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I'd really like to see a nice one for less than 150$ you know? I just care about clock speed and modern gaming so I can create modern games lol

PassMark Software - Video Card Benchmarks - High End Video Cards

Decided on this:

EVGA 01G-P3-1556-KR GeForce GTX 550 Ti Video Card - 1GB, GDDR5, PCI-Express 2.0 (x16), Mini-HDMI, Dual DVI, DirectX 11, Dual-Slot, SLI Ready. at TigerDirect.com

It can be overclocked and it's already:

Core Clock: 951 MHz
Memory Clock: 4356 MHz
Shader Clock: 1903 MHz

Which I thought was great.


HP 451366-B21 750 Watts Power Supply for ProLiant DL185 (G5) Server Series

That's the power supply I want to get I found a deal for under $25, brand new not refurbished.

*Recertified* Black OCZ StealthXStream 500W ATX12V/EPS12V Computer Power Supply, Active PFC, w/ 120mm Fan, Model: OCZ500SXS-B - Best Computer Online Store Dallas Buy Discount Prices Texas-Axiontech.com
Here's another for 16.99, recertified.

just remember many Twin Frozr II's and III's many people try to OC even further beyond stock, some get great OC's, others don't. But I'd be careful, with buying 2nd hand, unless they can guarantee that the card will work fine.

I actually trust some Forums Buy/Sell sections more than I do Ebay. (which is where I got my i7 940 for cheap, over on Overclock.net, for $135. was only run for 6 months, and the guy had it stable overclocked to 3.8-3.9GHz)

EBay has many used 560s in my budget including gtx 560 Msi twin froze ii

If EVGA had some more GTX 560 Ti's that were recertified in stock that would be a steal, but currently on their site the best recert card they have is a GTX 275.

LOL, SWEET. just found these, I'd consider jumping on one of these:

MSI N470GTX Twin Frozr II GeForce GTX 470 1280MB DDR5 PCI Express (PCIe) Dual DVI Video Card w/mini-HDMI & HDCP Support MSI 912-V222-048 N470GTX Twin Frozr II

This is the one I have, and in that YT video above: MSI GeForce GTX 470 1280MB DDR5 PCI Express Dual DVI Video Card w/mini-HDMI & HDCP Support MSI N470GTX-M2D12 GeForce GTX 470

ASUS ENGTX470 GeForce GTX 470 1280MB DDR5 PCI Express Dual DVI Video Card w/mini-HDMI & HDCP Support ASUS ENGTX470/2DI/1280MD5/V2 Geforce GTX 470

I'd go for the 1st MSI one, its a better cooler design and SHOULD run cooler than the stock fan, but also should be quieter running as well.



Hell, if I hadn't already bought that 560 Ti back in the summer, I would be willing to grab 2 more of these, and upgrade my PSU so I could run 3 Way SLI on my newer board.

My psu is being changed for 500w. I will need it. I am getting an OCZ or CoolerMaster. I'd love to just get least power consumption Max performance but under 200. 170 range :-\ Im at a bit of a fork lol

GTX 580 is going to cost you $400 AT LEAST for brand new, if not closer to $500, buying used or recertified or refurbished, your not going to get much cheaper than $350-400 if your lucky.

GTX 580's: Newegg.com - Computer Hardware, Video Cards & Video Devices, Desktop Graphics / Video Cards, GeForce GTX 500 series, GeForce GTX 580 (Fermi)

Plus the card consumes 244W of power, 50% of your PSU's max rating: nVidia GeForce GTX 580 Video Card - Reviews, Specifications, and Pictures - GPUReview.com

Well I am really going by benchmarks here and one guys overclocked card he says is like a 580. If i can get a 580 or cheap...

I'd look into some sound insulation for the case as well, if your looking at the GTX 470/480's.

Eventually I plan on putting some of the stuff in my new case as well, but for now, the GTX 560 Ti I have, which performs a bit better than the GTX 470, runs much quieter, uses less power (170W +/- vs 215W) and runs a bit cooler as well.

PC Computer Sound Dampening - FrozenCPU.com *

Plenty of other case modding parts/material.

FrozenCPU is my preferred place to shop, their fast with shipping and VERY Customer Service oriented, honestly Newegg and some other sites have nothing on these guys, and could learn a thing or two, about Packaging, Shipping and keeping up A+++ communications with the customers.

Normally when you order, you get the regular transaction confirmation email, but you also get a order packaging update email, and a order shipped email, and when you get your shipment the invoice is usually with it and stamped by who took care of the packaging and shipped it.

