Which gtx video card for 3d gaming?

[stephen-elias]

Hey guys, i am currently in the process of designing (my first) new gaming pc. I am not too sure which graphics card to go for but am pretty sure i want to go with one of the high end nvidia gtx 400 series cards due to the fact that i will be wanting to play 3d games on it and watching 3d blu ray movies. Which one is best for 3d and is SLI worth the extra cost?

My future gaming rig is as follows;

AMD PHENOM II X6 SIX-CORE 1090T BLACK EDITION
AUD $352.99
NEW! Asus Crosshair IV Formula MB
AUD $381.80
A-RAM 4GB single module
AUD $168.90
Pioneer BDC-S02BK / BDC-202BK Blu-Ray Combo Drive
AUD $162.99
1000W "IKONIK" Vulcan 1000 Power Supply
AUD $242.00
Seagate Barracuda 500GB 7200RPM 16MB SATA 3.0Gbs
AUD $48.99
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio
AUD $64.57
COOLER MASTER HAF 923
AUD $182
Logitech G15 Gaming Keyboard 'blue led European version'
AUD $89.49
Genius Navigator 335
AUD $22.99

Will also be buying the new 3d alienware monitor as i think its best from reviews.
Any suggestions on which video card to go for or about my rig in general will be very appreciated.

 

[Zantal]

before i answer you, how much money do you want to spend?

you could look at my sig, everything works fine and it's been like this for over 1 year, and no problems at all, and that's overclocked all time.

you don't go nvidia just because it has 3d support, nvidia drivers never have given me problems, updates come frequently increasing perfomance, and in 6 years i still have to break one, + generally even if some gtx400 cards might run a little bit slower compared to some ATI cards (this is coming from personal experience) it generally is more smooth (just look at all reviews where generally minimum framerate is higher than ATI)

although be ready for some high consuming , loud (not too much if u have good ventilated case) and expensive experience.

i would replace the AMD, with an i7 920 , in some cases the 4 core from intel is better than the ATI six core, it is a little bit less expensive, but it clocks really easy.

as a motherboard the asus p6t deluxe, someone pointed out to be one of the best in its category.

any dd3 triple channel memory will do the work, speed doesn't matter really, with triple channel you will never starve the cpu. 6 gigabytes aren't so expensive nowadays so i would go for that.

let us know =)

 

[decoste007xt]

To be honest your not going to see any 3D games worth while.. for awhile. You're going to see stuff like "Flower" in 3D.. no Call of Duties, Starcraft's or anything of that nature until the technology has matured. ATI's card rip the Fermies apart from what I saw, they just don't handle 3D... and to be honest what games are out there that you want to play that are 3D? I can't even think of any that I would want to play.

 

[Zantal]

ATI's card rip the Fermies apart from what I saw, they just don't handle 3D...

ATI doesn't rip nvidia, it just costs less .

for some people paying 20% more to get 10% more is ok.

do not turn this into a ATI vs NVIDIA discussion pls

 

[TerranBrackiatt]

first of all, if you are considering SLI, you want a board with the Nvidia 980a chipset, not an ATI chipset board.

second, unless you plan on upgrading to 4 x 4gb modules, i'd recommend a pair of 2gb sticks instead, for the dual channel performance gains. (GSKILL seems to be the best choice)

third, if you're going to buy an X-Fi, get the titanium, its actually a better card. the Xtreme Audio is basicly an updated Audigy. the "true" X-Fi has the outputs to stream the signal to home audio equipment, while the "fake" one only has the speaker and mic jacks for PC speakers.

and lastly, the best nvidia bang for the buck (performance / price ratio) is the GTX 470, but the GTX 480 will outperform it. i personally have two GTX 480s in SLI and i love it. i also play Metro 2033 and Crysis all maxxed out at 1920x1200. its easily a grand for the two cards (US dollars) i don't know the performance hits after enabling 3D, but if you play the the above two games and plan on keeping up with the latest "tech demo" games, you'll want to go SLI. that being said, a pair of GTX 470s will cost a lot less, and still give substantial "tech demo" performance, as well.

something else to consider, if you plan on selling the GTX 400 series cards the second the next gen comes out, then buy one 480... if you plan on keeping them for two generations, buy two 470s. unless of course you want the higher performance from the 480s.

P.S. make sure to get PowerDvd 10 3d (unless there's something better for less money i don't know about, which is very likely) for those BluRay3Ds. WinDVD is too much hassle imo, with all that DRM crap and liscencing BS. i couldn't even play BluRays because WinDvD said my key expired, and this was only after watching 2 BluRays.

