GTX 470 Upgrade

Hi Guys,

Looking to upgrade my noisy GTX 470. What do you suggest.

I want something with good performance (better than 470), with decent noise levels and price.

The 660, does this provide better performance than a 470, or similar? Could I justify spending the money on this or does it provide similar performance.

Would it be worth waiting for the Radeon HD 8 Series, and if so, does anyone have any insider knowledge on it's release date?

Just looking for comments and suggestions, really, and a bit of discussion!

Thanks!

I would suggest a GTX 660Ti, for the best price to performance ratio right now. Or a GTX 670 depending on your budget.
significantly better performance than 470 - AND much more power efficient - less heat.
See this relative performance chart -
http://i2.squidoocdn.com/resize/squi...3A_a__a__0.png

Hmm interesting so a 670 would be slightly more than a 75% increase in performance. Are these reference cards too?

Yes that is just comparing reference cards, of course results will vary between different games and whatnot but that gives you an idea what kind of gains you can expect assuming you don't hit a CPU bottleneck

Quote:

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Originally Posted by davesom555

Hi Guys,

Looking to upgrade my noisy GTX 470. What do you suggest.

I want something with good performance (better than 470), with decent noise levels and price.

The 660, does this provide better performance than a 470, or similar? Could I justify spending the money on this or does it provide similar performance.

Would it be worth waiting for the Radeon HD 8 Series, and if so, does anyone have any insider knowledge on it's release date?

Just looking for comments and suggestions, really, and a bit of discussion!

Thanks!

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This HD7950:

http://www.dabs.com/products/gigabyt...x-oc-7XN5.html

Above that a GTX670 or HD7970 as the price has dropped on them.

Regarding the HD8000 series,March/April has been touted as the release date for the top end ones.

If you want nvidia - 660 ti is the one to get IMHO - best bang per buck. If you want a bit more poke - get 2 in SLI.

I just got a MSI 660ti Power edition to replace my ageing GTX480. Its a much much better card. It's about 30% faster than the 480 in the games I play but more importantly for me it's totally silent and uses ~150 watts less - which I am really happy with.

Butuz

Hmm very interesting. What about the 660Ti vs the Gigabyte Windforce 3gb that Cat mentioned. That is at a very nice price!

Also I have a BitFenix Prodigy Case - I forgot to mention before so obviously space would be an issue, and the lower thermals the better.

Can't help you on that I am afraid - I have been Nvidia only for a long time - have not tried a modern Radeon as I want PhysX in games and I also use Cuda for parallel processing so AMD is no use (to me) for either of those.

If I had spare cash for a second games PC i would try a radeon in it just to see what the fuss is about.

If AMD is anything like Nvidia then the revelation for me about the modern generation of cards is the very low power usage and extreme silence. I cant get over how totally silent the MSI is in general use. My GTX480 was like concorde (but I guess like concorde, it was also very fast).

Butuz

Yeh I know what you mean, sounds like i'd have the same revelation moment. My GTX 470 is extremely loud, it's as if im working in an engine room on a ship.

water cool it :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by davesom555

Yeh I know what you mean, sounds like i'd have the same revelation moment. My GTX 470 is extremely loud, it's as if im working in an engine room on a ship.

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All my cards cooled by "single cage fan + blow hot air out of the back fans" are really noisy. The best solution I found was to mount three or four 120mm fans with filters on the left case cover all blowing air in, then adding a vent in the top of the case for the excess hot air to blow up & out. Also, keeping positive pressure in the case stops dust bunnies from building up in the CPU & video card heat sinks.

Not subtle, but effective and can be done to cheap cases.

same card, same problems. both the sound and looking for a upgrade.
i found this list www<dot>videocardbenchmark<dot>net/gpu_list<dot>php
And yes, its unclear, but it had the general score about the same as i have seen in comparison test. the prices: i have seen the cards cheaper. but basicly its the 660ti vs the 7950.
So i'm gonna check the features an costs of both

oh need 5 post to post a url..

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Butuz

If you want nvidia - 660 ti is the one to get IMHO - best bang per buck. If you want a bit more poke - get 2 in SLI.

I just got a MSI 660ti Power edition to replace my ageing GTX480. Its a much much better card. It's about 30% faster than the 480 in the games I play but more importantly for me it's totally silent and uses ~150 watts less - which I am really happy with.

Butuz

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Yes - if you are worried about your PSU being unable to cope, get the 660Ti - gets the most power/watt. Whatever the setup, 2x 660Ti > 1x 680.

I bought the Gigabyte 7950 Windforce mentioned by Cat above, for 220 - Theres a £10 off voucher for dabs if you google it :). I also get 2% cashback from my work so it was a bargain.

Very happy with it - been playing Planetside 2 on max and I cant hear the GPU fan at all. Very much recommended.

Question about the bios though - It's running at 900 mhz as standard OC, is it possible to upgrade the bios to the boost one? If so is it really worth it?

Just overclock it normally instead of applying boost.

Yeah, thought so, boost seems to be a bit of a con!