Your opinion on what I should buy

[TokeR]

I have got a EVGA GTX 480 and I am starting to come across games that it struggles to display on maximum detail I am kind of confused on which option to choose from so I thought I would seek council with you guys .

I am thinking of buying a USED EVGA GTX 480 and running it in SLI with my EVGA GTX 480 but I am not sure on this, How much would I be looking at spending on a stock (not SC) EVGA GTX 480?

My other option is to sell my 480 then save a whole lot and buy two 580's and run them in SLI, but I don't know how keen I am on doing this.. I would "Hate" to finally get the cash buy them then a week or so later have the 600 Series jump out on me.

I would have thought of getting the 590 but in all the benchmarks I have seen SLI 580's almost always wins and there is no way I am paying $2000 AUD to buy 590's in SLI lol.

So what should I do? would buying a used 480 be a waste of money better saved up towards dual 580's or are they not even worth it because soon a 680 will be on the shelves or something lol.

Thanks.

[BrutalGreen]

well...for starters it doesnt need to be an EVGA card any other gtx 480 will sli just fine with ur current card! also mind telling us what game you can't max? if physx is involved that might be the reason the performance is dropping on a single card! physx can be quite a resource hog in some titles and u might try disabling it to c what kind of performance gain u might have if u ran a dedicated physx card...I would also ask what resolution but the 1.5gb 480 shouldn't be vram limited unless running at retarded 6x HD or something and even if thats the case going to a 480sli/580sli/590 wouldn't do you any good as all these options would give you the same effective video memory.

[ilya]

All depends on pricing and how much you're willing to pay on A/C. If you can live with the heat this time of year and can get a 480 used for ~$300-$350 AUD, I'd go for it. Otherwise getting a 580 and selling your 480 would be a better choice, you should be able to get closer to maxing your games. Thing is I hear the video card market is going to get cluttered come Q2 2011, so I'd be sniffing around for deals.

[dma0991]

For starters you already have a beefy PSU so power requirements are one thing that you don't have to worry about. The GTX480 is a hot and power hungry card and the GTX580 is a refined version of the GTX480 with more performance, less power consumption and less heat. So I would say that it would be better to get a GTX580 SLi than to get another GTX480 to SLi your current setup.

Not too sure whether GTX600 series would be coming out yet but definitely both AMD and Nvidia is moving towards the newer 28nm GPU soon enough and will bring about some major improvements in heat and power consumption. However I do not think you should wait as AMD will only be coming out with 28nm GPUs for laptops this year and most probably desktop variants next year. No news from Nvidia about their 28nm currently.

[draemn]

SLI 570 will perform about the same as SLI 480, I think... I don't remember hearing anything about scaling issues with the 480, and the 570 scales okay (not as good as the 460 or the 560 though).

I've seen new 480s selling for about the same price as the 570, so you will save a bit by going used, but is it worth the extra heat & noise? The SLI 570 will be quieter and consume way less power (and therefore produce less heat). Still, if you sell your 480 for a reasonable price, either method will be within 10% cost of eachother (that might be a touch optimistic depending if you can get your 570s on sale for a good price).

At the same time, I would really suggest SLI 560 Ti and nothing else if you're sticking with one monitor. <----------- DO THIS, LOL!

The next architecture from Nvidia will be Q4 of this year... that probably means late Q4... so probably Nov/Dec. These cards are supposed to be 4x faster than fermi (roughly) since they use 28nm... everything about them should be mind blowing ;)... Still, you should be able to recover some of the value from any upgrade you do now if you sell just before Kepler, if you want kepler when it comes out.

[_dangtx_]

yup,find a super cheap 480 to play with. not worth it to go to a 580,just clock your card(s)

[Bond007]

^^^2nd that opinion.

You can find 480 relatively cheap, since the 570 now performs approx that same and with less heat and power consumption. Giving you the opportunity to grab a 480 fairly cheap.

[TokeR]

Thanks everyone really appreciate the replies.

The title I can not run "on max settings" at 1920 x 1200 is Dragon Age II - I know it is a little silly to bother over one game but I just assume that this will be the beginning, obviously I could probably max out the next COD but I play lots of games and who knows what will happen.

Really good to know I can buy any card to SLI with, not sure I am going to go this route with the majority of you telling me to go 580 or 570. But still that is awesome news for me.. now if I see a "super cheap" 480 I may just go for it, but to be honest I completely forgot about heat and I am not sure how because on a 20'C night when I am gaming or benching my room can get up to 30'C and I find myself turning the AC on every half hour wasting electricity lol.

Just going to mention the actual problem with Dragon Age II to be clear, On "High" details DX10 I can run the game at a stable 30+ FPS but as soon as I go to "Very High" so tessellation I drop down to 22- FPS with constant dips to below 10, I have seen that they say they will be trying to fix DX11 issues with a patch but how much can it really increase FPS? (not being sarcastic btw I honestly don't know haha).

I think I will take a look at the GTX 570/580 Benchmark results try and sell my GTX 480 for ~$300? AUD then just go SLI 580/570. If I cant sell my 480 I know I have a Q6600 kicking about somewhere I could probably set up a F@H rig or something lol.

Thanks everyone!

[Luay79]

I'd say do with what you have. 480 and 580 both run on 40 nm chips, but the next 680 will be on a 28 nm chip so that will be a bigger jump. Some of us are doing fine with a 460 :P

[UNTAMED]

-just saying
I can max. the vram with 570 sli , in metro2033 and stalker cop with the complete mod, @ 1920 x 1200- so think about the vram.
-my Evga step up to the 580's came in this week so the 570's are in the mail.

a second 480 is all you need and wait for the next gen. ,
-heat is a different issue , do the 480 use what many more more watts in sli , like will you notice 700 watts over 600 watts of heat in the room [ =1 light bulb]?