AMD's REAL answer to GeForce GTX 480: AIB Custom 5970s

[stewlounse]

this is crazy...4GB on a vid card LOLLLL wtf!

AMD's REAL answer to GeForce GTX 480: AIB Custom 5970s - XtremeSystems Forums

[$uCkY-p|aYeR]

wow soon Vid cards are going to be so big they will need there own case lol hahahahaha

[stewlounse]

haha for real... gpu's are getting crazy

[Freaky_Angelus]

I need to win the lottery.. seriously ;)

[Brains]

YouTube- GDC 2010: Nvidia's Sarah Tariq on Simulating Realistic Hair
:D GO NVIDIA! :D

[[+Duracell-]]

Well, at the resolutions you would be using the HD5970 at, you'd be limited by video card memory. Default config is only 2GB. A 4GB 5970 would be freakin' insane,

[Brains]

the new Nvidia cards were revealed this weekend @ PAX East.

http://hardocp.com/article/2010/03/26/nvidia_fermi_gtx_470_480_sli_review/8

so gtx480 in SLi beats out the "stock" 5970 in performance but costs a cool grand, requires an insane amount of power and can boil water in an instant.......dammit nvidia.....why did you have to let me down. :(

guess my only question now is, do I buy a 5970 or crossfire 5870s?
I'm thinking of a 5970 and using one of my GTX260s as a dedicated physX card.

[Cosmic_Shame]

brains with the new ATI 10.3 the crossfire ability was increased by 30 FPS or more as long as u download the 10.3 crossfire control, i mean if they are saying the 480 SLI is good, i bet ATI continues to fix their crossfire to give it the same power as SLI and it will only get better. 5970 is a very expensive card, u can get 2 5870's for the amount of one or 2 5850's

i was using Nvidia for a long time, actually thats all i used, freaky convinced me to go to ATI, it possibly was the best thing i did computer wise, if ATI keeps making cards like this i will continue buying them

[[+Duracell-]]

One 5970 is a little slower than two 5870s. But the 5970 by itself is cheaper than two 5870s. Your call :P

[Freaky_Angelus]

I think the combo you mentioned brains with a 5970 and a GTX 260 for PhysX is awesome...

Seriously!! Considering the GTX 480 is only interesting in SLI and that costs a $1000,- it is not interesting to consider as a single card with the 5970 'only' $100 more expensive.

However.. IF you can wait till the GTX 495 comes out (and if I remember correct with you running GTX 260 SLI, as also mentioned between the lines) then DO WAIT.. That should lower prices as Nvidia won't sell a single one if it costs more then $1000,-

The other option of two 5870's is awesome and will beat the 1 5970 as Duracell mentioned, but using a GTX 260 for PhysX and pay less for 1 5970 is one hell of a setup.. IF you get that to work in all games, WOW!

Small Break Even Point:
2x 5870 at around $450 = $900 - selling 2x GTX 260 (900 -2X = 0)
1x 5970 at around $700 = $700 - selling 1 GTX 260 (700 - X = 0)

900-700 = X = 200 ;)

Those GTX 260's need to be sold for more then $200 each to make two 5870's financially interesting, considering a new GTX 260 cost $200,- aint happening and still.. a dedicated PhysX card?

[Brains]

I want to wait for the 495 but who knows when that will be. Mass production of the 480s doesn't start for at least another month and I don't want to pay a grand for 480 SLi (which I'd love to do right now if I had money to just burn :D ). I have a feeling nvidia is going to have to pump out the 495 soon because it's almost impossible to say nvidia are on top right now with the 480. it just doesn't perform anywhere near the level it needs to to be considered the best choice. even me, a super hardcore nvidia fanboy, is looking towards ATI.

it would be no problem buying a 5970, keeping one 260 for dedicated physX (which is possible, and easily done, specially with the "nvidia, the way it's ment to be played" games) and just selling off 1 260.

