SLI'd & OC'd GTX 480's......when and what to upgrade too

[serenekaos]

Current rig:
Core i7 920 @ 3.2ghz
12gb Mushkin 1.5v 1866 Triple Channel DDR3
2x EVGA GTX 480 Superclocked and OC'd @ 830mhz/2000mhz
Silverstone 1200w power supply
Asus P6T mobo

I have the CPU and GPU's under water and temps stay in the mid 60's celcius under load.

My question to my esteemed peers of this forum: What GPU could I upgrade too?

I'm currently thinking that upgrading to a Core i7 3770 and a ASUS Gene V mobo would be a better upgrade then messing with the sli'd 480s.

Your thoughts?

 

[JAG87]

Welcome to AT.

In my experience, the Gene V will make any kind of SLI difficult. Cards don't play well with heat when they are sandwiched, even the blower cooler ones. Of course if you are water cooling, this is not a problem. In which case I'd say GTX 670 SLI or 7950 Crossfire is your best upgrade in terms of perf/$.

If you plan to air cool then your only viable option is a single GTX 670/680, single 7950/7970, or a GTX 690, which is really the only tangible upgrade in terms of performance from 480 SLI. A single card would not provide much benefit over 480 SLI, except in situations where the 480s were VRAM constricted.

 

[Yukmouth]

Keep the 480's, price to performance is horrible on latest gen cards unless you go ATI and the new top end cards are just around the corner. Skip anything 7xxx series or 6xx series.

 

[Smoblikat]

SLI 480 beats everything out there right now. You wont find an upgrade unless you buy SLI immediatley.

 

[serenekaos]

Yea I couldn't think of a single card solution that would beat the sli'd 480s that was cost effective.

I think my current bottleneck is more in the CPU and chipset and probably my raid arrays.

Upgrading to the 3770 would drop my thermal concerns considerably as well since it's only a 75 watt CPU and I probably wouldn't even over clock it to begin with.

Thank you for everyone's input.

 

[tweakboy]

You dont need a upgrade. That will handle Crysis 3 as well.

Wait for 9xx series 2 years from now. Is any game slow your fps should be 60fps pretty much as all times,,,,

What do you want to improve ? That is like a 570 card
Your fine for now. Black Ops 2 will run fine ........ use some AA etc..

 

[Termie]

Yeah, you are extremely cpu limited. If you can't or don't want to overclock your 920 more, then move to a new cpu before upgrading your gpus.

Then again, if you're happy with how all your games run, don't do anything at all. You don't have to upgrade just because you have a bottleneck, since there's always some bottleneck.

 

[wbynum]

Comments:

1. OC that i7 920. You should easily be able to get it up to 3.8 ghz or more.

2. If you upgrade the CPU, why not go for something like the Asrock Z77 extreme4 motherboard? Only $135 through newegg or $85 through BM Microcenter with CPU purchase. The Asrock motherboard has two slots between the PCI-E slots so your cards will not be shoved against each other.

3. I say wait for another ~$320 7970 deal and then sell the two 480's. You can net about $125 per card on ebay.

 

[serenekaos]

I can't OC the 920 any higher and keep the heat under control. I have a swiftech mcr320 drive unit cooling the cpu and both video cards. I honestly need another 240mm radiator in the loop.

 

[Arzachel]

I can't OC the 920 any higher and keep the heat under control. I have a swiftech mcr320 drive unit cooling the cpu and both video cards. I honestly need another 240mm radiator in the loop.

Is there anything you're having issues running right now?

If not I'd suggest you wait a year or so and get Haswell and a HD8XXX or GTX7XX series card(s).