Would you buy 2 470's for $200?

[exar333]

Thats a great deal, I would take that....

 

[Jaydip]

Op go for it,Hope Balla's blessing lights ur path

 

[OVerLoRDI]

That is some solid performance for that money. Also dropping them into your machine and parting out your 460s to your GF/htpc is not a bad plan. You could probably sell one of your 460s and use something cheaper/onboard for your htpc.

 

[aaksheytalwar]

You need to take into account that a brand new 7850 35% oc approaches 580 heavy oc or 7950. 470 sli oc will only be about 10-25% faster which is offset by lesser smoothness and some ms besides many other reasons. IMO a brand new 7850 at 250 or 560 to 448 at 220 is a better deal

 

[Gikaseixas]

Great deal, but like many have said check temps one you install the air coolers and go from there. Maybe you could bargain your way to 75 each. After all, he's your friend

 

[MichaelD]

Assuming:

Your MB/CPU/Chipset is "current generation" (i5/i7 series/DDR3/AMD equivalent)
The cards are both identical
Neither one is damaged from OCing

I'd do it in a heartbeat for that price (offer $50 less just for grins). I have a Gigabyte GTX470...it's got some upgraded caps and such...it's of their "Durable" line of cards. It's been a GREAT, reliable card. If I could get an identical card in 100% functioning condition, I'd SLI the two of them and not have to upgrade to the upcoming "GTX670" single card, which no doubt will be $300+.

Just yesterday (not kidding, this thread is timely!) I upgraded from a DDR2/Q9550 based rig w/the GTX470 to a i52500K/DDR3 based rig with the same GTX470. The difference in benchmarks is obvious. The differernce in gameplay is also obvious. Games released in the past two years or so have the capability of being severly CPU-bound. You need a strong "subsystem" (CPU/memory) to go along w/your mega-watt GPU or else your GPU Upgrade might not be all that you hoped it would be.

This might be old news to you. I've known it for a little while, but knowing it and seeing it for your self are two diff things. I saw it for myself just yesterday.

Hope this helps.

 

[hyrule4927]

I'll take them . . .

Need to get a real folding farm going.

 

[T_Yamamoto]

200 for 2 470? Of course!

 

[Ieat]

The 7850 fan club needs to chill out. Seriously, OP says he might split the cards up into 2 different systems and you still get silly answers like get a 7850! Can this magic card now transform into 2 smaller cards now? A single gtx 470 overclocked to 775 core gets very close to a gtx 480. Where else are you going to get even close to that kind of performance for $100?

 

[BallaTheFeared]

You need to take into account that a brand new 7850 35% oc approaches 580 heavy oc or 7950. 470 sli oc will only be about 10-25% faster which is offset by lesser smoothness and some ms besides many other reasons. IMO a brand new 7850 at 250 or 560 to 448 at 220 is a better deal

Let's look at it another way.

7850 CF = $500

Results at 1120 core/1450 memory

GPU score = 13020

470 SLI = $200

Results at 930 core/1075 memory

GPU score = 12834

Granted you won't be hitting 930 core on reference air, however depending, just like the 7850, on the sample you could get up to around 800MHz which is still going to land you in the 11k region. Since we're talking about similar performance at $200 vs $500, you could always go aftermarket on your cooling to either address the noise/heat (which overclocked 7850's are also going to have problems with) or increase performance. I've seen 470s with VF3000Fs hit 900 core gaming stable.

Both setups have their draw backs of course, 7850s are clearly overpriced performance wise, and 470s will draw noticeably more power and as such produce noticeably more heat. AMD's CF support is something awful, while Nvidia is, as you know since you have 460 SLI, pretty decent.

 

[Silverforce11]

If you're gonna compare OC vs OC speeds, the most important point here is that 40nm cards once OC can and does draw >100W extra on top of the already high ~250W power use.

So far, 78xx OC draws 20-30W extra only, above their already low 120-130W. So we're really comparing 150W vs 350W once OC. Even my old 5850 @ 1ghz is a power hog.

If you pay around 0.20 to 0.30 USD per kwh peak rate, even with modest gaming a 200W difference is NOT cheap.

If you don't pay the bills, it doesn't matter.. but meh, think of the baby polar bears!!

To answer the OP: No i would not, stay away from such old tech like the plague. Not to mention the low vram is asking for fail in the future.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

To answer the OP: No i would not, stay away from such old tech like the plague. Not to mention the low vram is asking for fail in the future.