Plus many times if you have a problem the companies CEO will actually take personal interest and responsibility for accidents, screw ups or issues.

next one after FrozenCPU, is Performance PC's, IMO. Performance-pcs.com

a few other sites as well, but for more specific Hardware parts Newegg is still the place to go. After newegg is Directron.com.

Then you have sites like Tigerdirect and others taking 2nd/3rd place.


But I just placed an Order for some more cables and thermal paste late last night (monday night) and the whole thing was shipped before noon today (tuesday), so should be here by Friday with 2-3 Day USPS shipping. 9 out of 10 times though, even if I ordered week long shipping, the orders are usually shipped out from New Jersey to middle of no where in West Central Minnesota in 2 to 3 business days.

Well i found a few 470's and 480's for low prices all used. One was never used and all stock and still in it's wrap, guy won for a competition and never used it apparently. Another one I saw was overclocked and said to give 15-20% better performance.

I have two fans in my case now already. It's an HP Elite E9110T. I'm doing some custom fabrications on it with fiberglass etc. Right now I just started adding my own vents and meshing them up and adding lighting. The next thing I'll do is take out the fans I have now and replace them with about 4 fans, but making sure they all are placed properly and the air travels in the right direction, etc.

Just so you know...




Yah, thats my current i7 system with a GTX 285 and GTX 470 in it.


If fan noise is an issue when the card is running full tilt, might want to reconsider the GTX 480, as it will be even worse, or similar, since its a more powerful/hotter card usually.

its also why I don't really recommend the 470/480 anymore, unless a really good deal can be had, since they run so hot.

knowing that, plus Ebay, I hope the seller has some sort of money back guarantee just in case the card is a dud when you get it.

to be honest I've been looking to sell my GTX 470 for a while, once I get my issues with my new upgrades figured out, but have been thinking of selling mine for $150-170 range, so a GTX 480 for $160 is a good buy, but I'd check to see what the seller has to say about operating temps, how long it has been run, when they bought it, and whether its been Overclocked past its factory settings.

Mine, like all, runs hot, 80-90C in some games at full load. Its never been Overclocked beyond stock factory specs, and has been run almost 24/7 since I got it back in January of this year. But despite its run time and hot operating temps, its probably run idle for 75% of that time, since I don't put in as many game hours as I used to. and I haven't really done much Folding@Home on it, not like I did with the GTX 285 before it.

Thanks! I'll take it all into consideration and go through everything this site has been more than helpful!

Found a GTX 480 for 160 MSI too. So I'm happy Ebay

Threads merged, no need to start fresh when you have an on-going conversation.

Honestly you can taking gaming considerations out of the equation. In most games any of the cards you mention are going to be a bit overkill for the resolutions you are running or at least would give enough performance that it shouldn't sway the decision one way or another.

I'd check with the software you are using for development and see where you stand with support. If they run better on NVIDIA cards then go NVIDIA if not then its comes down to a matter of personal preference or shear performance numbers.

2 Cards - 3D Development / Gaming

So it's between the Radeon HD 6870 and the GTX 460 (unless you can find a 470 for under $170 lol).

Those are my two choices.

My PC Specs
Operating System
MS Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit SP1
CPU
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 @ 2.83GHz 43 °C
Yorkfield 45nm Technology
RAM
6.00 GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 531MHz (7-7-7-20)
Motherboard
PEGATRON CORPORATION Eureka3 (CPU 1)
Graphics
SyncMaster (1280x1024@75Hz)
1024MB GeForce GT 220 (MSI)

Programs I run:

ADOBE
¯¯¯¯¯¯
Photoshop® CS5 Extended
Illustrator® CS5
InDesign® CS5.5
Acrobat® X Pro
Flash® Catalyst® CS5.5
Flash Professional CS5.5
Flash Builder® 4.5 Premium Edition
Dreamweaver® CS5.5
Fireworks® CS5
After Effects® CS5.5
Adobe Audition® CS5.5
Bridge CS5
Device Central CS5.5
Media Encoder CS5.5

3D Development
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
3D Studio Max 2012
Maya 2012
Blender

-----------------

Performance 3D Video Cards

One of these should work it says for what I want. I did a few reviews on the video cards necessary.

Best Alternative Single-Core Card - Sapphire Radeon HD 6970 2GB
Best Multi-Core Card - Sapphire Radeon HD 6990 4GB
Best Alternate Multi-Core Card - EVGA GeForce GTX 590 3GB
Best AMD CrossFire Setup - Sapphire FleX Radeon HD 6870 1GB
Best NVIDIA SLI Setup - EVGA GeForce GTX 570 1.2GB SuperClocked

I traditionally only use one monitor @ the standard 1280 x 1024. Sometimes I may switch over to the big 45" (or something) Flatscreen but not too often.