I'm going to wait around for the 495 for now, nvidia has to be announcing that soon, otherwise they are going to be losing ALOT of customers. if you don't SLi the 480s, then there is no reason to buy either of the two new nvidia cards.

if they do pump out the 495 and it's around the 700-800 mark, I'll do it. they just have to get on the ball and do it soon, I'm not going to just wait around forever for nvidia to come to their senses and take the GPU market back.

[Freaky_Angelus]

^^

But I'm afraid that two 480 chips that already manage to run 94 celsius under load will take a new cooler to actually be possible to combine in 1 card.

Anywho.. if you get around 150 back for your 260 then a combo of a 5970 for around 550 dollars is pretty sweet!

ahhh.. let's see what the lottery does the 10th ;)

-edit-
and by which I want to add.. If that happens I'll BBC2 cosmic.. so stop whining and start praying I win :P

[Cosmic_Shame]

if they do pump out the 495 and it's around the 700-800 mark, I'll do it. they just have to get on the ball and do it soon, I'm not going to just wait around forever for nvidia to come to their senses and take the GPU market back.

if ATI was smart they would instantly drop the price of all their cards by 50 dollars and really stick it to Nvidia

[Brains]

well my case has extremely good cooling/flow. right over my two 260s, I have 4 120mm side fans (case: nzxt zero) [2 of which have blu LEDS for extra sexiness] but maybe I'll get the liquid cooled 495 if someone creates it ;)

[stewlounse]

brains are you running a multi monitor setup or something? why so much demand for these insane cards? llol

[Freaky_Angelus]

Because he is a man and prob doesnt have another hobby that costs him this amount of money..

Simple.. I have 3 hobby's I gotta spread the lil money I have :D

fyi
- Gaming/PC
- Celestial Photography
- DJ with Vinyl.. shit is expensive :S
(- alcohol is no hobby.. it's a fulltime job!)

[Brains]

Well because I expect ALOT of out myself when I game. basically, I have to have 100fps always. back in my Cs days, I was a Cal-o and Cal-m dude. I can feel the difference between 60FPS and 100FPS. when I play at 60FPS, I feel clunky, slow, unconsistant...which is why I hate console gaming, they can only hit 60FPS.

also, I'm am really into 3d animation/modeling. and programs like maya, 3dsmax, premiere,photoshop are very demanding...and just recently, these programs have begun to offload alot of their processes to GPUs....so basically the more GPU horsepower I have, the more I can do. for example, I used to do all my modeling on a laptop (Dell XPS Gen2) and a certain animation that I worked for like 50 hours on took me nearly 22 hours to render it all at really shitty quality and it was only a 4 minute animation. I just recently rerendered it with higher quality textures and set to production settings (settings that Pixar and stuff would use). this time, even with all these enhancements, took me around 4 hours. so with my GTX260s in SLi doing nearly ALL the work, it outperforms pretty much ANY CPU on the market. GPUs have SOOOO many cores and power. nvidia cards have drivers that allow you to use your GPU to watch Bluray movies instead of having your CPU do the work. even photoshop cs4 lets you turn on GPU utilization so now you can use your GPU to handle all work, so you can zoom into a picture in greater detail and faster than ever before. previewing changes instantly, rotating the picture, paiting on 3d objects that you imported directly from a 3d modeling program...nvidia has been looking to make a completely GPU based solution to computing, no CPU needed. CPUs are just so weak.

EDIT: also, I don't spend my money often. I pretty much put everything I make into the bank (only paying off student loans from college). so when I do actually buy something, I have to buy the best there is. so instead of buying lots of shitty things throughout a year, I'll buy a couple beast things. I don't really need to have alot of things to be happy, just some stuff here and there. hell, put a soccer ball at my feet and I'll be happy for the entire day.

[stewlounse]

Ex cal-o/im/m here as well so i know exactly what you mean (crt is a must for that kind of seriousness). I was about to say these cards are wayyyy overkill for 100fps unless you're running a massive resolution. pretty much anything over the $300 mark is bout literally throwing money away.

but for your 3d apps...hells yes..mo powa mo powa! I hated using the old dump ass computers in lab at college for cad design...freaking horrible. I always opted to do the work at home because my pc could actually handle the load, lol. I can see spending this much for 3d work. I have noticed that in ATIs driver package..theres the optional installation of their transcoding for portable devices...supposed to be much quicker than the CPU doing the work. But yea if our CPUs were more like the GPUs...shiet would be crazzzy.

