they'll always be something better on the horizon. If you keep waiting for the next best thing, you'll be waiting forever.
Well AMD's new 6k series is due out very soon now. so you might as well wait to see the benchmarks on those. And at the very least it will probably drive the GTX4## series down in price so then you can get an upgrade for cheaper
we are selling some of the 460's for as cheap as 180 ... 1gb for 210 ... 260 maybe for the EVGA superclocked 1gb version? or palit 2gb ?
This is for the super high end one's I hope. What was the price before if your above statement is the case? Lol. The "superclocked" FTW eVGA edition is 260 and that just recently came out.
Running 460GTX FTW superclocked super duper blah blah blah 120132GB, I heard is better then running with a single 480GTX, and cheaper.
I heard of this card from the EVGA you tube page where they have this supposed world record Over clocking footage with that card. A few clicks away I saw that price.
Not true. In SLI yes - somewhat true, it can perform up to a 480 "standards" if overclocked correctly as well. Here's an article incase you want to read it: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-460-sli-geforce-gtx-480,2694.html
Read this article and saw that the 460GTXs in sli outperformed the single 480GTX in every test they threw at it. "The GeForce GTX 460 SLI configuration absolutely obliterates the GeForce GTX 480’s performance scores, landing a 26% performance coup de grace upon its big brother after continuously battering it with wins in every benchmark at every setting." "
The only thing is that you have 2 slots used on your motherboard, which cover up a second slot each. Meaning the cards take up 4 slots on the motherboard so expansion slots cant be used in computers (except maybe the bottom one of a normal board). Also you need either an Nvidia motherboard (absolute trash) or an Intel board. If you have an AMD computer that uses any modern chipset then you cant do SLI anyway as AMD boards use Crossfire with ATI/AMD graphics cards. It also draws more power than a single GTX480, and puts out a lot more heat than a single card. It also means you cant get your sound card to be far away from the graphics card so you can get interference in your sound. And I really like good sound. So performance wise, yes. Practicality wise, no.
if your goin to SLI 460's you better have a good ATX board a good PSU and a good big ass case ... Id rather SLI 460's then a 480 cuz of price point but I already have a good board and case just need a higher PSU
I'm not to certain but I think they make MOBOs with more slots. If you're thinking of going sli you're probably thinking of heat and other problems that might occur. I can't think of a person who is thinking of going "sli" who doesn't think about those issues, besides rich people haha. I have to say it wouldn't be that unwise. You just have to think about what you're doing, also obtaining great things require some sacrifice. =] Last time I checked 460GTXS aren't THAT big...
I am not thinking about it at all, I was just stating that there are a lot of cons for the computer in other departments. And no they dont make things with more slots on ATX boards than any normal ATX board has. Slots have to be spaced out in a certain way and the ATX form factor is only so big. Sure you can have a lot of PCI-E slots, or a lot of PCI and only one or two PCI-E. But what I am saying is that a 460 is a dual slot card and will take up 4 slots on the motherboard no matter what when SLIing because of that. ATX motherboards only have 7 slots at best, most have 6. The top one if it is on the board is almost always a PCI-E 1x slot. Then you have a full sized PCI-E 16x slot. Below that is whatever the manufacturer wants. Usually consisting of a combination of PCI-E and PCI slots. With most boards only having a single PCI slot now days. And the PCI slot is almost always either in the #3 slot or the #6 slot. Probably the largest motherboard you will find except for proprietary form factors is this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131390 and it still only has 7 expansion slots. Case size has nothing to do with expansion slots on a motherboard so I am not thinking about that at all. All I was simply saying was that having two GTX460s in SLI isnt the end all of everything. Yes it has a bit more performance than a single GTX480, but the two cards only save you $40, consume more power, dump out more heat, and take up twice the real estate in your computer. All for about 10fps more in average fps. You should find out what the minimum fps is on both setups as it will be a lot closer to each other and that is the only benchmarks that count. It is even possible that the dual cards will have a worse minimum than the single 480 because of the way SLI works. And then you throw the microstuttering into this whole debate and that is an even bigger reason not to get dual cards. People will sometimes say micro stuttering is gone now days but that isnt true. With the more powerful cards you dont notice it as much when running at high FPS. But you can see the effects more and more as you stress the cards further.
And also remember, you can only SLI 460's once. The 470's can tri-sli and I think the 480's can go 4 if you got room / power / capable motherboard. Not that one would spend the $ on four 480's, but just stating. Isn't too future proof for 460's if you sli 'em, but if that's all you need - then that's what ya should get.