I found these:

EVGA 01G-P3-1556-KR GeForce GTX 550 Ti Video Card - 1GB, GDDR5, PCI-Express 2.0 (x16), Mini-HDMI, Dual DVI, DirectX 11, Dual-Slot, SLI Ready. at TigerDirect.com

Newegg.com - SAPPHIRE FleX 100314FLEX Radeon HD 6870 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card with Eyefinity

Newegg.com - DIAMOND 6870PE51GB Radeon HD 6870 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card

Using Game-Debate.com I used their "Can I Run It?" feature to see how each gfx card stacks up in terms of "out of 10" ratings. I tested Crysis, Crysis 2, and GTX 550ti - GTX 460 - and HD 6850 and HD 6870 - and the 6850/6870 both got a 10/10.. the 460 got an 9/10. 550 ti got an 8/10.

I found an Asus 6870 for 154.99... but you said Asus sucks (and I'd believe that they would cut corners on their gfx cards quality).

So I guess It's a 460 or a 6870 that I am down to.

===============================================
EDIT: I actually found out most companies like Autodesk and Adobe actually have graphics card lists

Autodesk - Certified Hardware - Find Graphics Hardware

http://download.autodesk.com/us/qual...aphics_win.pdf

So for future reference if you're researching cards or giving advice tell people to check hardware requirements or graphics cards for the programs they want to use. I should have done that in the first place haha

take neweggs product reviews with a grain of salt, more than half of them are by people that deserve to be shot dead and left in the street for the buzzards to pick at their bones.

They claim to have high tech knowledge and most are complete morons when rating the products.

I notice with that Zotac card, a lot of them are bitching and whining about not getting the Mail in Rebate. That IS NOT an issue with the card itself, its something completely separate and unfortunately newegg never polices their reviews ever.

Many of those morons don't get the fact, a Mail in rebate is an incentive to pull people in to buy stuff, your paying regular price at check out, so you don't get the MIR, big deal, at least they didn't charge you OVER what the card was retailing for.

there's 47 reviews on newegg, and you mention 10 bad ones, if your talking about neweggs reviews, that about 20% of the reviews.

Keep in mind a lot of people don't bother wasting time to even write a review.

but 80% of the reviews are better than 1 star/egg.

heck the total rating right now for that card is 4 out of 5.

Out of all the bad reviews on there, I only read 2 or 3 that actually dealt with the card having problems.

thats acceptable as all companies have a few duds in their inventory.


The only one I see mentioned that might be an issue, is this one...

Pros: Absolutely None: If you buy this card for 3D graphics creation; it is a waste of money; this card is little better than silicon trash for most popular applications, a total loser. Google GTX 460 to Wikipedia: " The problem, which affects any OpenGL application using textures, involves accessing framebuffer contents or storing data on the GPU. So far, one customer using an OpenGL based application got a response from nVidia support indicating that the behavior is expected in the GeForce 400 line of cards, and no software update is available to improve the performance of the hardware." The problem could be fixed if Nvidia would release a driver that would fix the memory copy to access the buffer object problem.

Cons: I'll say it again. This card is silicon trash. I bought this card to do graphics work with 3D Max and Cinema 4D; fps is slower than my antique 8800. Here's what Wikipedia has to say: " It has been reported by users as well as developers that nVidia 400-series cards have severe performance problems with 3D content-creation applications such as Autodesk Maya and 3ds Max, Blender, Rhinoceros 3D—as well as some OpenGL games—to the extent that video cards two generations older routinely outperform 400-series in such applications and games. The problem, which affects any OpenGL application using textures, involves accessing framebuffer contents or storing data on the GPU."

Other Thoughts: In my opinion, Nvidia purposely crippled this card so graphic artist's have to shell out big bucks for either a Tesla or Quadro. The 460 could do the job for a lot less if Nvidia had'nt purposely crippled it's performance with the driver code and they have no intention of changing it. They want profit. It's all about greed.

Now keep in mind, the user is talking about DRIVER Issues and NOT the card.

So again, its another user not knowing WTF their even talking about in rating the product.

But with the Driver issues this person is having, it might be something similar that you might have troubles with as well.

Its more likely that its an issue Nvidia never got around to fixing or bothered too. The 1st generation GTX 400 series Fermi cards weren't perfect either, they used a lot of power, ran hot, and the GTX 480 was not running at its original Max Specs, with only 480 of its cores enabled due to the fabrication issues Nvidia was having.