[Freaky_Angelus]

consider me a couple years behind you guyz.. I'm the student bitching about wanting to do it at home ;)

[stewlounse]

Well actually I've been reading some this morning about gaming cards and design cards. Looks like for the best design performance, go with a Quadro/FirePro/FireGL. For best gaming performance, Geforce/Radeon. From what I've read, it seems that spending an extensive amount for a gaming card and hoping to use it for CAD won't give you as big of a performance increase like what a Quadro would. The differences in performance there appear to depend on the different kinds of drivers. Gaming card drivers are optimized for gaming, pro card drivers are optimized to utilize the hardware especially for professional applications which should greatly increase the performance in those areas.

But I guess that depends on how complex and demanding your modeling is, but I still find it hard to justify spending that much for a gaming+modeling card. I also found some guides for soft-modding GeForces into Quadros that might be of interest to you. I'm not sure how old those guides were that I found but maybe they are still relevant. [edit: Still, it appears that soft-modding will not give you the high-end performance as a real Quadro.]

[Brains]

I've known about the quadro/tesla cards for a while but the thing is, gaming cards are better at handling pro apps than design cards at handling gaming. plus those design cards cost even more than top notch gaming cards. if I'm ever rich enough to buy a quadro/tesla then I'd get the whole workstation so I could just have my standard rig offload the computations to that workstation to do all the work then give met he results back on my gaming rig. but right now, I'm only doing 3d animation and stuff as a hobby. I want to be a game designer one day but for now I'm a software engineer who does 3d animations in my spare time so the design cards are out of my league

[stewlounse]

So, I guess I'm thinking that your work could be done by a $300 card just as easily as a $600 or more card without seeing much performance loss (because a $300 5850 is a monster of a card that could easily rape modeling). I would just hate to see a brotha spend a lot more money than necessary to get just a slight increase in design performance.

[Brains]

wellllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll, it kind of just goes back to what I said earlier, when I actually do buy something, I want the best :D

since I don't go to dunkin donuts every morning, buy clothes every week, buy lots of DVDs, always go out to eat, etc...those things that people normally will spend hundreds of dollars a month doing, I don't. so all that extra money I have just hangs out in my bank account until I actually do want to buy something :D

and I'm a tech geek, having the coolest new technology is fun for me. I bought my computer back in the middle of 2008 when the gtx260/280 just released (just before the i7 CPU too :( ) so my computer pretty much was rapesauce for a while. now with the new dx11 cards, overclocked i7s to over 4GHz, 1600mhz ram as default...I'm starting to fall behind. so almost 2 yrs old now. that's along time for someone who is always looking to bump up productivity and performance as much as possible :D

[stewlounse]

roger that, for future prooofness. thats still more than enough for upgrading every 2 years lol. whatever you buy..im anxious to see how it rapes.

[Brains]

well I'm only getting a GPU, so my piece of shit core 2 quad q9550 OC @ 3.4 GHz is nothing compared to a system with a nice i7 OC to 3.4 GHz :(
so sadly, even with a super sick GPU, the rest of my system will be garbage....but I'm still looking for a way to pay someone else (a pro moder/assembler) to put together my computer if i were to buy all the components. I would do it myself but I have a liquid cooled CPU so I don't know how to handle that sadly.

[stewlounse]

I present to you The Ultimate Water Cooling Thread (from one of my most fav forums for pc help).

...the rest of the water cooling forum: Water Cooling - Overclockers Forums

[stewlounse]

GeForce GTX 480 And 470: From Fermi And GF100 To Actual Cards!

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/geforce-gtx-480,review-31846.html

I only glanced at this from work today...some interesting benchmarks. Going to read when I get home today.

