I currently have a Palit GTX460 which I am happy enough with but wanted to lower temperatures and noise so bought a Gelid graphics cooler, before realising it would not fit my make of card. I can't return the cooler as I had already modified one of the heatsinks before realising it wouldn't fit, so thought this would be a good excuse to upgrade. I have narrowed the choice to AMD 5870 (still expensive despite an older design) or 6950 1Gb (better value I think) or go Nvidia with a GTX 560Ti 1Gb ( cheaper again with excellent reviews). Having read a magazine article recently, however, I am now wondering if what they suggest, that the Nvidia cards do not work as well with AMD CPU's, means I would be better off going for a matched graphics card. I am also concerned that my B50 X4 (core unlocked Phenom X2 550BE) CPU would simply bottleneck these faster graphics cards. Any thoughts and suggestions would be appreciated.
Hey mate, If your getting a 6950 you might as well cough up a marginal amount more for a 2gb model - hell you can get a Twin Frozr III 6950 for a tad over £200 on scan which is the card I am going for with my planned build with the view to throw another in there down the line due to the great scaling. You can even if you are feeling bold flash the bios to 6970 levels of course depending on the manufacturers warrenty this may void it. I suppose much of your decision depends on resolution though the 560ti is a brilliant card and Nvidia are a little sharper with the drivers imho but ATI's are very close these days. As a general rule at 1920 x 1080 and over more than 1GB is a noticeable advantage with quite a few games and with more DX11 titles on the horizon the extra RAM (and newer architecture of the 6xxx) will probably be a valuable factor in performance. Of course Palit do a nice 2GB 560 in the £210 range. Would you mind sharing your exact budget. And what games do you play/plan to play as of course let us not forget nvidia has Physx. As for the bottlenecking I'm afraid I cannot give you any insight there!
It has to be priced at less than £200 and if possible under £180. I don't think I need the 2Gb version as according to Bit-tech there is little difference in performance. At the moment I play mainly racing games (Grid, Dirt etc.) but will no doubt be trying other types as well. Can anyone comment on my compatibility and bottleneck query?
I run a 560TI and 955 @ stock and I'm not aware of any bottlenecking. I doubt your B50 @ 3.7ghz is gonna bottleneck a 560Ti or a 6950.
I haven't seen any reliable, unbiased and comprehensive testing so I would say the difference between AMD CPU with nVidia gfx and any other combination simply comes down to usual factors of actual CPU power and chipset/PCIe bandwidth. I certainly wouldn't let that lead my choice. If anything it's simply that Intel makes faster CPUs at the moment, clock for clock they are simply more efficient. As for bottlenecking your card may not reach the same max FPS as it would with a faster CPU but it's likely to be plenty fast anyway, plus upping resolution, details and AA+AF are likely to come with less penalty if your CPU is leaving some GPU power untapped. HTH!
Was this particular article in PCFormat perchance? I read the same one. I'll just point out that i run a AMD 1055t with a GTX570 and I really don't believe that it performs as slow as they make it out to compared to a i5 2500K + GTX570.
Generally speaking a Phenom II clocked at 3.6GHz or above will be fine with any current single GPU graphics card on the market. Only multi GPU configs might struggle but this will be heavily game dependant. In the OP's case either the HD6950 or GTX560TI would be perfect. They perform similarly; slight nod going to the HD6950 in real world gaming scenarios, and cost about the same. I went for a HD6950 1GB because I managed to pick one up for £150 but either the 1GB or 2GB will suffice. Most benchmarks have shown that even up to 2560x1200 there is virtually no difference between the 1GB HD6950 and 2GB HD6950. Personally I would say 1GB is a bit questionable at 2560x1600 but at 1080p it will be fine.
Thanks guys, your thoughts and advice are reassuring as usual. I shall start looking for any special offers to try and keep within my budget.
Scan currently has a couple of EVGA's GTX560ti's in it's Today Only offers page, 3 are under £180, the other is £221. You should qualify for free next day delivery as well. Sam
Yes I saw that and was very tempted with the single fan o/c as I have a Gelid Icy Vision ready to fit. Do you know what EVGA are like for quality etc. I am sure it will be on offer again and will be ready if I get reassurances that it is a quality product.
