GTX 480

[seankingman]

Yesterday I saw a Nvidia GeForce GTX 480 1.5Gb card up on ebay as an auction at £75! I won the auction for £87 (£77+£10 P&P). I was wondering if this would make a good difference over my current GTX 460 as according to the specs it's a lot faster. I am aware that this card is a 'gas guzzling jet engine' and that it is relatively old (March 2010) but I don't really care as long as it gives me the performance I hope for.
Also, I'm a bit skeptical as to whether my PSU can handle this monster. It is an Alpine JSP-700P-12N, it is 700w so the wattage should be fine (Nvidia claim a minimum of 600w) but they also claim that it needs '42amps on 12v rails' but I don't know if it has that.

Thanks.

[Nickster258]

The wattage would be plenty, but I am not sure of the quality of the power supply. Also, check the manual or just look up the power supply on Newegg and it should give you the specs and then you can confirm from there. Also, pro tip, don't buy something you are not sure you can use .-.

[seankingman]

Couldn't find it on Newegg, I'll just have to try it and see.

[Nickster258]

Find the part on http://www.pcpartpicker.com
That should help you figure it out.

---

I do say though, I have never heard of Alpine, it may be some off-market brand.

---

Just check with the manual if you have one.

[seankingman]

Yea, I will, I can't remember where it was bought, probably ebay.
I bought it because the stock one couldn't handle my 460 and I wasn't as interested in the specs back then.

[Nickster258]

Ah, you can always just get a new computer :3

[seankingman]

Well, I wasn't necessarily planning on buying a GPU, I just checked this website on Passmark marks:
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/
In the High End section the 480 is 12th but in the Best Value table it is 6th whereas, my 460 is 38th and 16th respectively. Obviously because it is relatively old. So I checked on ebay and found that one, thought it was a bargain and bought it. I didn't just buy it for the sake of it though, I was finding I wanted more in terms of performance. If it it does work I plan on selling my 460 for £50-£60 and therefore I'd only pay a mere £30 for a hopeful boost in performance.

[Nickster258]

Don't trust that website, nor their http://www.cpubenchmark.net counterpart. They made their own program to test the GPU performance. Best thing to do is just watch some FPS tests with people have done on YouTube. Or just ask the guys over at http://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc about it.
------------
The reason being is that it is only one test program and that program may have some loopholes, and it doesn't test the performance of gameplays and other stuff like that.

[seankingman]

Very true, however, I have watched some benchmark tests, including one on Unigine's Valley which my OC'ed 460 struggles around an average of 23/24 fps. In the video the fps seemed to be locked at 30 and was at or near it for the whole benchmark.

---

Also, as the card was considered the 'fastest single GPU card in the world' for the first few quarters of 2010, it should be good enough for what I want to do, especially for the price despite computing technology moving on at an extremely fast rate.

[Nickster258]

It should be powerful. The only thing is that you should watch out for last-gen things, especially two generations before the latest.

[seankingman]

Well, it runs DirectX11 which is the latest and OpenGL 4.3 which I also believe is the latest so I should be fine on that front, unless there's any other tech I haven't considered.

[seankingman]

Finally, nearly 2 weeks after I ordered it I have got it to work.
It included having to do some case modding, buying a new PSU, burning out my old PSU, buying an array of adapters, missing homework and playing the waiting game with Royal Mail, but it's finally complete!
All I have to do is test it on a few more games and then some overclocking.
Hopefully I haven't spoke too soon.