[Brains]

based on that review, the 480 isn't far behind the dualCard 5970 and it's 200 bucks cheaper. it creates more heat and uses more power but if you're the type of person who is looking at cards like these, then power/heat isn't really a huge concern for you. I'm still not sure about getting an ati card. I've just never been led astray by an nvidia card and my whole computer is pretty much nvidia so getting an nvidia card would work better with the system as a whole.

guess I'm going to hold off longer till these cards are massed produced and in the hands of other gamers. I'd still rather get the 480 over the 5870/5970

[stewlounse]

If you want to look at it that way... Or you can see that the older and much cheaper, much less power using 5870 is just a fine fine hair behind the 480. I'm sure you noticed the 480/470 were the bottom 2 cards on the Efficiency Index. More power usage, less efficiency = more heat = shorter life...but that may not matter if you upgrade every 2 years. Nevertheless, not a good path Nvidia is on there...having the 5870 so close on it's ass and using wayyyy less power is a kick in the nuts.

"So, if you break everything down into power, price, and performance (meaning you're most concerned with how GeForce GTX 480 and 470 stand up in today's games), then today's preview comes off somewhat underwhelming after the build-up."

^That's what I wanting to know, gg Nvidia.

[stewlounse]

Actually..the 480 is getting raped pretty badly by the 5970. I wouldn't call that not far behind. ATI will drop their prices soon to make Nvidia look even worse.

[Clone]

Actually..the 480 is getting raped pretty badly by the 5970. I wouldn't call that not far behind. ATI will drop their prices soon to make Nvidia look even worse.

an i be there with grad money after paying for initial college bills to scoop up. :)

[Brains]

not exactly sure how you consider this raping the 480 :D

raping would be the 5970 vs the gtx295 in my book

but still. yes, looking at it from the ATI point of view, the 480 doesn't match up

I still want it though lol

I won't go ATI unless I absolutely have to :D

[Cosmic_Shame]

derp

[Brains]

found this.
http://img638.imageshack.us/img638/1957/gpuo.png

probably accurate too :D

also here's an interesting post (Steam Users' Forums - View Single Post - GTX 480 - Arrived)

[Freaky_Angelus]

Actually.. There was 1 game in a dutch review where they found the limit of the GTX 480 when they threw enough shit at it that the HD 5870 was coming along side..

ignore dutch text and scroll to the bottom fps counter (http://tweakers.net/reviews/1615/11/gtx480-nvidias-nieuwe-monster-gpu-dirt-2-directx-11.html)

Translation (general) for you guyz of the last paragraph:

At 2560x1600 the HD 5870 is faster then the GTX480. It's here where it shows that the HD 5870 has a fixed-function unit on board for tesselation, by with at even 2560x1600 enough calculational power remains for the other tasks. With the GTX 480 there is no more 'stretch' in the Cuda-cores and the tesselation causes a performance limit.

I knew that when the GTX 4xx was announced but that it would take that much before it would hit that, considering the track record on AA and AF and now seeing ATI having more problems with those elements fps wise has been a new experience. I must say however it looks like the HD 5970 is very bottlenecked in most of the reviews I've been seeing.. How can that card not get close to 2x a HD 5870 in any game except when we throw a 2560x1600 resolution at it? I mean.. Ok.. 170% of a HD 5870 I get, but most of the times it's not even that, then I see this review showing the same as ever and surprise.. extreme resolution and demands and it goes as if it finally realizes it is the one ;) 59 fps min.. compared to 38 fps.. finally something in a proper scale (considering 85 / 60 and 78 / 53)..

However, the release of the Nvidia 4 series has done 1 thing in my country.. ALL HD 5850 in the entire country are sold out, by which I mean.. With my main suppliers login I can't even get them before end of the month at the importer of my country! Great job Nvidia, you just made ATI rich! Now go ATI make me a HD 6xxx series before XFX actually makes me a HD 5970 X2!

