Graphics Seriously having a hard time deciding on a graphics card :P!

Hey guys at the end of this month I will be buying all the bits my very first self built computer (yay!).

But one thing that is giving me no end of woe is deciding on a video card - I am pretty flexible with my budget - I can go all the way up to the £270 (give or take) price range but at the moment I am thinking the 560 ti seems to be by far the best value for money and I am seriously considering getting a card now to "tide" me over until the new 28nm cards are out at the end of the year. The resolution I will be gaming at is 1920 x 1080 so pretty standard there.

Anyway it started out that I wanted a 6970 but then I heard it sounded like a jet engine and had/has some driver issues particularly with one of the main games i will be looking at playing Shogun 2 (and the supposed TW favouring of the red team is one thing that was sway me in that direction too) anyway that was back when my build was in its infancy a few months ago and I was not as knowledgeable about the fine details . So for the past few weeks the MSI GTX 560 TWIN FROZR II 1GB has been sitting happily in my shopping basket but then I started getting restless and was looking at other 560's like the Gigabyte Super OC model and the 2GB Palit model and again I was thrown in a state of non-committal.

Now as the date approaches where I will be able to buy my build I would really like your input on what card and what manufacturer/cooler/OC I should get.

Honestly I wish I had the money for a new rig last year when it seems like the choice was much easier - Red Team all the way over the overall apparently lackluster Nvidia offerings now it seems like making a choice is much more difficult!

Also probably important to point out I am not comfortable with the idea of flashing a 6950 to 6970 as I've heard a few horror stories about potential consequences of running a "6970" on x2 6 pin power connectors.

Thanks fellas!

 

This was what i was planing on recomending until you wrote that (N) Scan are selling 6950's for something like £170 with the cheapest manufacturer and even if you dont want to flash it up to a 6970 its a pretty good deal that will run pretty much anything your looking at for a while... And if not you could always buy another one and Crossfire it to make up the performance loss in the future...

 

£270 is gtx570 territory. They trade blows with 6970's and come out on top in alot of games. For the money, this one is pretty good.

The stock cooler is pretty loud at high speeds, but luckily these cards stay fairly cool in all but the most intense gaming sessions. Backed by a decent evga warranty, it's a pretty solid choice.

I know a gtx 560 ti can oc up to the level of a 570, but let's not forget you can oc a 570 too...

 

I have this MSI GTX 560 TWIN FROZR II 1GB. And game fine at 1920x1080. They have been as low as £165. The GTX570 isnt enough of a step up. Save your £100 or enjoy it on something else

 

Thank you for the replies fellas .

I'm going to be a real pain and state the obvious and whine and dither - obviously the higher up you go the greater the performance per £ decreases.

Would I see a dramatic difference between a 570 and an overclocked 560 ti? particularly when you start looking at the Super OC's on them (although the wattages do seem to get a bit excessive?). Not to mention I'm probably going to be eager to see the new 28nm offerings at the end of the year. There is also a Palit 560 that is 2gb although there doesn't seem to be much information out there about it and I've heard lots of people talk badly of them.

Part of me kind of likes the 6950/70 though as 2gb seems useful in a few games and I think you can pick up the reference MSI version for under £250. But I have some reservations about the driver support - I know AMD/ATI have came leaps and bounds over the past few years but I've seen many threads on various forums complaining of driver issues with a number of games :/.

Are we allowed to name names of other sites than Scan? I don't want to get on the wrong side of the mods or anything it's just as it stands I'm forming my build on another popular UK computer site :O!

Might as well post the useful information of my build other than GPU for you nice chaps!

Coolermaster HAF X Case
Coolermaster Silent Pro Gold 800W Modular PSU
Asus P8P67 Pro R3 P67 Socket 1155 8 Channel HD Audio ATX Motherboard
Intel Core i5 2500K 3.3GHz Socket 1155
Corsair Cooling Air Series A70
G-Skill 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1600mhz Sniper Memory Kit CL9 (9-9-9-24) 1.25V
Samsung HD103SJ Spinpoint F3 1TB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 32MB Cache
Asus Xonar DG 5.1 Surround Sound Card

Thanks fellas!