I myself will prolly just get a single 460 1 gb model maybe the 2 gb model from work I run a samsung 23" monitor at 2048 x 1152 i have a decent enough rig that a 460 should be more then enough i7 860 4 gig ddr3 1600 9800gtx+ right now
You always have to take benchmarking tests with a grain of salt. Most of the time you'll get 10 different answers to the same question. That stated, I have seen many reports of SLI 460's surpassing the single 480.
very very very TRUE!!! for my purpose a single 460 should be more then enough to run most games on full
So my question to you is if I went sli 460GTX would I not be able to include a sound card, I'm also a person who appreciates high quality sounds. I'm pretty new to the whole sli thing, so I'm not really sure if you'd really only get 10FPS for all the cons it doesn't seem worth it if you put it that way. I'm, sure you're trying to help a fellow xoobie but I'm not sure why it'd be that much worse it's not like NVIDIA is gaining anything hell they're actually losing money if people choose 2 460GTXS over a single 480GTX sure it's only 20-40bucks but it's still builds up. It seems like SLI would be much better and cheaper, also the power consumption and heat it gives off is some what effected by the case and of course PSU. If you have a big enough case with enough ventilation heat will still be a concern but not as much as having a half tower then a full one. I'm just saying if you'd buy or go into sli I'm sure you'd have a big enough case, enough power. Sure there will be more heat and more power consumption, but did you really expect that NOT to happen? Honestly I'm glad you posted, I'll have someone to pester when I create my computer it seems you're pretty knowledgeable and have dealt with this. I've made only a single computer and I didn't put it together. To me the heat and power consumption isn't that big of a deal, as long as you do it right. Does power consumption really jump that much from sli to a single card? Does the heat really build up that much I could understand that one of the cards would be affected because of the blocking of the face plate. Curious as if it'd just be better to SLI it up then 480 because I still want a sound card with my next system.
Power supply has nothing to do with how much power the graphics cards draw or how much heat they put out. It just needs to have enough power to supply to the cards. Having a less efficient PSU will make your electric bill higher as it will require more power from the wall socket to generate the required wattage for the computer. Well if the single PCI slot in a modern motherboard is near the top of the slots, like this: Top area PCI Then your screwed either way as the graphics goes in the top slot on single or SLI, thus covering the PCI slot. However, if you were to get a PCI-E based sound card, you would either have to put it right above the graphics card which will get VERY hot, as well as pick up a lot of noise from the massive amount of EMI the graphics card is dumping out. Or you could stick it in the lower PCI-E 1x slot. However, if you go SLI then you do not have that option as the lower PCI-E 1x is covered up by the second GTX460. With this motherboard: different board, same chipset You could run your good PCI sound card if you only had a single graphics card. Or if you went SLI you would not be able to use a PCI sound card, however you could get a PCI-E 1x based sound card and that could go in the bottom PCI-E 1x slot. Tri SLI on that board would leave no slots open at all once all 3 graphics cards were in. I like PCI based sound cards as they are better than PCI-E versions. This is because of the voltage pins on a PCI slot compared to a PCI-E. an older PCI based sound card can supply better voltage levels to the op amps which will make them sound much better. So as you can see it really just depends on the motherboard whether you can use a sound card or not with SLI, however it looks like you will only be able to use PCI-E sound cards if you run SLI, and that is only on some boards. As for heat, the GTX460s do run cooler per card than a GTX480. The GTX460 uses about 270 watts each of power. a single GTX480 uses about 380 watts. So with dual 460s you are looking at a draw of 160 watts more power draw on average when playing a game. At those wattages, the GTX460 runs around 77 degrees Celsius. The GTX480 runs around 92 degrees C. Either way, your looking at a very hot setup. Now as for performance, 26% better on the 460 SLI setup is complete BS. Maybe in 1 test it showed that. But that doesnt mean it is always that high. Many of the texts I saw were 6-10 fps difference in favor of the GTX460s. But again those are AVERAGE frames per second. You should disregard any of those tests unless they tell you the MINIMUM frames per second both setups had. Those are the only numbers that matter. Who the fuck cares if I can run Guild Wars at 1300 frames per second (Yes, I used to on my old computer) if when a battle starts and people are running around casting things I can only run the game around 100fps? The only number that you should care about is the 100fps in that situation as that is the number it runs at when it actually matters. Now if the GTX460 in SLI somehow manages to outperform the single GTX480 in minimum fps by a good margin then that is the clear winner. But if you have the problem inherent with SLI setups and the GTX460s get the exact same thing, a little less, MAYBE 1 or 2fps more, then that is a much harder decision to make.