Why is 2x GTX 460 1GB SLI still viable?

[FalseChristian]

I upgraded to 2 eVGA GTX 760 4GB but a friend of mine who is quite well off offered to buy them from me for a $100 profit. I just couldn't say no. He's a great guy and I think he just wanted to help me out more than anything.

Anyhow, I'm back with my 3 year-old 2 eVGA GTX 460 1GB SLI and I can actually run Battlefield 4 (albeit at my 'lowly' 1680x1050 resolution) at playable frame-rates on High with 16x AF and 4x AA.

I think if my GPUs had 2GB of vRAM they would be viable for 1920x1080 and up for years to come.

 

[spat55]

I hope you weren't using those GTX 760's at 1680x1050! That would be a terrible waste.

I don't know why you are surprised there were games back then that took a lot to power like Crysis.

 

[crisium]

What is playable, to you?

PerfOverlay.drawfps 1

What're you getting? That AA has got to hurt your performance. But still, besides the VRAM that's still a capable setup since SLI 460s overclocked should land somewhere around 660 Ti stock performance.

 

[mindbomb]

im pretty sure a 7970 is faster and uses less power.

 

[Silverforce11]

Your GPUs aren't that old, and you have two of them. It's purely limited by the vram by what settings you can play, but playing at lower res eliminates vram as the bottleneck and there's plenty of grunt left.

For instance, I strongly belief if someone today were to folk out for CF R290X, in FOUR years time, it will still be perfectly playable at 1080p in the latest games, but it will probably struggle hard at 4K res in games several years later.

I had a single OC 5850 and ran BF3 64 MP really well at 1080, high settings, 60 fps solid when MSAA was disabled.

 

[monkeydelmagico]

because 2 gtx 460 = roughly gtx 480 = 570 = 660

With a little OC a pair of 460's is probably within spiting distance of a stock 760.

Perfectly awesome cards for their time which wasn't all that long ago. I'm a little suprised your able to have the AF and AA that high given only 1gb of vram though.

 

[Attic]

Had I been smarter I'd have kept my eVGA 460GTX 1GB SLI. Once over clocked those bad boys held their own.

But the 1gb VRAM is the problem now or very soon.

The key is finding todays 460GTX 1GB. It might be the 7950. 7950's over clock very well, have enough VRAM to last through future games and when in xFire they are beastly.

But the 7850 in xFire can be done ridiculously cheap now and provide >680GTX performance once over clocked to 1000-1050 on the cores, though may not have the performance to meet needs in a few years like the 7950xfire most likely will.

 

[blckgrffn]

Had I been smarter I'd have kept my eVGA 460GTX 1GB SLI. Once over clocked those bad boys held their own.

But the 1gb VRAM is the problem now or very soon.

The key is finding todays 460GTX 1GB. It might be the 7950. 7950's over clock very well, have enough VRAM to last through future games and when in xFire they are beastly.

But the 7850 in xFire can be done ridiculously cheap now and provide >680GTX performance once over clocked to 1000-1050 on the cores, though may not have the performance to meet needs in a few years like the 7950xfire most likely will.

I rolled the dice on this. I picked up a pair of "premium" 7950's for $225 each and are hoping they'll go the distance like my 5870 did (which cost $200 and I sold for $100 about 2.5 years later... hah).

I just helped a buddy of mine buy a pair of GTX 660Ti 3GB cards. It was a little more costly, but as some have alluded, the ability to use the NV utilities to tweak games settings, etc. was worth it to him. With a factory OC, they should be in the upper tier of performance for the next two years or so.

FWIW, I have a pair of very nice EVGA GTX 460's in a box ready to ship!

 

[FalseChristian]

I got my 2 eVGA GTX 460 1GB at 837/1674/4200 and boy does that make a difference in newer games like Metro: Last Light and Crysis 3.

I game on a 22" Samsung SyncMaster 2253BW at 1680x1050 and 1GB of vRAM is enough.

I know I should get a 27" 2560x1440 LED 120Htz monitor but I've had my monitor for 7 years and it still displays like it did on day 1!

 

[spat55]

I got my 2 eVGA GTX 460 1GB at 837/1674/4200 and boy does that make a difference in newer games like Metro: Last Light and Crysis 3.

I game on a 22" Samsung SyncMaster 2253BW at 1680x1050 and 1GB of vRAM is enough.

I know I should get a 27" 2560x1440 LED 120Htz monitor but I've had my monitor for 7 years and it still displays like it did on day 1!

Why not get a 1440p, which will need you to upgrade the GPU's though and use your 22" as a secondary/backup?

 

[JBT]

AF is basically free. What do you use for AA? That could impact your performance quite a bit. Either way at 1680x1050 you aren't going to hit any RAM limits.