 

Been some damn fine deals on MSI cards via SCAN this week. Also Friday tends to be Nvidia day under the 'Today Only' section of SCAN, so hold back to see what deals they have on offer! Smash up 20 posts on these forums and you can get free weekday postage!

For £270 I would wait for a 'Today Only' offer on the MSI GTX 560 TWIN FROZR II 1GB which I can guess would be between £170 - £180. If you wanted to spend the rest then an OCZ 60GB Agility 3 SSD is one serious piece of kit to compliment your ASUS Pro!

Also Palit have lost my interest since they fluffed the GTX 460 design. The cards they produce these days are cheap for a reason!

 

Thank you for the reply Blogins !

I'm going to go sleep on it now haha but I look forward to seeing more input come tomorrow night when I get home from the daily grind and will be sure to check out the deals on Scan.

Edit: Also what is a Dremel ?

 

This this this and again, just for good measure, this. I can vouch for the MSI 560 and to have a SSD boot drive will really show what your other components will do

 

The deals posted on Friday typically last all weekend anyway until they change again Monday at 1:00PM, so you'll have plenty of time to contemplate!

 

It's worth mentioning what games your playing. Multiplatform games will run fine on a 560, PC exclusives like Shogun 2 on the other hand...

 

just a note that for 1920x1080 there is NO BENEFIT of 2GB of VRAM it will perform the same as 1GB. so dont pay the extra for nothing.

 

Certain games can push Vram requirements over the 1GB level at 1920x1080 so there are certainly *some* benefits to having more Vram although I agree in the grand scheme of things it shouldn't be the highest priority.

I should qualify my statement:

Running Crysis Warhead at 1680x1050, 4xAA, 16xAF and Enthusiast settings has shown memory usage of above 1,000MB on my GTX460 OC (All the Fury) - this was actual gameplay and not some canned benchmark. Up the resolution to 1080p and it would be easy to see memory requirements breach 1,000MB quite frequently.

In terms of a graphics card for this budget I would look at a HD6950 2GB and unlock it. For similar money to the GTX560TI you will end up with a faster card and more Vram which *could* be beneficial in the not too distant future. I wouldn't bother with a GTX560TI at around £200 and for £30 more you can get the significantly faster GTX570.

In summary:

AMD - HD6950 2GB and unlock shaders
Nvidia - GTX570

Outlier - GTX560TI but only if under £180.

 

the most powerful GPU in your price range is the 480 wich is only marginally slower then the 580.
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

and GIGABYTE has a vers nice pre oOC version too:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-079-GI&groupid=701&catid=1914&subcat=1750

That is 120 MHZ OC on the Streams!

 

What about a GTX 480? Isnt that on a par with a 570? But for sub £200?

Im thinking of getting one myself for my wc build but not sure.

 

I bought a Palit 560ti 2 Gb around 3 months ago. Awesome in all games at 1920x1200, and overclocks very simply if that's your bag. Not sure why I bought the 2Gb version over the 1Gb, but I'd buy another at the drop of a hat. It's nice and quiet too, barely audible, even under full load.

 

+1 for a stock 570, especially the evga ones, I'm a big fan of there cards

 

No problem with heat or noise from my 6970. Just buy what ever you prefer. The 570 and 6970 are both great cards

 

Thanks for all the advice so far guys !

I gotta say making a decision on this is very hard ! - it seems like this is one of the most even generations of Graphics cards. I am still leaning towards Nvidia because of their driver support and the fact that it seems to me that many games are slightly more optimized for Nvidia systems - be that because they make up a larger market segment or because they have the money to throw around.

If I was going to go for a 570 what design/manufacturer would you fellas recommend? Or perhaps I would do better to get a 560 now and then get another a few months down the line as they apparently scale really well (6950 scales better though?) which should give me the grunt to handle most things at reasonable settings until the end of the year? I don't care about extremely high levels of Anti Aliasing - x4 is generally more than enough?

Hmm...



Although ATI/AMD still tempts me, it's so damn hard to make a decision!

 

How long do you want it to last?
1-2years running most games max settings - GTX 560 / HD5950
2-3years running most games max settings - GTX 570 / HF5950 flashed to 5970

 

I'm leaning towards getting something realtively affordable now (560/6950) until the 28nm cards are out at the end of the year .