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Upgrading from 9800 GT to 640 GT or 660 GTX?

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thomase

thomase

Joined
Dec 25, 2010
Messages
31
Motherboard
Gigabyte EP45 DS4
CPU
Intel Core2quad 2.13
Graphics
Sparkle GeForce 9800 gt
Mac
  1. MacBook Pro
Classic Mac
  1. iBook
  2. Power Mac
Mobile Phone
  1. Android
Hello fellow hackintoshers.
I have been running a hackintosh for about 2 1/2 years now. The only problem is that I can't seem to get this baby to update beyond 10.6.4, but that's ok.
I do animation and vjing on the machine but lately especially rendering from apple's motion has been kind of frustrating. So I thought about upgrading the system. I don't do many gigs, so I don't want to spend another 1000€ on this machine at this point in time, so I figured that it might be enough to only upgrade the graphics card. I had almost already decided on a GeForce 640 GT which is available with 4 GB of VRAM at a decent price, but than I read some rather bad reviews about it because it only sports DDR 3.

http://www1.hardwareversand.de/2048...+2GB+GDDR5,+2x+DVI,+HDMI,+DisplayPort.article

I decided then to have a go at the GeForce 660 GTX which has DDR 5 but is more expensive and features PCI express 3.0 which AFAIK my mobo doesn't.

http://www1.hardwareversand.de/4096...0+Dual-Slot,+4096MB+DDR3,+PCI-Express.article

Now the questions are:
1. Is it worth upgrading the GPU at all? And if yes,
2. Should I get the cheaper 640 with PCI express 2.0 but slower VRAM or is it worth the extra 100€ for the faster 660 GTX with unsupported 3.0?

I have already talked to some friends who have some knowledge about pc hardware, but none of them was a real help...

Edited to add: I was looking at those cards because they were the ones recommended in the latest customac blog post, if there are better options, feel free to suggest them as well...
 
The 9800 GT was a marvelous card and still performs very well these days. Avoid the GT 640, it is a publicity stunt. Anything below GDDR5 is crap. You will hardly gain any performance boost. See the comparison: http://www.hwcompare.com/12942/geforce-9800-gt-512mb-vs-geforce-gt-640-ddr3/

The GTX 660 however is a great card. Expect to have three times power compared to your 9800 GT: http://www.hwcompare.com/13425/geforce-9800-gt-512mb-vs-geforce-gtx-660/

If you even go for a moderatly overclocked one, like http://geizhals.de/837790 or even http://geizhals.de/837784, you should be even ready for the most recent Ivy Bridge technology. Have fun with it!
 
I wouldn't go for anything less than Kepler these days. The GF114 on the 560 TI is a fairly old design, compared to the GTX 660 only powerful in terms of power demand. Is your power supply even equipped with TWO six-pin connectors?

I won't expect a considerable performance drop on the GTX 660 used in a PCI-E 2.0 configuration.
 
I'm not sure about the PSU. It's an Xilence Power with 550 WATTs.
 
thomase said:
Thanks for the advice.

But what about the PCI express 2.0 vs. 3.0 problem?

I had a look at the recommendations again and realized there is a 2.0 card with more power in the same price range:

http://www2.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?adp=0&aid=60150&agid=1156&apop=0

Either way, the 640 is out. So now it is 660 or 560.
Click to expand...

PCIe 2.0 vs 3.0 is simply a matter of bandwidth, there really is no other difference.

A single PCIe 3.0 lane has twice the throughput of a single PCIe 2.0 lane. So effectively a x8 PCIe 3.0 slot has the same throughput as an x16 PCIe 2.0.

However, nothing currently saturates an x16 PCIe 2.0 slot, not even a Dual GPU card like the 690, so it's basically irrelevant which you use and an x16 PCIe 3.0 slot doesn't gain you anything vs an x16 PCIe 2.0 slot.

The place where the extra bandwidth of a PCIe 3.0 lane vs the PCIe 2.0 starts to matter, is on something with a highly limited number of PCIe lanes, like a z68/z77 socket 1155 motheboard. Those only have a total of 16 PCIe lanes. So if you wanted to use dual graphics cards or some other combination of multiple PCIe cards, you would get better performance with the PCIe 3.0, since dual PCIe 3.0 x8 slots would work just as well as dual PCIe 2.0 x16 slots or quad x4 PCIe 3.0 slots would perform as well as quad x8 PCIe 2.0 slots.

Again though, even dropping down to a PCIe 2.0 x8 slot from a PCIe 2.0 x16 slot doesn't really hurt you that much. I think it's on the order of about a 10% penalty. Though that would likely increase if you were running at a high resolution (2560x1440 or more) with lots of Anti-Aliasing and other eye candy.
 
Thank you very much for the explanation. I was aware of the fact that it's only a speed difference but couldn't tell whether that would make a difference in my case.
So after what was said here I think I'm going for the 660, then later change the other components as well so I don't have to shell out all the money at the same time.
 
thomase said:
Hello fellow hackintoshers.
I have been running a hackintosh for about 2 1/2 years now. The only problem is that I can't seem to get this baby to update beyond 10.6.4, but that's ok.
I do animation and vjing on the machine but lately especially rendering from apple's motion has been kind of frustrating. So I thought about upgrading the system. I don't do many gigs, so I don't want to spend another 1000€ on this machine at this point in time, so I figured that it might be enough to only upgrade the graphics card. I had almost already decided on a GeForce 640 GT which is available with 4 GB of VRAM at a decent price, but than I read some rather bad reviews about it because it only sports DDR 3.

http://www1.hardwareversand.de/2048...+2GB+GDDR5,+2x+DVI,+HDMI,+DisplayPort.article

I decided then to have a go at the GeForce 660 GTX which has DDR 5 but is more expensive and features PCI express 3.0 which AFAIK my mobo doesn't.

http://www1.hardwareversand.de/4096...0+Dual-Slot,+4096MB+DDR3,+PCI-Express.article

Now the questions are:
1. Is it worth upgrading the GPU at all? And if yes,
2. Should I get the cheaper 640 with PCI express 2.0 but slower VRAM or is it worth the extra 100€ for the faster 660 GTX with unsupported 3.0?

I have already talked to some friends who have some knowledge about pc hardware, but none of them was a real help...

Edited to add: I was looking at those cards because they were the ones recommended in the latest customac blog post, if there are better options, feel free to suggest them as well...
Click to expand...

You want to upgrade the graphics card only? Will you still run Snow Leopard on it? If so you may not be able to do so since these new graphics cards are not supported under Snow Leopard.
 
Jamesbond007 said:
You want to upgrade the graphics card only? Will you still run Snow Leopard on it? If so you may not be able to do so since these new graphics cards are not supported under Snow Leopard.
Click to expand...

That was the plan. I don't have to stick to snow Leo though. What would you recommend?
 
Btw. I have tried several times updating to 10.6.5 or above, and it always got stuck. So IF I need to update to anything beyond that, I need to re-install completely new.
 
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