Feeling a bit lost :(

[matty-hodgson]

Basically, I'm getting a cheque through for a compo claim in about 2 weeks for around £1200, so I'm looking to spend it upgrading my PC.

I plan on selling my current PC in parts on the Hexus forums, so PM me if there's anything out of it you want in a fortnight or so. (Keeping the SSDs, the 1TB HDD and PSU).

I'm looking at getting a GTX460 SLI setup with them being available for around £300. But I just don't know what CPU/Motherboard/RAM to get .

My budget comes in around £1000, might be able to go a bit over cos I'm hoping to get about £250 - 300 altogether for my computer parts.

Need:

Case, CPU, RAM, Motherboard and a GTX460 SLI set up.

Or if you all think I'm being stupid and that I should wait for Sandy Bridge, then I think I could manage to lock away the cash for a while .

[PC4Free]

You think that your lost!?!?!

Try getting stuck in a desert with one leg shorter than the other. With no major landmarks, I was walking in circles for months.

EDIT: On a more serious note, I'm sure your current system can last you until sandybridge

[Biscuit]

+ 1 on waiting... shame you will be hit by that 20% VAT

[Pob255]

It might be a good idea to get the gtx460's now (or next months when sales intensify) as it's not likely to go down any more than it currently is and may well go up after when the VAT goes up.

Same goes for the Case

[nibbler]

Surely it's better to go for a GTX580 than 2 460s. Or a 5870 tbh, 1 card > 2.

[Terbinator]

I would disagree with the 1>2 card mantra, MS 'issues' aside.

Personally, i would say wait for SB and definitely give the 460's a miss considering next week we will see the 570 and soon after the 69xx's.

[nibbler]

I simply think 1 is better than two since it means you can get another card for even more upgradablility.

[Pob255]

Well my main point is that I very much doubt that ether the high end 570 or 69xx will have any impact on the mid range 460, although it may generate some deals on current high end cards as stock is sold off cheaply.

currently if you want to run a triple monitor setup on nvidia cards then you have to use sli but a single gtx580 is very tempting but it's £400 so two gtx460's are still a good chunk cheaper, as a single gtx460 1gb can cost as low as £130

It would be worth keeping an eye out for deals though like the low cost 5850's that have been about, there maybe some cheap gtx470's soon if the 570 is a decent price.

[Savas]

I believe you should wait.

As at least you'll know what to aim for next month in terms of upgradablity. Depending on what's good, bad or cheap. I think the only saving you'll get is on mid-range products. The current high-end won't be affected as they know most people won't be completely aware of the next generation stuff.

With your budget being around £1500? I would wait and get a mobo that's capable of handling all the new CPU's and then buying cheap the other components to later upgrade. I see it's more beneficial to spend low and upgrade often. That way you still get decent products, for more bang-for-buck.

Personally I'm in a rush to get a decent set-up so I can actually play World of Warcraft without my computer freezing in the middle of game play.

[tarqueen]

I'd wait for Sandy Bridge. It's only a month away.

Also take a look at this from tech report. lots of CF/SLI setups compared with single card performance

http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/20043

[kalniel]

Or if you all think I'm being stupid and that I should wait for Sandy Bridge, then I think I could manage to lock away the cash for a while .

If it's for gaming then wait for Sandy Bridge.

[matty-hodgson]

I've decided I'm gonna try and spend this money a bit more wisely, and my Q6600 with 4GB of RAM is more than enough for the gaming I do at the minute, so I think I just need a new graphics card and motherboard.

Are there any decent SLI motherboards for my LGA775 chipset? Cos I really want to get a GTX460 SLI set up and my current motherboard has just about had it I think .

I need to upgrade to PCI-E 2.0 I think as well, sitting on a 1.1 atm and I think that'd start to bottleneck a higher powered graphics card at 2048x1152 resolution.

So, I need your motherboard suggestions, must take SLI, allow about 3GHz out of my Q6600 and be available new.

[Terbinator]

Allow me to clarify my points about the 460...

It just seems like you would be buying, what is for all intents and purposes, EOL tech. It's clear the 570 is coming next week, along with the 560 soon after not to mention whats already on the table in terms of 68xx and the up coming 69xx in addition to the sporadically cheap pricing of the 5850's - pipping for the 460's now is a bit foolish IMO, especially given that a decent branded 460 is still going to cost you in the region of £150.

If you are after an SLI board then definitely wait for SB and sell of your current stuff - there is still high demand for Q6600's from what i can tell as well as DDR2 RAM.

[jim]

I wouldn't bother with SLI on socket 775, tbh.

Crossfire is fine, but IIRC you're a physx/CUDA nut? Sandy bridge might turn out to be the best option afterall, unless you go for a GTX 580.

[scaryjim]

ASUS P5N72-T? (780i SLI, £140)

ASUS P5N-D? (750i SLI, £75)

That's all I can dig up from the usual suspects...

[Pob255]

The 780i was the good sli chipset, however it wasn't cheap and was plagued with heat issues

the gf114 (gtx560) is still months off so it all depends on how much you "wantitnow!" the gtx275 shouldn't be held back in any major way by pci-e 1.1 as the through put of pci-e 1.1 is still more than the card demands (remember that x16 pci-e 1.1 is the same as x8 pci-e 2.0)
ATM nvidia has no pressing need to release it, as the gf104 has still only been out for Four and a half months and is selling well and performing well ve ati cards of the same price (disscounting stock clearence sales, which while cheap are few and very short lived)

The number of pixels you're asking it to push is probably the thing causing issues, both the memory size esp with the very high res textures on new games and FSAA, if you're using it, adds a big chunk to the workload of a graphics card, one of the main reasons why many games don't include FSAA settings and offical benchmarks never include it.
Try dropping the FSAA level a notch or two (down to x2 or x4) also dropping the texture settings in games that cause issues may well change things in a big way.

Also thinking about it the gtx460 768mb is probably around the same performance level as the gtx275 so the 1gb version will not be a big jump in performance.
Keeping a eye out for a gtx470 deal is probably a good move esp if the gtx570 comes out this month as we should get some cheap stock clearance deals on it, however with the growing popularity of sites like skinflint and others which alert people to cheap deals, competition to actually get these sort of deals has become quite fierce and far harder to win.

[rant start]
So annoying when you realise that allot of these sorts of deals just end up within the week on ebay at normal retail price, it's people trying to make money off stuff like this that spoils it for the rest of us who want to actually use the hardware.

[/rant over]