The lights are on
I'm going to spare the group needless exposition for this topic and get right to it...
Is anyone keeping their finger to the pulse of video card pricing, specifically in relation to the expected time frame for a price drop on the GTX 600 series?
I've never spent more than 350 on a single card before, but gracious is that GTX 670 calling my name... My current GTX 465 still many years remaining on it's warranty, but the nature of it's issues are what's pushing me toward getting rid of it sooner than later. Evidently a lot of the stuttering is due to Vsync... so that adaptive sync on the 600 series is calling. Beyond that the drivers associated with the HD audio on the 400 series cards, whether you actually use it or not, results in uncontrollable hard-locks... which I'm getting more and more even after multiple attempts to clear/disable... just a pain.
Anyway, 410$ for the EVGA 670 FTW edition... jump or wait?
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It all depends on how long you are looking to wait. You can expect that around mid to late September prices will actually start to rise. In my experience GPU/CPU/MB prices tend to rise going into the holidays. Once the demand drops off and they can keep them in stock the prices will drop again. That probably wont be till February. So if you can wait 7 months you may save $50-$75. If not you probably want to purchase in the next 45 days or so.
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That's all I needed to hear. Buying now, hopefully have it by tomorrow XD
Edit: So... I decided to reference the card P/N on Google Shopping before I pushed the button on Newegg, and saw the thing for 399 on Amazon. So I head to checkout on both sites to compare, and I notice something... this is probably going to sound incredibly stupid, but apparently I don't have to pay sales tax on Amazon but do on Newegg o.o
Upgraded to 2-day shipping, 412$ final charge... as compared to some 440 after tax on Newegg with basic shipping. O.O How much sales tax have I needlessly paid over the years...
Let me know what you think of it. Some of the new technology does seem really good. Just my current cards are still a little too good to replace. I am also thinking if I do go for a 600 I would probably want a PCI 3.0 board first to take full effect of the card. Which basically means new processor so at that point it is mostly a new build.
Wow, I never noticed that, either. Hm...looks like I'll be shopping on Amazon from now on. Thanks for the tip! xD
It is one thing I have loved about Amazon for a long time. Remember though, don't forget to still shop around as I have found Amazon isn't always the cheapest place in town.
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Oh yeah, I still definitely shop around to find some good deals here and there. If NewEgg or Tiger Direct has a good deal I'll probably end up getting my stuff from there. I just discovered a gigantic Tiger Direct store near where I live so I think I'll be spending a good bit of time there in the future. :D
Wondering how you are liking the card? I am starting to set aside some cash and do some math for a massive upgrade come Jan-Feb. I love love love love...LOVE my 570s, so it seems the logical upgrade would then be the 670 Unless I can convince my GF that i must have a 30" 2560 monitor then i will be getting a 680. I also found it very convenient with my last build, I bought 1 570. Then once things got a little choppy I picked up a second for $100 less and just went SLI.
Can't think of any negatives, honestly.
Temperature and fan noise are both considerably less than that of my old 465, haven't had a single instance of vsync stutter or tearing across some 16 different games, and I'm running every title I own liquid smooth at 1920. Mind you I am not running games on "ultra" settings simply for the sake of doing so... Battlefield 3 and Witcher 2 for example auto-detect to High and I leave it there. I've yet to try Crysis 2 or Skyrim with their respective high resolution packs, but both titles are running at maximum "out of the box" settings. Although it's worth noting Skyrim is running several user created high fidelity mods: snow, rain, water, foliage etc.
But yea, you can find benchmarks if that's what you're interested in. My personal experience has been completely painless, and despite the higher than average price tag, has been perhaps one of my least remorseful purchases in quite some time.
Hehe yeah I have already decided not to jump yet. I had spent most of the morning reading about the new 660 so I had that little voice in my head saying ohhh shiny. It would be completely irresponsible to replace 2 570s at this point. I really like the new adaptive Vsync but not worth it imo. I am running a first gen I7 Bloomfield though that is starting to show a bit of age. So odds are I will pick up a new PCIE 3.0 MB and an i5 3570k
I'd wait. I'd also reinstall the drivers for your card. Choose 'custom' and only install the driver/physx. You can choose not to install update/3d/HD audio.
Why to wait though. The raw power the of the 600 series is impressive, but it's vram is still a little, insufficient imo. We're close to next-gen consoles and I wouldn't feel comfortable investing in a new gpu unless it's reference design started at 3GB vram. You can buy custom gpus with that much, but reference means the gpu and it's architecture are fully optimized to utilize that much vram.
When dealing with custom cards, factory overclocks and such, there are often some glitches affecting performance or stability in one way our another. Nothing deal breaking but annoying crap. f.ex, I own an EVGA superclocked GTX 570. Eventually, every few wks/month, stability issues develop causing system hang, TDRs(driver crash), and/or Adobe Flash crashing repeatedly. The fix, is really simple . You shut down the PC, then unplug it or hit the psu switch and let it sit for a few minutes with no power. Boot back up and everything's fine again.
"The raw power the of the 600 series is impressive, but it's vram is still a little, insufficient imo. We're close to next-gen consoles and I wouldn't feel comfortable investing in a new gpu unless it's reference design started at 3GB vram. You can buy custom gpus with that much, but reference means the gpu and it's architecture are fully optimized to utilize that much vram."
This is so completely wrong.... oh, wow.
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hehe I was very much thinking the same thing but did not want to go into it. Pushing 3gigs of Vram or more will mostly only affect 3 or more monitor setups. 2gigs is more than enough for 1080p resolution. If anything it would be nice if they kicked the bit-rate up from 256, 512 would be AMAZING...but then the cards would cot 3 times as much.
Maybe LQ knows something that I dont, I keep up to date on things like this but am by no means an expert.
I've been shopping at Amazon for a long time, and that's one of the reasons I love it. However, starting in September, Amazon will start implementing sales tax, even though they tried to fight it for the longest time. In the end, I think the resolution was that they would create more jobs in return for the sales tax or something like that.
And since Amazon is also opening more warehouses, there's a high possibility that they're going to do same day shipping and stuff. Didn't read the entire thing, so I might be a bit wrong on that. :P
Aww, bummer about the sales tax finally catch up to them. But... not bummer on the warehouses - there's actually a distribution center that was just finished a few weeks ago about 20 miles from my place, and the video card was shipped from there. Received next day on standard shipping :D