Widescreen Gaming Forum

Hi there.
I've just picked up 3 1080p monitors and I'd love to use them for gaming.

I have about $600 to blow on graphics cards... any suggestions as to what I should get?

I have an Asus P5N32-E SLI motherboard so I am thinking about getting two GeForce GTX 460 with 1GB of memory each.
...but I hear the a 2x460 SLI set-up really benefits from 2GB of memory on each card.
Is this correct, and if so, what are my options for a 2GB card?

What would I need to run the latest games at full resolution (3x1920x1080)?
Is there a better single-card setup? Like a Radeon 5870 or GeForce GTX 480?
And if so, is there any specific type that is recommended?

I'd really love some help on this as I don't want blow my cash on a donkey!

Thanks,
Dan

You can get 2GB GTX 460's.

Thanks for the info. There aren't many stores that sell the 2GB cards in Canada. :(

What do you think would be better...

2 x GTX 460 2GB

...or...

2 x GTX 470

?

What sort of performance would I be looking at with the 2GB 260s?

Thanks,
Dan

Well the only real benefit from the 2GB 460's is up at 5760x1200 resolution, with anti-aliasing enabled, but at that resolution, you are limited by their horsepower.

2x GTX 470 with 1280MB each, against 2x GTX460 with 1024MB each, the 470's have more power and more memory available.

But I don't know once you get up to 5760x1200 resolution, if there becomes a point where the extra memory of the 2048MB GTX460's gives it more FPS than the 470 combo, but it will never have the raw horsepower of the 470 either. Or the higher power consumption, heat output and noise output either :)

Therefore I cannot answer the question better than I have.

Interesting...

What kind of resolutions can 2 x 1GB 460s handle?
Reports on the web are inconclusive - is anyone running 2 460s across 3 monitors?

Yup.

I ran two 1GB cards for a while. It's doable, but you need to be really careful what settings you enable or the cards run out of VRAM and hit single digit FPS as they swap to system RAM.

Running two 2GB cards is much better, although there are still games that eat 2GB of VRAM for breakfast and keep going. Crysis is an excellent example.

5760x1200 and 6064x1200 are the resolutions I run at for Surround.