[stewlounse]

Here shows the FPS performance increase for 5970 vs 480, then 480 vs 5870 all for 1920x1200 4xAA. Pulled from anandtech (link (http://anandtech.com/show/2977/nvidia-s-geforce-gtx-480-and-gtx-470-6-months-late-was-it-worth-the-wait-/1)).



<TABLE border=1>
<TBODY><TR>
<TD>1920x1200, 4xAA</TD>
<TD>5970 vs 480 </TD>
<TD>480 vs 5870 </TD>





</TR>
<TR>
<TD>Crysis Warhead</TD>
<TD>29.9%</TD>
<TD>12.6%</TD>





</TR>
<TR>
<TD>Battleforge (DX10)</TD>
<TD>-18.8%</TD>
<TD>27.9%</TD>





</TR>
<TR>
<TD>Battleforge (DX11)</TD>
<TD>19.9%</TD>
<TD>29.0%</TD>





</TR>
<TR>
<TD>HAWX</TD>
<TD>13.3%</TD>
<TD>32.4%</TD>





</TR>
<TR>
<TD>Left 4 Dead</TD>
<TD>7.9%</TD>
<TD>-6.4%</TD>





</TR>
<TR>
<TD>Bad Company 2</TD>
<TD>84.6%</TD>
<TD>-20.7%</TD>





</TR>
<TR>
<TD>Stalker: Call of Pripyat</TD>
<TD>35.8%</TD>
<TD>11.4%</TD>





</TR>
<TR>
<TD>Dirt 2</TD>
<TD>7.8%</TD>
<TD>23.0%</TD>





</TR>
<TR>
<TD>Mass Effect 2</TD>
<TD>48.7%</TD>
<TD>5.9%</TD>

</TR>
<TR>
<TD>Wolfenstein</TD>
<TD>8.6%</TD>
<TD>3.8%</TD>

</TR>


</TABLE>


I'm not sure why...but there's such a big hit on BC2 for the 480, but there's not this much difference from the tomshardware article. The 5970 has an 84.6% FPS increase over the 480. The 5870 even gets 20.7% more FPS than the 480. Ouch, who knows how this got so butchered.





I finally got the tomshardware article to pull up, here are the results with AA, then No AA.


<TABLE border=1>
<TBODY><TR>
<TD>1920x1200, AA</TD>
<TD>5970 vs 480 </TD>
<TD>480 vs 5870 </TD>





</TR>
<TR>
<TD>Cod:MW2</TD>
<TD>13.3%</TD>
<TD>31.0%</TD>





</TR>
<TR>
<TD>Dirt 2</TD>
<TD>29.7%</TD>
<TD>30.1%</TD>





</TR>
<TR>
<TD>Crysis</TD>
<TD>41.8%</TD>
<TD>-2.4%</TD>





</TR>
<TR>
<TD>Stalker: CoP</TD>
<TD>24.2%</TD>
<TD>17.4%</TD>





</TR>


<TR>
<TD>Bad Company 2</TD>
<TD>11.1%</TD>
<TD>27.1%</TD>





</TR>


</TABLE>






<TABLE border=1>
<TBODY><TR>
<TD>1920x1200, No AA</TD>
<TD>5970 vs 480 </TD>
<TD>480 vs 5870 </TD>





</TR>
<TR>
<TD>Cod:MW2</TD>
<TD>3.3%</TD>
<TD>31.6%</TD>





</TR>
<TR>
<TD>Dirt 2</TD>
<TD>34.2%</TD>
<TD>17.8%</TD>





</TR>
<TR>
<TD>Crysis</TD>
<TD>37.8%</TD>
<TD>-0.9%</TD>





</TR>
<TR>
<TD>Stalker: CoP</TD>
<TD>37.4%</TD>
<TD>2.0%</TD>




<TR>
<TD>Metro 2033</TD>
<TD>27.5%</TD>
<TD>21.8%</TD>





</TR>



<TR>
<TD>Bad Company 2</TD>
<TD>28.7%</TD>
<TD>9.1%</TD>





</TR>


</TABLE>








We all know how exponentially more expensive the highest-end parts are compared to the next best(the 5970 being $200 more than the 480 for high-end, the 480 being $80-100 more than the 5870 for midhigh-end).