 

[stephen-elias]

Well money isn't a big issue, but on the same token i dont want to needlessly spend extra money on something i dont need. I think im leaning towards just getting a single GTX 480 for the time being just incase i do decide to upgrade to a new gen in the future.
I have already bought my case which is a HAF 932 and ordered in my motherboard and cpu already.
Thanks for the info on powerDvd 10 3d and the x-fi titanium. I will definitely take it up.
Just looking at different ram to buy it seems that the triple channel setups are only for intel 1-7's and X58 <----dont know what an X58 is. So i am guessing i wont be able to do it that way but have to go with a dual channel for my setup?

"first of all, if you are considering SLI, you want a board with the Nvidia 980a chipset, not an ATI chipset board." <---------- is that absolutely necessary or just a better way to do it?

Thanks for your help.

 

[stephen-elias]

Oh and will i need a bigger power supply than my 1000w to support sli?

 

[RADIO_ACTIVE]

If you wanna save some money on the monitor ACER has a great 3d 1080p monitor.
http://www.amazon.com/Acer-GD235HZb...dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1
I personaly use this monitor and have a 3d Nvision set up (Sig rig). I love it!

I don't know how much they run in Austrailia, but here in the States the ACER runs about 100 dollars less.

 

[decoste007xt]

5870 comes in around $450
480 comes in around $550

Theres 2-3 frames difference in both cards in some tests but check out this article it might help you decide. It does ultimate show the 5870 doesn't do very well at all in some games. I'll never play Crysis simply because its only a few hours of gameplay anyhow, I built a whole new machine for it back in he day! But if your a Crysis player this might be crucial!

That being said x8 AA, you dont really notice anything past x2 so it always seemed more like a unique perk they have now. Often I forget to even enable it, games are needing it less because of the beastly processors cards have now we can display higher level meshes and high poly counts on the fly!

Ultimately you can draw your own conclusions, but the fermis run hotter, take more power but do out perform ATI around ever bend, their more expensive and atleast its for good reason. A big thing is they have a whopping 1.5GB memory which will help if you play at large resolutions. I dont play any higher than 1680 x 1050 but I know people with some pretty big screens that need the extra ram.

http://www.techspot.com/review/289-geforce-gtx-480-sli-versus-radeon-5870-crossfire/page5.html

Most small room heaters only consume ~1000 watts of power, so essentially a GeForce GTX 480 SLI system can serve two purposes, the second of which will likely be welcomed during winter months.

Im totally getting one, screw a heater!

 

[RADIO_ACTIVE]

To be honest your not going to see any 3D games worth while.. for awhile. You're going to see stuff like "Flower" in 3D.. no Call of Duties, Starcraft's or anything of that nature until the technology has matured. ATI's card rip the Fermies apart from what I saw, they just don't handle 3D... and to be honest what games are out there that you want to play that are 3D? I can't even think of any that I would want to play.

Do you even use 3D Nvision? Because I do... and there are great games that use it and it looks great. A couple that I currently play with Nvision on are WoW, BC2 and L4D1-2

 

[TerranBrackiatt]

Just looking at different ram to buy it seems that the triple channel setups are only for intel 1-7's and X58 <----dont know what an X58 is. So i am guessing i wont be able to do it that way but have to go with a dual channel for my setup?

X58 is the newest of intel's "northbridge" chipsets. it basicly controls all the pathways to your PCI-E and SATA slots, and is designed by intel to compliment their i7s. but both the X58s and P55s can utilize both SLI and crossfire. so far, the P55s are preferred for Overclocking your RAM.

dual channel is the way to go. (vs single) because one channel is input, the other output. so far i haven't seen any performance increase in benchmarks with triple channel vs the same system with dual channel. (i wish someone would actually explain to me how triple channel works. is the third channel basicly a buffer?)

"first of all, if you are considering SLI, you want a board with the Nvidia 980a chipset, not an ATI chipset board." <---------- is that absolutely necessary or just a better way to do it?

Thanks for your help.

absolutely necessary. basicly, to get 2 Nvidia cards in SLI you need nVidia northbridge, to get 2 ATI cards in crossfire, you need an ATI (AMD) northbridge. because you need the graphics drivers and northbridge drivers to be compatible. if they're not compatible, you would need to hack them and basicly rewrite them yourself.

Im totally getting one, screw a heater!

somebody give me a "Hell Yeah!"