wrote:Check if your PSU does 24A on 12V. If so, get the 660. Everything above that is wasted money IMO. PCIe versions are irrelevant, about 2 FPS difference or so on high end cards if I recall correctly.
the 660 is crippled by a 192 bit memory band with.
The regular 660 has 144 GB/s memory bandwith, the 78xx series cards have 153. The 660 performs about right inbetween the 7850 and 7870. It's the more balanced card than the 660 Ti which I would not recommend, since that card really is crippled by bandwidth, being the same 670 core.
@eL_PuSHeR: You are mixing stuff up. There is no such thing as a 6-pin Molex. Simply wait until your PSU arrives, being that beefy it will certainly have all connectors that will allow you to power your card without any adapters.
interesting, i forgot about performance and blinded my self with the specs. I did see a slow mo of skyrim with AMD versus Nvidia. One of them had stuttering. I think it was 7000 series and a 600 series.
Well like I said in this thread earlier I'm content with my used 9800 GTX+ 🤣
wrote:@eL_PuSHeR: You are mixing stuff up. There is no such thing as a 6-pin Molex. Simply wait until your PSU arrives, being that beefy it will certainly have all connectors that will allow you to power your card without any adapters.
That's mostly a semantic argument. Molex is the PSU connection standard and the PCIe power connector is 6-pin (although I believe they're now moving to 8-pin).
Yes, I meant two PCI-E power connectors (8 and 6 pins).
i was safely using 450W psu with 6+8 pins gfx.
just use these:
http://static.frazpc.pl/board/2008/01/120038919033164175.jpg
http://kablammo.strongerthandeath.com/wp-cont … /04/adapter.JPG
anyway 6+8 gfx are too noisy, better get 2x6pins gfx which is way silenter
wrote:I recommend EVGA or BFG or even XFX as video card brands. Of course, you can't go wrong with AMD or nVidia themselves...
I don't think BFG exist anymore, but they definitely used to be a good brand.
wrote:I have ordered a new PSU. It has 750 Watts and provides up to 35A for the +12V line. Too bad it won't arrive until next tuesday. The power connectors on the card have got eight and six pins respectively, but the diagram sucks (it seems two 4-pin molex are being connected). I think I will connect two 6-pin ones.
I think the ones on the psu are labeled PCI-E. My current card just has got one 4-pin molex.
As always, any advice would be greatly appreciated. It's like I am shooting in the dark here. However I think the molex sockets are rounded/squared for avoiding mistakes when connecting.
What PSU did you get? 35A on the +12V line seems a bit low for a modern 750W PSU (unless it's a fairly cheap one). My PC downstairs is using a 550W Cooler Master GX PSU that can supply up to 44A on the +12v rail. The PC i'm typing from now is using a 600W Cooler Master Silent Pro Gold (modular) and can supply up to 48A on the +12V rail.
What card did you end up buying in the end?
wrote:the 660 is crippled by a 192 bit memory band with.
The 660 Ti also uses a 192-bit memory bus, but it doesn't seem to affect the performance as much as some people may think. It would only start to choke if running at insane resolutions with AA or running games that rely on loads of memory bandwidth.
wrote:The regular 660 has 144 GB/s memory bandwith, the 78xx series cards have 153. The 660 performs about right inbetween the 7850 and 7870. It's the more balanced card than the 660 Ti which I would not recommend, since that card really is crippled by bandwidth, being the same 670 core.
The 660 Ti still performs better than a regular 660, and the performance of factory oc'd 660 Ti cards is very close to a 670 anyway (probably too close to even notice any real world difference 😉).
You're right. BFG is gone now. They made some stupid mistakes near the end that killed them. This is the story as I recall reading about it at the time. Firstly, they were caught dabbling in AMD based video cards, which really ticked off nVidia who threatened to cut them off as a board partner, the only problem was that the AMD cards they were prototyping weren't authorized by AMD, either, so they couldn't legally make AMD based boards if they lost nVidia as a GPU supplier. Meanwhile, while BFG was trying to mend their fences with nVidia, the retailers got wind of all this and stopped ordering BFG products, fearing they would go bankrupt. So now BFG had a warehouse full of product they couldn't sell, and nothing in production unless they were able either to smooth things over with nVidia or get a contract with AMD to supply them with Radeon chips. And THEN the creditors came knocking on the door wanting to know why production was idled and nothing was shipping and generally getting nervous about whether they would be paid or not. It was a huge mess in the end and it was all set in motion by whoever got the "brilliant" idea of making a few Radeon prototypes.