I was only able to pull up a cached page of that steam forum link, but one post explains it all:
"Man it's funny to see people still defending nVidia.
Over half a year late.
95c load temps
Twice the power draw of ATI equiv cards
Only 5-10% increase in performance for 35% more money
How can Hammer Legion Members even defend this?"

One can easily see how I could conclude rape. This would nearly be worth it IF Nvidia knew how to price things competitively. No one should waste their money on this crap!

edit: all reviews are so different so its hard to go by this. but the obvious still stands...it's not worth it.

[Brains]

good stuff stew! +1

so the question comes down to this....should I:

1) upgrade to an i7 CPU (would involve also getting a new mobo/RAM) and keep my 2 GTX260s
2) keep my q9550 OC @ 3.4GHz and just get a 5970

I would much prefer 1) since games still seem to be heavily CPU based (even BC2 is massively CPU based because of the intense sound processing. I see it like this, if intel never released the i7 than I would be perfectly happy with my rig. But, seeing how much of a massive improvement i7 systems are, it is a waste of money for me to try to get more out of my current system (getting a new video card). I got my computer about a month before i7 was announced (a couple months before they were actually sold)...so I got screwed :D upgrading to an i7 system would pretty much set me straight for several years since the only place we can go now are 6/8/12 core systems (6core amd and intel chips already exist and are going into mass production soon - but these CPUs are made to already fit into the same chipsets the current i7 uses so if I eventually upgrade to 6core, I just would need to swap out the CPU, not get a several other components along with it)

[Freaky_Angelus]

Financially it makes no sense to switch to an i7 when having a Q9550 at 3.4 (can do more imo) and keeping 2x GTX 260..

Getting 1 HD 5970 with a GTX 260 setup, still saying AWESOME on that would be close to your systems max.. So no upgrades possible.

The only thing now is, how soon do you expect the next upgrade to happen? You invest in the i7 mobo that (confirmed?) will also handle the new cpu's would be nice, but you would be needing a very expensive mobo too.. So on money you would still get close to it and games are still not optimized for 4 cores (or more).

It depends if you want to spend that much money right now anyway and come to a situation where you can upgrade as soon as either the GPU's dropped in price or you have a lot of money, again, available.

IMO, the dedicated PhysX + 5970 would still kick all asses and give you in most games the advantage.. It is the fastest card and with PhysX dedicated card you are safe for all games... With the funny boiling point on GTX 4 series I don't see a 495 coming soon if it even comes at all and this way you still have Nvidia ;)

[Clone]

good stuff stew! +1

so the question comes down to this....should I:

1) upgrade to an i7 CPU (would involve also getting a new mobo/RAM) and keep my 2 GTX260s
2) keep my q9550 OC @ 3.4GHz and just get a 5970


why not go with i5 which is almost as good as the i7
for $89 to $200 cheap to get a 5870 which would also be a big upgrade and is ~$300 cheaper and upgrade both?
----though maybe not considering you have them in SLI, correct?

I'm not sure, and to be honest many have been d-bags that I'm somewhat afraid to post on the subject so I'm not attacked.

[stewlounse]

Yah I don't see much point in upgrading to an i7 while keeping the GTX 260's, they will probably be a big bottleneck. You would definitely be on top of things with a q9550+5970. I would try to wait it out some and see what happens with Nvidia's pricing because of ATI or vice versa. The i7's have been coming down in price some and have been going on some really good sales. Just last week I saw a i7-920 on sale for right around $200. It's a hard call because this is a bad time for Nvidia. If you can stand to play with your current system for a while longer, you'll probably be glad you waited.

[stewlounse]

Here's another interesting article testing GTX480 SLI with GTX470, 5970, 5870, 5850.
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/03/26/nvidia_fermi_gtx_470_480_sli_review/2

[Brains]

Financially it makes no sense to switch to an i7 when having a Q9550 at 3.4 (can do more imo) and keeping 2x GTX 260..

