470 SLi or 5870 XFire, and questions about unlocking GTX465's...

[Caldezar]

Two big questions in this thread...

So everyone knows I'm ready to buy a whole new rig. I was actually going to order it Friday, but circumstances now point to Monday. This has given me the weekend to ponder last minute changes. And I'm posting a NEW thread on this, as I have some particular questions...

I've been looking at benchmarks of the 470's in SLi lately, and have been really impressed with the performance. Do they really line up with the 5870's more or less? (Please try to avoid simply biased brand favoritism here.) I've been looking at this benchmark run and I'm wondering if I should save myself some money and budget down to a 470 Sli system?

Also, important to note, is that this decision somewhat surrounds the MSI GTX 465 Twin Frozr's being sold at NCIX that seem to be coming unlocked to 470's. Is this the case with ALL of them? Or is it a hit or miss thing, like AMD CPU cores? And is NCIX actually going through the trouble of unlocking them all? If so... a build surrounding 2 of these cards, and shuffling a few other things, could drop my build price by a rather significant chunk. And although I'm not a fan of Intel or nVidia, the money drop for the same performance (assuming those reviews are correct) has left me no choice but to consider it...

[rjbarker]

If you want shear performance and don't care about Power / Heat....then yes 470 / 80......otherwise if your pondering 470's think I'd tend to take a good look at 5870's...around the same performance with less power / heat....otherwise back to Sli 460's ;)

[Caldezar]

Originally Posted by rjbarker

If you want shear performance and don't care about Power / Heat....then yes 470 / 80......otherwise if your pondering 470's think I'd tend to take a good look at 5870's...around the same performance with less power / heat....otherwise back to Sli 460's ;)

Yeah, I know power/heat is a big deal for a lot of people, but I'm not quite as concerned about that. Certainly it's a factor, but I put much more weight on cost vs. performance (465's unlocked are $120 cheaper per card than the vapor-x's) and sound volume. (Which is why I'm looking at non-stock cooling for both sides) Truthfully, volume is amongst my biggest points.

On a whole, moving to an X58 setup and budgeting a couple points down can save me upwards of $450. But that being said; I don't want to regret my decision, and $450 isn't all that big a deal in the grand scheme.

[ilya]

The GE Twin Frozr 465's are ALL unlocked before they're shipped to you. If it doesn't unlock, they don't sell them. According to Linus only 1 of them hasn't unlocked and only 2 have unlocked with issues.

If you get the newsletter I highly recommend you get it at the sale price, it's a way better deal than anything else out there. Most of these cards are reporting clocks in the 800mhz core range.

[Ryoohki]

Not a troll here but actual experience. I had 5850 Xfire and OC and now i have GTX 460 1GB SLI and OC. I'am getting a better experience with SLI right now and with the game i play.

I got a pair of Gigabyte GTX 460 Twin fan and they are great. I've OC them to 825/2075 and i'am not getting even at 70C under load, so it's great! They are very silent (just like my 5850 PCS+) etc..

[jcmaz]

The MSI 465 sold by NCIX are guaranteed to unlock.

EDIT: Actually they are suppose to be unlocked by Linus himself...

http://images.ncix.com/forumimages/5...9D9D55C015.jpg

[_dangtx_]

if you play metro? or actually youl lfold i say go with the 470(465 unlock)

although for the price performance you cant pas up the above suggestion either :)

[RockCrayfish]

Apparently Linus is unlocking all of NCIX's GTX 465 Golden Edition cards. That being said, some do not unlock, those are being sold here on NCIX as well: http://ncix.com/products/?sku=55222&...SI%2FMicroStar

As a note, you can actually find the unlockable GTX 465s on NCIX for $309.99 at this link (your link was priced at $333): http://www.ncix.com/products/index.p...7&promoid=1008


Hope this helps. Any other questions you have can probably be answered at my thread over at Overclock.net. It can be found here: MSI GTX465 Twin Frozr II Golden Edition Owners Club - Overclock.net - Overclocking.net

[Realityshift]

The golden MSI ones sold at that link are pre unlocked by linus, not all 465s will, they require the 10 ram chips to be on the card to allow unlock, if those arent there then no dice. There is a chance you can get lucky and find an unlockable random 465 from other companies but they are rare, the MSI gold ones are limited run cards that are ALL unlockable, only the ones from NCIX that specifically list in the description that they are running 470 clocks are actually unlocked.

I have had one on order since thursday last week, still hasnt shipped but looking forward to getting it.

[Linus]

I did another batch today, Realityshift, so your order should go out soon!!