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Upgrading to GTX460 SLI

tyl998

tyl998

Senior member
I just ordered two of these cards: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814125333 and now I'm worried that my PSU might not be able to handle it.

I'm building a new system from scratch, and I will be putting everything together minus the 460s tonight. In their place I will be using a single GTX280 until the new cards arrive.

So, I've got some questions:
1) Does have two cards increase the Tessellation capabilities of the setup?
2) Can the 460 handle DX11 well?
3) Is Tessellation and DX11 important? It's part of the reason I upgraded from my GTX280.
4) Is $354 dollars (after MIRs) for the two cards a good deal or should I have waited for the prices to drop some more (thinking the new AMD cards might drive prices down)?
5) Will my 650 Watt antec PSU be enough?

The rest of my rig:
MOBO -Gigabyte GA-X58a-UD3R
Processor - i7 930 Bloomfield
Memory - Corsair TR3X6G1333C9 XMS3 6 GB 3 x 2 GB PC3-10666 1333MHz 240-Pin DDR3 Core i7 Memory Kit
HDD - Samsung F3 Spinpoint 1 TB 7200 rpm, 2x old IDE drives with about 120-140 GB capacity each
Optic drive - Sony Optiarc Black 24x DVD+R
Case - Antec 300 (has 3x 120mm fans, 1x 140mm fan)
Peripherals - Logitech MX518 mouse, Logitech G15 Keyboard, Logitech headset
 
1) I believe so.

2) yes, but nvidia has backwards compatablity issues. FFXI a directx 8 game still doesnt work on 4xx cards without them getting like 5-15 fps with their 480 cards. Nv Forums they keep mentioning drivers that will fix the issue, but theyve been saying that since the launch of the 4xx cards, hasnt happend yet.
The 5xxx series has no issues with the older dx games. Rumor mill is saying its a hardware issue because of the hardware crippling nvidia did.

3) Currently I wouldnt say that its that big a deal, but it looks like in the future there might be more and more of it.

4) No idea.

5) a 460 at stock core/mem uses about 155 watts or so, maybe abit more (155w x2 = 310w+ under load). Yes I think you should be fine with 650w psu.
 
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1. Yes
2. Yes
3. Yes, though the performance difference should be much more noticeable.
4. Rebates suck, but the price is pretty good with at least one. You might want to check out what this wording means: "Multiple purchases on a single product only qualify for one rebate per promotion".
5. Yes for all stock, or possibly overclocked cpu and stock gpus (that factory overclock is ~= stock), but probably not any other combination.

I have a similar system but with only one GB GTX460 so far, and for some reason I couldn't bring myself to get a PSU better than the Corsair 650 which doesn't even have 4 PCI-E power connectors like that Antec (yeah I could use the molex to pci-e adapters). The GB GTX460 doesn't match my color scheme at all, so I'm kind of interested in seeing how the Cayman GPUs or any nVidia surprise stacks up against SLI 460s.
 
Absolutely no offense meant here. I'm just curious.

Why are you asking these questions after the purchase? Will the answers matter?

1) yes
2) yes
3) increasing in time
4) not bad
5) A little tighter than I like
 
I can still cancel it if I need to because it hasn't shipped yet. I needed to order them quickly because the deal might go away very soon.

No offense taken.
 
I can only speak on behalf of the power consumption. I currently have 2 x gtx460's with a 965be cpu all folding 24/7. My power supply is one of the original Corsair 550 watt units. Using my kill-a-watt I am getting a total system pull of about 360 watts. YMMV, but I think the 650 watt unit will be more than ample.
 
I have msi cylcones in SLI with the Antec ea650, it has only 1-6 pin and 1-6+2 pin. I bought Y splitters for each, because I prefered not pulling from molex connectors. Working great , o/c everything.
 
which Antec 650 watt psu do you have? if you do any significant overclocking on the cards and your cpu then you would likely be cutting close on the available 12v amps.
 
*embarassed* I actually don't know. I've had it for years and back then I didn't pay attention to the exact product lines. I just know it's 650 Watts and has hybrid cable management.
 
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