Getting 1 HD 5970 with a GTX 260 setup, still saying AWESOME on that would be close to your systems max.. So no upgrades possible.

The only thing now is, how soon do you expect the next upgrade to happen? You invest in the i7 mobo that (confirmed?) will also handle the new cpu's would be nice, but you would be needing a very expensive mobo too.. So on money you would still get close to it and games are still not optimized for 4 cores (or more).

It depends if you want to spend that much money right now anyway and come to a situation where you can upgrade as soon as either the GPU's dropped in price or you have a lot of money, again, available.

IMO, the dedicated PhysX + 5970 would still kick all asses and give you in most games the advantage.. It is the fastest card and with PhysX dedicated card you are safe for all games... With the funny boiling point on GTX 4 series I don't see a 495 coming soon if it even comes at all and this way you still have Nvidia ;)

Yah I don't see much point in upgrading to an i7 while keeping the GTX 260's, they will probably be a big bottleneck. You would definitely be on top of things with a q9550+5970. I would try to wait it out some and see what happens with Nvidia's pricing because of ATI or vice versa. The i7's have been coming down in price some and have been going on some really good sales. Just last week I saw a i7-920 on sale for right around $200. It's a hard call because this is a bad time for Nvidia. If you can stand to play with your current system for a while longer, you'll probably be glad you waited.

I don't plan on buying something soon. I'm just saying, I would like to do those. just getting some opinions. Right now, I'm not like getting dominated by video games, so I'm in no rush. lol if I was playing games at like less than 50fps then I'd consider it. But I just want to gather ideas and see where possible routes are. I don't actually plan on making any moves until at least the end of this year. as long as nvidia keeps pumping out driver updates like they have been than I'm set. each new driver has been giving me more and more performance boosts in games. all that's left is for DICE/VALVe to optimize their games and I'd be a happy camper :D

as for OCing my CPU...it came factory at 2.83. Currently as it stands at 3.4, it does fine and hardly breaks 80 C cuz of the liquid cooling. OCing anymore wouldn't give me a big enough boost in BC2 or any video game for that matter. I'd have to significantly OC it more to see an effect. I saw some OC guides that were tested with BC2 and for my cpu, once you pass the 3.4 mark, you hardly get significant returns.

[stewlounse]

Good deal, wait it out and you'll be rewarded with total sexiness. I imagine the quad i7's will keep coming down now that the six cores are out there.

I think the next big upgrade you make should be to replace the GTX260s. Or, resell everything you currently have and put it towards a fresh new build when you're ready. Trying to improve your system now would probably result in bottlenecks one way or the other and require a 2nd upgrade soon after.

[Freaky_Angelus]

Here's another interesting article testing GTX480 SLI with GTX470, 5970, 5870, 5850.
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/03/26/nvidia_fermi_gtx_470_480_sli_review/2

Wow...

That entire review shows me awesome numbers, non with equal settings and in a lot of situations I see GTX 480 SLI not beat the single (I read single in the article) HD 5970.. or at least it can keep up.. and then the conclusion came along.

Anywho..

If you don't plan on buying anything soon, not important at all.. By the end of the year I expect at least the press release on the HD 6xxx series from ATI and for you, considering you like Nvidia, by that time even Nvidia should be able to make a GTX 495 that won't run like Tsjernobyl.. All in all, no reason at all to start discussion options right now.

[Brains]

just a nice video I came across showcasing the awesome power of triSLi GTX480s in BC2
YouTube- Broadcast Yourself.

[Zero Hour]

just a nice video I came across showcasing the awesome power of triSLi GTX480s in BC2
YouTube- Broadcast Yourself. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O43v4ix6FEQ)bahah did not see that coming. Anyone know what movie that is? looks bad ass.

[Brains]

terminator 2

even found a nice clip for you: YouTube- Nuclear Nightmare (Terminator 2)

[Zero Hour]

Wow, that's why it's so bad ass. I totally forgot that part was in T2, haven't seen in a long time.