geforce 280 gtx sli debating about 480 sli...
 

Hey guys... my rig specs are in my sig...

things running pretty smoothly until I got a third monitor to get the surround temptation out of the way...

Now I can see things are starting to look a bit taxed at 5760/1080 with 3 monitors. I mean... borderline great with a bit of choppiness...

Would it be overkill to get 2 480's considering my specs? Not sure if I can budget an i7 at this time...

Looking for guidance to either trigger a guilt ridden purchase or to stop my hand from twitching around my wallet!

Thanks!

Re: geforce 280 gtx sli debating about 480 sli...
 

well, at 1200 watts, the psu is there for 480 sli. And it depends on what you consider guilt ridden. I mean if the budget money is there and you aren't spending against monthly bills, why are you feeling guilty?

Re: geforce 280 gtx sli debating about 480 sli...
 

nice specs you got there.... drool worthy hehe... Never spent against the bills money, have plenty of unused credit and some spare cash... my guilt would just be based off the lack of benefit from moving up this year... I was hoping that someone that moved up to the 480's from 280's or 275's or 285's for that matter would say "wow rock solid performance increase!"... I see you got 24 gb of ram there, what is the benefit for that level of ram? i have yet to run out of memory on 64 bit win 7 with 4 gb of ram, even though at times I have 6-7 visual studio 2010 windows running + possibly 10-20 SQL Server query windows opened?

Re: geforce 280 gtx sli debating about 480 sli...
 

Go for it. SLI 480's scale extremely well and 3 monitor gaming is pretty taxing on a system.

Re: geforce 280 gtx sli debating about 480 sli...
 

I have an eVGA GTX 480 I'm selling if you're on the fence about price.

Link

Re: geforce 280 gtx sli debating about 480 sli...
 

i would go for a cpu upgrade first. my cpu (like yours) bottlenecks my cards a LOT! i put them in my other machine that has an i5 750 @ 3.6 and they where very happy ;) MUCH better performance. especially in Bad Company 2!

Re: geforce 280 gtx sli debating about 480 sli...
 

I would agree that a CPU and motherboard and memory would be the first thing to do .The
i7-920 0r i7-930 scales better then the core2 Quad in SLI .I would upgrade to a i7-920 or
i7-930 and a new motherboard and DDR3 memory first and then get new video cards .

Re: geforce 280 gtx sli debating about 480 sli...
 

no disrespect John, but even an i5 750 would suffice, and be alot less to upgrade. i went through the whole i5 vs i7 debate, and couldnt justify the bigger expense. but yea clock for clock i5-i7 easily beats a core 2 quad. hell even at stock clocks my i5 beats my C2Q at 3.6 by a bit ...

Re: geforce 280 gtx sli debating about 480 sli...
 

If he were running a single monitor, I'd agree that 480's in SLI are too much for his current rig. But 3 monitors with a resolution that high are a different story, you'll get more performance out of the cards than than a CPU upgrade.

Re: geforce 280 gtx sli debating about 480 sli...
 

even with my overclocked i5 and max settings i havent bugun to use my second 260. with the right cpu a 260/275/280 is plently @ 1080p. now if your gaming at 2560 or whatever i can see a second 400 series being usefull, but other that that one 480 is plenty IMO. unless your playing Crysis, and even 3x480 barely cuts it ...

Re: geforce 280 gtx sli debating about 480 sli...
 

Ok.

Now read the OP again. :rolleyes2

Re: geforce 280 gtx sli debating about 480 sli...
 

i completely skipped the fact he's using multiple moitors :o maybe dual 400 series might be needed afterall. gotta quit skimming ;)