Perhaps you misread?

OP has 1GB 460s in SLI and isn't looking to replace them as he currently is ok with his 1GB cards at his resolution.

The question he's asking is if they're a good value to split between two setups, one is his GF's PC which will replace a 4870, and the other is a HTPC to replace a 4830.

Buying a single 7850 for $250 and moving the 460's into those two solutions would make sense as well, buying the 470s and moving his 460s into the other rigs would be another option.

Both have their pros and cons, 470s being clearly more powerful than a single 7850 while costing less, a 460 would make a better HTPC card IMO than a 470.

 

[dust]

I wouldn't buy two for two hundred, I would buy one for 100 though.

 

[Denithor]

Buying a single 7850 for $250 and moving the 460's into those two solutions would make sense as well, buying the 470s and moving his 460s into the other rigs would be another option.

Either of these should work well, I would personally try for $150 for the two 470s, otherwise go for the 7850OC to save on the power bill.

 

[blastingcap]

OP sufficiently vague as to make it hard to recommend stuff. Doesn't say what resolution or if he'll upgrade to a higher one that will need more VRAM. There are multiple ways to split up or not split up the 470s, with or without water, and multiple different cards he could sell including selling one or more of his old cards or one of the 470s. I think it's ok if he buys both even if he's not sure what to do with them, because he can probably resell them for at least as much as he paid for.

 

[Upgrade_Itch]

I wouldn't buy old tech at all, but thats just me. Newer tech= more efficient

 

[BallaTheFeared]

I wouldn't buy old tech at all, but thats just me. Newer tech= more efficient

Normally I'd agree, like I'd never buy a 280 over 4xx or a 88xx over a 260, however 28nm is a joke in just about every way. The only good thing it has going for it is power draw, which for most people isn't a major factor. Hence why people are still arguing for the lesser 7970 over the 680 because it's about as fast, while being slightly cheaper, even though it draws 100+ more watts oc vs oc.

 

[Don Karnage]

Let's look at it another way.

7850 CF = $500

Results at 1120 core/1450 memory

GPU score = 13020

470 SLI = $200

Results at 930 core/1075 memory

GPU score = 12834

Granted you won't be hitting 930 core on reference air, however depending, just like the 7850, on the sample you could get up to around 800MHz which is still going to land you in the 11k region. Since we're talking about similar performance at $200 vs $500, you could always go aftermarket on your cooling to either address the noise/heat (which overclocked 7850's are also going to have problems with) or increase performance. I've seen 470s with VF3000Fs hit 900 core gaming stable.

Both setups have their draw backs of course, 7850s are clearly overpriced performance wise, and 470s will draw noticeably more power and as such produce noticeably more heat. AMD's CF support is something awful, while Nvidia is, as you know since you have 460 SLI, pretty decent.

What does a single 470 score at that speed?

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Can't say for sure, it's been awhile since I ran a single 470. I picked up one on OCN for $110 ages ago for SLI. Can't get more than x2 scaling so worst case would be around 6500.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Buy low, sell high. Seriously, buy them and then sell them on a forum for profit...

 

[thilanliyan]

Balla, you have a call on line 4.

Lol that is exactly what I was thinking.

I would buy two 470s for $200...but only if the overclock...like HELLSPAWNS RAAWWWRRRRRR!!!!

 

[BallaTheFeared]

lol with that 6100 you might as well stick to one, cause bottleneck.

 

[Don Karnage]

Can't say for sure, it's been awhile since I ran a single 470. I picked up one on OCN for $110 ages ago for SLI. Can't get more than x2 scaling so worst case would be around 6500.

so a thousand points lower then my 1250 core 7850?

btw balla. I call dibs on your 470s when you decide to get a 7970

 

[BallaTheFeared]

so a thousand points lower then my 1250 core 7850?

btw balla. I call dibs on your 470s when you decide to get a 7970

I'll run one at 950/2250, just for you

Once I figure out which z77 board I'm going to get :\

 

[blackened23]

Buy low, sell high. Seriously, buy them and then sell them on a forum for profit...

This. Might as well not use them because they're hot and loud, you can easily sell them for profit. Heck, i'd probably lowball him and try to get them for less than 100$ a piece....see if he will go down to 80-90$, easy profit.