460 gtx SLi or upgrade 660/760?

Hey guys,

I currently have a palit 460 gtx which is serving me well and does pretty much what I ask of it but I would like to step it up a little. You can pick up 460 gtx's for peanuts these days so I was wondering is it worth while picking another up and running in SLi or should I just spend a bit more and get say a 660 or a 760.

Thanks:banana:

 

get 760. dont waste money for über old tech.

 

I went from Gigabyte GTX470 SOC to a single 660ti which was an awesome speed upgrade at 1080p. I now run 660ti in SLI and don't need to upgrade plays everything awesome at 1080p bought 2nd 660ti to future proof did not need it for 1080p but figured get it while I could I ran single 660ti for several months


buy the best you can afford check out reviews what resolution will you be gaming at.

 

Indeed, just pick up a GTX760 and be done with it.

 

If you have budget, get the 760.

460 SLI you'll still be limited at 1gb VRAM, no to mention higher power consumption, heat and noise.

You'll get a better overall gaming experience with an updated card.

 

This kind of question gets asked a lot.

If money is not considered, then this is a question with an easy answer.

And if money is a factor, then it is not as easy.

How much are 'peanuts' being sold in your part of the world?
And, how much is 'a bit more'?

Graphics performance wise, GTX460 SLI is, at its best, close to but not equal to a single GTX760. The only advantage of choosing the SLI option is $. $ question is quite subjective. So, if your budget is limited but wish to get a nice performance boost, SLI is the option. But if money is abundant, go for a GTX760.

 

gtx 460 sli is about as fast as a gtx 580 and be slower in newer games that are vram limited....... Id go with the gtx 760 if you really can. 1gb vram is just not enough anymore at 1080p in newest games.
Im bout to run gtx 470 sli because I can get a new zotac 470 for $100. I dont care about running games above high settings and using more then 2xAA anyways. Plus there is SMAA and sweetfx. And Downsampling is awesome in older games.

 

Funny how people always recommend to pick some card to SLI it later on, but when its the moment to do it, its time to 'ditch that old tech, not 'nuff ramz' and just buy a new card.

 

that advice is used when we're talking about going with a 2nd card reasonably soon. Nobody buys gpus with a plan to upgrade to sli 3 years later.

OP, get a new gpu.

 

Thanks for the responses guys!

Regards to peanuts I've seen a few go for ~£40 and under so not very much and 760's for between £170-200 but that's pretty price of new anyway iirc. My 460 at the minute lets me play everything I want at high settings, 1080 and always 30+ fps this is more for a bit of headroom rather than holding me back so yes I could afford a 760 but I don't really need to, that's why I was wondering if it would be worth while to spend very little for a nice little gain.

Noise and temperature have been considerations as my current one could get noisy but I did the bios flash the other day as I haven't heard it since! Temperature wise I'm not to concerned as my cpu is water cooled and I would have thought another gpu would have minimal affect on the temperature of that that's just a guess though to be honest.

 

Couldn't agree more... :thumbup:

 

~40 quid is indeed peanuts. You surely will spend very little but not for a nice little gain but for a fairly big gain. C/P ratio is unbeatable here. I would suggest getting a 2nd GTX460, on one condition. That is, if you can find a GTX460 with blower style cooling. This could be harder to find as most use a central axial fan, which should be your Palit's.

The reason is thermal (and acoustic) which concerns you. Your motherboard's PCIE slots layout does not allow an empty slot in between the 2 SLIed cards. This means, the upper card will have little room for air intake. Axial fan style cooling will suffer severely thermally. On the other hand, a blower style cooling is much more efficient in this kind of situation to suck air in. Needless to say, high temp will lead to higher fan speed and thus more noise.

So, if you can find one, use it on the top PCIe slot and install your Palit to the 'slave' card/position.

 

That's a good point! Although my case does have a side mount for a fan near the gpu which should help. The only blower style one I've seen that I can think of is the asus one and I'm not sure what it's like but seems a more viable option.

C/P ratio?

I think my brother has a 460 now I think about it actually, I could pinch his and see what's what.

Thanks again!

 

That's a good option since you're able to try it first... and for free.

 

The room between pci e slots is why I picked my MSI board over the Asus P6X58D-E. As said, blower style fans are the way to go for sli with the top card if you go that route.

 

460 is well over 3 years old, the recommondation I give is buy one now and a few months down the road buy another one, not years later and 1 gb vram is not much at all these days, having another 1gb 460 is going to give a boost but you are still going to have to tone down iq settings not because of horsepower but vram limit

 

C/P is cost-to-performance ratio.

IIRC, Nvidia's reference cooling design for the 460 is a central axial fan. So, this is the default cooling. And, as odd as it might sound, blower style cooling is the non reference cooling.

It is good that you can try your brother's card out. Nothing beats a first hand experience.

A quick Google search gives Zotac and EVGA also have blower style GTX460.
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2010/07/12/nvidia-geforce-gtx-460-graphics-card-review/3
http://www.maximumpc.com/files/u5033/GF460GTX_B1_Z.jpg

If you use SLI for now, I suggest using the money saved to start a fund for a future upgrade of your entire system. Currently, the whole system is quite 'balanced'. i7 920 at 3.6GHz is still capable to match GTX460 SLI at 1080p. Perhaps in a few years time, you will need to move the whole system up.

 

Ahh I figured it was something like that just couldn't get the right words into the right order. Yeah I had seen a couple with that being the reference design so I'll keep my eye out for them

Yeah I think that's a fair description, I'm going to have to replace my ssd soon as it's on it's last legs then I'll look into a system build in 12 months or so I think sli will keep me going nicely till then I think and by then we'll be on the 8xx or maybe even 9xx gtx's

Thanks again everyone

 

I have pretty much the same plan. Gonna run this system another year. Then turn into a server.

Hope what ever you decide works out mate.

 

Lack of ram is why I switched out my 460s I was running in sli and bought this 7870 for cheap and performance wise it was more of a side grade but I don't get the stutter of the vram getting saturated.