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Will 650W be enough for my 460 SLI?

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tyl998

Member
Joined
Aug 31, 2010
After getting a lot of good answers from the other thread and doing some more research myself, I've decided to upgrade from my GTX280.

I just ordered two of these cards: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125333 and now I'm worried that my PSU might not be able to handle it.

I'm building a new system from scratch, and I will be putting everything together minus the 460s tonight. In their place I will be using a single GTX280 until the new cards arrive.

So, I've got some questions:
1) Does have two cards increase the Tessellation capabilities of the setup?
2) Can the 460 handle DX11 well?
3) Is Tessellation and DX11 important? It's part of the reason I upgraded from my GTX280.
4) Will my 650 Watt antec PSU be enough?
5) I plan on overclocking my CPU, but I've never done any OCing before. Do I need some special software? What is this CPU-Z and GPU-Z I keep hearing about?

The rest of my rig:
MOBO -Gigabyte GA-X58a-UD3R
Processor - i7 930 Bloomfield
Memory - Corsair TR3X6G1333C9 XMS3 6 GB 3 x 2 GB PC3-10666 1333MHz 240-Pin DDR3 Core i7 Memory Kit
HDD - Samsung F3 Spinpoint 1 TB 7200 rpm, 2x old IDE drives with about 120-140 GB capacity each
Optic drive - Sony Optiarc Black 24x DVD+R
Case - Antec 300 (has 3x 120mm fans, 1x 140mm fan)
Peripherals - Logitech MX518 mouse, Logitech G15 Keyboard, Logitech headset
Monitor (has own power source) - ASUS VH236H 23 Inch Widescreen LCD
 
1. Yes. but not 2x its dependent on scaling.
2. Yes, the 460 is a DX11 card.
3. Yes, if you play DX11 games which include tesselation (BFBC2 is one I can think of)
4. It should be fine.
5. You need to read the link in my sig (i7 overclocking guide). You can google CPUz/GPUz, but they are just programs that show some needed statistics such as clock and bus speeds, voltages, memory speed and stock speeds, etc.

I still would have went with the 470, especially considering the price drops lately ($250 for one of those now). I know 460 1gb in SLI beats them but... I dont like SLI/Crossfire b/c if I pay 2x, I want 2x performance all the time, not 1% of the time. Scaling on average is around 70% or so.
 
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I'm sure the 480 is sweet, but the best price I've seen so far is about $500. That's about a 42% increase in price over my SLI combo...
 
Out of curiosity...what about compared to a 480? Is 460 SLI > 480?

It's certainly less expensive...
 
i hope you didnt pay 440 for the 2 cards. THese 2 were on sale for 320 total, after the rebate (see cyber deals)

i7 will to to ~3.6 without even touching the voltages.
 
i hope you didnt pay 440 for the 2 cards. THese 2 were on sale for 320 total, after the rebate (see cyber deals)

i7 will to to ~3.6 without even touching the voltages.
I was the one who put up that cyberdeal ;)

Badbonji:How much do the 460s use? 160 watts each?
 
Thanks Earthdog, Badbonji!

Earthdog, the link in your thread is the updated version of the original guide right? The author is not you right?
 
My link, goes to here, which now that article is not hosted here. I did not write it, that was MIAHALLEN.
 
Building New System - 1st in a long, long time.

New to the site and would like to ask whether you folks think I have enough power supply in this new system I'm putting together, my first since about 1995:

Asus P6T Deluxe V2 MoBo
Antec 1200 case
Antec 1000w psu
i7 950 CPU
12 GB RAM
120 GB SSD (1)
1T HD (2)
MSi N460GTX Hawk 1 GB GDDR5 Graphics Cards - SLI'd (2)

Reason I'm asking is the MSi box recommends 450W for just 1 video card. I sure appreciate any feedback I can get.
 
Sorry; should have also mentioned that each of the 460 GTX's seems to require 4 molex connectors, which has me wondering about cabling issues.
 
Thanks for replying. Each of the converter cables does three, that gives me a possibility of six, but the two video cards together are needing a total of eight molex terminations. Any ideas on whether the 1000w will be enough?
 
3. Yes, if you play DX11 games which include tesselation (BFBC2 is one I can think of)

BFBC2 has tesselation??? That's new...

Thanks for replying. Each of the converter cables does three, that gives me a possibility of six, but the two video cards together are needing a total of eight molex terminations. Any ideas on whether the 1000w will be enough?

Get a PCI power splitter. Turns one 6-pin power connector into two.
 
All along you should have been thinking buying a new PS and getting 460 SLI and using dedicated 280 for physX(or sell the 280 to someone with a dual 280 system so they can go TRISLI and buy a third 460 with the money). Three card setup = You won't be sorry.

I'm running 3 GTX 280's on my Corsair 1000HX. It's a good power supply in my opinion but I'm sure there are better ones. If I can run this you can run 2 460's and a 280.
 
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All along you should have been thinking buying a new PS and getting 460 SLI and using dedicated 280 for physX(or sell the 280 to someone with a dual 280 system so they can go TRISLI and buy a third 460 with the money). Three card setup = You won't be sorry.

I'm running 3 GTX 280's on my Corsair 1000HX. It's a good power supply in my opinion but I'm sure there are better ones. If I can run this you can run 2 460's and a 280.

You can't go tri-sli with 460s.
 
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