Top Mainstream and High-end Graphics Cards

[Guest]

I bought a GTX 480 a few months ago to replace my dual sli 8800GT's and I'm amazed at the performance. I only use a Quad core 8200 though so if I get a second GTX480 it will be majorly bottlenecked by the CPU without an i7.

Next year they are bringing out new processors (INtel with it's Sandybridge processor at almost 5 Ghz and AMD with bulldozer). Not to mention that Kepler form Nvidia boasting 3-4 times faster speeds than the GTX 480 is coming out next year too. If i was looking to upgrade, i'd wait till next year to get these new processors and video cards. By then the old gen GTX480 cards will be much cheaper anyway.

It all depends on how much bang you want for your buck. Pay a premium and get the new Kepler and Sandybridge/Bulldozer and have crazy "beat-all-your-friends" performance, or pay a bargain price for the old cards (which are now premium). Wait till next year people!

 

[dividebyzero]

Just a couple of notes...

Next year they are bringing out new processors (INtel with it's Sandybridge processor at almost 5 Ghz and AMD with bulldozer).

Sandy Bridges' top speedbin is 3.4GHz (Core i7 2600K), anything more is an overclock figure

Not to mention that Kepler form Nvidia boasting 3-4 times faster speeds than the GTX 480

JHH actually quoted 3-4 times the double precision (DP) performance per watt over Fermi. Mathematical DP performance accuracy does not necessarily correlate to graphical performance. Given that a process shrink will likely lower power requirements by some considerable margin it is probably not out of the question even if Kepler is basically a tweaked GTX 4xx (although that is unlikely).

...is coming out next year too.

Grain of salt needed here > <. The slide here shows Kepler due in 2011. The same slide also shows Fermi in 2009 (!)*.
This also presupposes that TSMC's 28nm high-K metal gate process, not to mention nvidia's GPU design, have a fairly troublefree introduction- not a given since this is new tech all around, and GPU's have been (and will likely to continue to be) the worst yielding products made at any foundry.


* GTX 480/470 were launched in March,2010