When the 2nd Gen/Revision GTX 400's came out (and mainly these were just the GT 430, GTS 450 and GTX 460) many of the fabrication and power consumption/heat issues were improved, but drivers were still the same for all of them.

now the GTX 500 series, which is what the 400's were supposed to be, especially the 570/580's. GTX 580 finally had all 512 cores enabled, and the 570 was 480 cores.

I have no idea if GTX 500 series has improved performance over the 400 with newest drivers, but might be something to look into.

I know running the Cinema4D based Cinebench benchmark, that compared to my GTX 285, my GTX 470 saw a noticeable improvement in GPU rendering speed, and that was earlier this year, with current drivers back then, so its possible drivers were improved, or the user in that review wasn't using updated drivers or something.

hard to say for sure, but it might be an issue for you since your uses will be similar to what their talking about.

I'll say this, as far as Geforce Cards go, the best ones are EVGA & MSI. Followed by Gigabyte, and Dare I say it, Asus.

after that, some of the lesser known brands are actually quite good, PNY, ECS, Sparkle, Galaxy, Palit, even Zotac depending on the cards.

And looks like XFX is making Geforce Cards again, a year or two ago, they lost their license to make Geforce cards from Nvidia, so they were exclusively Radeon for a while, but looks like they're making some lower end Geforce G/GT Series 200, 400 and 500 Series cards.

Hopefully we'll see some more upper echelon cards from them again, and start giving EVGA & MSI another run for the money.

I reviewed the cards and was looking at the clocks and pricing and I have to say Zotac has bad reviews. Over 10 people reported negative one star comments. This is why it's so hard to find a card, I found one card for like 150$ and it had only one review, others that have no reviews, etc. So what do you buy? I mean it's hard to pick the right one haha

Originally Posted by ScathDeSolas

Do you trust eBay or sites like this Compuvest Corp. I also found 2gb 460

In general I don't trust ebay, though there are reputable sites and stores that deal on ebay. I've heard of compuvest, and shopped their site, but have never ordered from them.

Looks like they have a 1GB Refurbished Asus GTX 460 for less than $130, but then again, its Asus (not a big fan of them), but also only has a 45 day warranty which sucks as well.

the 2GB card I saw was a GTX 550 Ti, which would be lesser in performance.

the only thing that 2GB of Memory will allow for you is Ultra High Resolutions or running a game spanned across 2 or more monitors. There's little if any difference in single screen performance at 1920x1200 or lower between a 1GB and 2GB card (GTX 460 1GB or 2GB for example).

Originally Posted by ScathDeSolas

350w stock psu now. Those deals you found are great! I'm not so sure if zotac can deliver but I've heard mixed feelings lol bit more research on your provided links and ill be ready to buy thanks man.

On another note I'm building a large gaming network. Send me an email ill hook you up with premium when its all done. Its called Limitless Gamer. ScathDeSolas@gmail.com soif you're interested in that or deals I can give you on site or graphics design it whatever lol you helped me I help you

I have a Zotac Mini ITX motherboard, and its ok, nothing spectacular.

its about all I can comment on as far as first hand experience goes.

but honestly myself I'd buy a Zotac over an Asus any day, I'm just that much of a "hater" of Asus. Asrock, which Asus is its Parent Company, I trust miles and miles better than Asus, with Asus your paying for the name 90% of the time.

There was a 720MHz clocked GTX 460 listed from EVGA on newegg, it was priced just a bit higher than the Zotac, if you grabbed that 500W Coolermaster, you might be able to squeeze that card in there into the Budget, and the EVGA is miles better on quality and Customer Service/Warranty than Zotac IMO.

Newegg.com - EVGA 01G-P3-1370-TR GeForce GTX 460 (Fermi) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

+ the 500W Coolermaster for $40.

Would come out about same as the Zotac and the 450W Coolermaster PSU pricing.

350w stock psu now. Those deals you found are great! I'm not so sure if zotac can deliver but I've heard mixed feelings lol bit more research on your provided links and ill be ready to buy thanks man.

On another note I'm building a large gaming network. Send me an email ill hook you up with premium when its all done. Its called Limitless Gamer. ScathDeSolas@gmail.com soif you're interested in that or deals I can give you on site or graphics design it whatever lol you helped me I help you

Originally Posted by ScathDeSolas

Do you trust eBay or sites like this Compuvest Corp. EVGA 460 I also found 2gb 460

Do you trust eBay or sites like this Compuvest Corp. I also found 2gb 460