Contemplating an upgrade on an old board

[tricky]

We have Intel D975XBX2 main boards with Intel Core2 Quad CPU @ 2.66GHz. At the moment, we have FireGL v7350 cards which will not work with RT GPU.

We are therefore thinking of upgrading the Windows 7 x64 and installing an Nvidia based card. At the moment, I am looking at either the GTX560 Ti (384 cores) or the GTX480 (480 cores).

Which do you think will perform faster? The newer generation 5-series with fewer cores or the older generation with more cores?

[tricky]

Think I'll be going down the GTX560 route as it draws less power and produces less heat.

[kein_plan]

i just got the 560 ti 2gb. it is 10° cooler as the 460. i think this card is very good for updating older systems...

[tricky]

Well, I got cold feet (soon to get hotter with these cards next to them!) in the end and changed my order. We've opted for the older GTX480 cards!

[scottsch]

I finally got my first Fermi card yesterday ($230 used Zotac GTX 480 on eBay). It is pretty much everything they say... runs unbelievably hot (luckily vents outside of the case), really loud (REALLY loud compared to any other card I've had, ever), and MONSTER performance... really, really fast card. A basic sun/sky scene renders to a good preliminary preview almost instantly in iray (still need to buy vray 2.0), probably ~5 times faster than a GTX 260. I'm very happy with the 480 so far.