ti in SLI or a 970GTX?

[nerdgeek]

Confused!

I'm looking to upgrade and get the most for my money obviously.

I currently have a 2GB 660ti which I'm happy with to a point! I have triple 22 inch monitors and trying to play the latest games on their highest settings fails somewhat. The highest settings on a single monitor is smooth with great frame rate.

Which would be best, a second secondhand 660ti or a new single 4gb 970 gtx?

I understand that the new 970s have better AA (MFAA) and also DX12 but it's going to be a year or so before these are mainstream?! The 970 will have less heat but I have great airflow thanks to the Corsair Carbide Air 540.

I've read that SLIs can be a PITA in some games and micro stutter is an issue???

A secondhand 660ti is going to be ~£100 where as th 970 is going to sting me £260. If I did go for the 970 I'd sell my 660ti for ~£100.

I'm not sure I would see the extra £60 in performance over and above the £100 for the SLI!

[kalniel]

I think you've covered the pros and cons already - SLI is cheaper for the performance, but you have to deal with extra power/heat/space and micro-stutter (not a big problem in the most part). We don't know anything solid about DX12 implementation yet - it's likely we'll need a new generation of cards to use it fully - on the other hand some features are probably available even on your 660.

The biggest nod towards the 970 in my opinion is probably the framebuffer - 4GB is going to be more handy for the three displays than the 2GB you have on the 660s - SLI won't increase the framebuffer.

[nerdgeek]

The biggest nod towards the 970 in my opinion is probably the framebuffer - 4GB is going to be more handy for the three displays than the 2GB you have on the 660s - SLI won't increase the framebuffer.

I didn't know this, thank you. I presumed that it would stack 2x2GB!

[Domestic_Ginger]

It'll be 1.5gb x 2. The last 1/2 GB is very rarely used and very slow apparently.

There you go; 970 time!

[nerdgeek]

Thank you.

970 it is then!

[edit]

re-looking at the 970s and the ones within budget only have one dvi port!

The Gainward GTX970 has 1 x DVI, 3 x mini DisplayPort, 1 x mini HDMI... I guess I would use the 3 display ports.

The current 660ti, I use two DVI and one HDMI to DVI port!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Working GTX660TI cards are going for as low as £70 on Ebay:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_fr...x660ti&_sop=15

I would probably get the GTX660TI,and wait until the 20NM DX12 GPUs are out in the next year and a bit.

The value of the cards will go down,but I doubt it will be massive as the sub £100 cards have not really improved massively in performance anyway.

Plus even on 28NM we have still not seen the GTX980TI or R9 390X which will probably cause the cards under them to drop in price anyway,and we know they are coming.

[PlayerAsleep]

Wouldn't 2 GTX 660's be better than one card anyway? Sharing the load and all that

[Bonebreaker777]

GPUs in cooperation mode (SLI or CrossFire) have bigger drawbacks that a single card.

Driver problems, uneven scaling of performance, support in games, consumption, heat & noise output.

[kalniel]

Wouldn't 2 GTX 660's be better than one card anyway? Sharing the load and all that

Two 660s would be better than one 660.. but that's not what's being compared.