Interesting - but I would say their only mistake was getting caught. Wanting to diversify beyond nVidia seems rather sensible.
I don't know if it's common practice to build a prototype before getting a full fledged contract with the chip supplier, but it seems reasonable as long as it's kept behind closed doors.
The flip side of this is now nVidia has lost a board partner, which doesn't really help them any. But I guess it will serve to intimidate the others.
The paranoia of chip suppliers is kind of funny to me, though it makes sense that it happens. Cutthroat business for sure.
I remember reading about the first AMD Athlon motherboard sold by Asus. Their fear of Intel led them to put it in a plain unmarked box, as if it was manufactured by nobody. Although it didn't really fool anyone.
wrote:What PSU did you get? 35A on the +12V line seems a bit low for a modern 750W PSU (unless it's a fairly cheap one). My PC downstairs is using a 550W Cooler Master GX PSU that can supply up to 44A on the +12v rail. The PC i'm typing from now is using a 600W Cooler Master Silent Pro Gold (modular) and can supply up to 48A on the +12V rail.
What card did you end up buying in the end?
I think the PSU must be a cheapo one. I don't know its brand.
As for the card I ordered a Gigabyte one with comes overclocked at factory settings. I am planning to run without AA (maybe at monitor's native resolution [1920x1080] or less). I think it will be enough for me. Funny enough my current Radeon card (3870) has a 256 bit memory bus.
wrote:Funny enough my current Radeon card (3870) has a 256 bit memory bus.
Most high-end cards built in the last 10 years, starting from the Radeon 9700 in 2002, have a 256 bit memory bus, at the least. The predecessor to the 3870- the 2900XT- had a 512bit bus!
wrote:wrote:Funny enough my current Radeon card (3870) has a 256 bit memory bus.
Most high-end cards built in the last 10 years, starting from the Radeon 9700 in 2002, have a 256 bit memory bus, at the least. The predecessor to the 3870- the 2900XT- had a 512bit bus!
This was mainly due to the type of Frame Buffer RAM being used on the card more then what is being used now, GDDR5+ type memory cells.
These and future memory cells have huge memory bandwidths so it's not as big a deal to have a that large a bus any longer.
Also the fact that they have yet to get a single GPU to suck up all the bandwidth of the PCIe v2.x spec yet, let alone v3.x
No matter where you go, there you are...
the 3870 was a top tier card of course it has 256 bit bus. that is also why it has lasted you so long. just late last year i bought a second 4850 for crossfire. then by the time i get money to upgrade the HD8850 will probably out.
Crossfire/SLI is probably the worst bang for your buck. I would only recommend it if you have multiple monitors or use rendering software that takes advantage of it. You're lucky to get a 150% performance boost in general.
Just go all-out with one high-end card. Buy it separately to offset the cost if need be. That is - buy the video card this year, buy all the other upgrades you want next year, upgrade the card in two years etc.
wrote:Crossfire/SLI is probably the worst bang for your buck. I would only recommend it if you have multiple monitors or use rendering software that takes advantage of it. You're lucky to get a 150% performance boost in general.
Just go all-out with one high-end card. Buy it separately to offset the cost if need be. That is - buy the video card this year, buy all the other upgrades you want next year, upgrade the card in two years etc.
I've had my fair share of SLI and Crossfire setups, but now i just stick to a single fat GPU... No micro-stutter, less compatibility issues, less heat and lower power consumption 😀.
SLI/ CF make sense sometimes- like getting another card on the cheap to supplement your old card if you don't wanna spend much, e.g. getting another 3870 in this case. Or, stapling 2 cheapo cards that scale real well together, e.g. getting GTX580 performance with 2 6850s in CF...damn cheap. Of course they're some drawbacks, but I'm quite able to live with them.
New drivers also make many of these old cards perform much better than their contemporary reviews suggest. I ran a 3870 tri-fire setup sometime back, and in some things it was faster than a 5870.
Tri-fayah
For some reason I just can't get used to having the PSU mounted on the bottom of the case...
wrote:For some reason I just can't get used to having the PSU mounted on the bottom of the case...
I personally don't like to have the fan on the PSU facing the floor (not like in the photo above where it's facing upwards). It's actually quite dangerous to have the fan facing the floor in case it pops and any hot components land on your carpet (i wouldn't have it on a carpet anyway with a bottom mounted PSU facing downwards).
