A well overclocked 560: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/1gb-...hz-gddr5-gpu-1000mhz-shader-1800mhz-384-cores Or a slightly overclocked 570: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/1280...0mhz-gddr5-gpu-800mhz-shader-1600mhz-480-core I'm quite new to building PCs, so I don't understand how much clock speeds affect a cards ability, compared to things like the amount of SMs. There are even 580s with lower clock speeds than the 560: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/1536...ddr5-gpu-772mhz-shader-1544mhz-mhdmi-dl-dvi-i Would the 580 and 570 still out-perform the 560? Thanks.
easiest thing to do if you dont uderstand GPU archietecture is to go by benchmarks. although a 560 does have higher clocks than a 570 or 580 its still slower. basically its a overall design that makes a GPU at said speed not an indivual clock like core clock, shader speed, memory speed, memory bus width or the number of SMs. ATI also have a different design tha nvidia so you cant compare clock speeds between ATI/AMD and nvidia either as it wont reflect true performance order of performance is 560 < 570 < 580 now that kinda makes sense but it doesnt always work like that with the name so dont go by that. for example a 465 is slower than a 460 !
Techreport have compared the 1GHZ core GTX560 (I am not putting the Ti after the name every sodding time) against the GTX570 (along with the rest of the top end lineup) and it is within 5% most of the time. However it does this at the cost of power consumption (very similar to the 570). This also doesn't take into account a potential lack of vram for future releases and the fact the 570 can also overclock quite far. It also basically matches the HD6950 2GB in real world scenarios so my preference would be HD6950 2GB and spend 5 minutes unlocking it into the HD6970*. *HD6950 Asus unlocked bios and overclock to HD6970 speeds.
always go for non-overclocked fastest architecture you can afford. these manufacturers will try to distinguish themselves by releasing overclocked cards, but all those overclock can be done by yourself. the only real difference is the architecture of the GPU, and 570 is vastly superior than 560 in every single way. look at it this way, a 1000MHz 560 is nearly on par with a 732MHz 570. 1000MHz is pretty much the furthest 560 can go, while 570 can also be overclocked to over 900MHz. and a 900MHz 570 is on par with a 772MHz 580. but 580 can be overclocked to 900MHz also. these overclocking will bring you to the higher card for less money, but you can always overclock the more expensive cards to be even faster. so, always buy fastest architecture you can afford. it's same theory for buying CPU, i7 920 is far better value than i7 960.
I went for 2x 570's back in december and am happy with the choice as the total price difference to now isn't to bad (got a good deal) and want surround so the memory does probably matter. If buying now I'd take a nice 560 with a decent cooler and clock it.
I'm broadly with wuyanxu, but if you are new to all of this and don't really think you will ever get round to overclocking, just get whatever benchmarks best. As far as clock speeds go don't pay attention to them if you are comparing cards for different lines. They are more useful for comparing cards of the same line, but even there benchmarks are more useful. And these clearly say for the unoverclocked cards: 560<570<580 You won't go wrong buying any of those cards though. They will all run every game out today at good settings and 1080p
