Ola, So I was about to buy one of the mildly OC'd 560's from Scan when I noticed Palit do a 2Gb model, though not overclocked. Sure, I can overclock myself, but do I want the extra 1Gb of RAM? My native resolution is 1920x1200. £20 extra is fine for my budget, but will the extra memory make the card hotter/noisier/thirstier by much? TIA! Cleggy.
If you game at 1920x1080 then 2Gb isn't really worth it, only if you use something like eyefinity or 3d surround
A mate of mine has the Palit 2gb GTX 460, as far as I can tell there's absolutely no difference in performance at 1920*1200 vs my 1gb. Also I know Palit had a lot of mixed reviews of their 460 model, I don't know if the 560 is much different but there are much nicer models of 560 out there IMO
Oh well, I've gone for it anyway... Should be here tomorrow, I'll post my findings after some gaming. V excited! PS: Should I keep my 8800GT for PhysX duties or sell it?
I'm sure it'll still be a bloody good card Do you have any PhysX games to test it on? You may as well try it with and without the 8800 as a dedicated card and see if there's much difference, if not sell it! Whats an 8800 go for these days?
Agreed, not today, but maybe tomorrow. Though no one on here keeps cards forever, I’d say for £20 difference I’d definitely opt for the 2GB one. Also makes it more resellable further down the line when things like vRAM become the limiting factor (in fact, GTA4 tells me that it uses over 1GB of RAM right now)
Thanks for the thoughts chaps. The only game I have with PhysX is Mafia II so I'll try it with/without the 8800GT. I'm also interested in running a dual monitor setup so I'm sure the memory will come in handy at some point. Fingers crossed the new card will arrive tomorrow, I'll feedback once installed. Cleggy.
Remember to post your benchmarks with and without the 8800GT for PhysX! Although you've already made your choice, the only thing I'll say is that you have a little bit more 'future proofing' if games suddenly increase their VRAM usage for textures or something. The only downside I can think of at the moment is that you probably won't be able to overclock the memory as high as a 1GB version, but I've always found that overclocking VRAM gives bugger all performance increase anyway!
I'm in market for a new card and still trying to decide - be great if you could let us know how far you can push the 2gb Pallit as its on my list of possibles. I'm upgrading from a 8800gts 512 so would be cool to hear how much difference you notice too - I'm guessing a lot.
A 560 is strong enough to be able to handle phyx as well so you may as well make a bit from selling the 8800.
I'm kinda hoping that'll be the case as I want the rig to be as quiet as possible. I'm also probably knocking on the door of my PSU limits, so just running one GPU will be preferable... On that note, can anyone take an educated guess as to my power requirements/draw (specs in my sig)? If I need a new PSU I'll be a bit gutted...
Well, Nvidia recommend a minimum 500W supply, and your PSU seems decent enough so yeah, it'll work . Just plug each 6 pin connector into a separate rail and you'll be gravy.
The 8800 GTX had 768 MB of VRAM. The card was released in 2006, five years ago. Now, most decent cards have 1GB of VRAM, which is only a 33% increase in VRAM in 5 years. This idea that 2GB of VRAM futureproofs you at any resolution lower than 2560x1600 is rubbish.
"Most decent cards"..... The 8800GTX was not a 'decent' middle of the road card, in fact it was top of the pile when it was released. Now lets look at whats top of the pile now, either the 2GB 6970 or the 1.5GB 580GTX. So thats a minimum 50% increase. Rage, Shogun 2, Crysis 2 or Battlefield 3 could all easily use more than 1GB of vRAM at 1920x1080 - as stated GTA4 uses that today and that was released last year. No use having a screaming CPU/GPU core if your vRAM is the limiting factor. - for £20 - I'd eliminate that possibility.
Thats hypothetical rubbish. You say that these games "could" easily use more than 1GB of vRAM. And tomorrow pigs could fly. The only game that uses more than 1GB vRAM is GTA 4, which doesn't prove anything. Spouting a load of future releases does not make your argument valid. I suspect these releases do not want to have draconian system requirements like GTA 4 in order to increase sales. The 580 GTX has double (thats 100% increase, you obviously don't know anything about mathematics) in five years. That still proves my point. That is massively slower than Moore's law. The truth is clearly that vRAM requirements have not increased quickly and thus the logical conclusion is that you do not need to purchase a card over 1GB VRAM.
OK, relax, it's a graphics card, not a bloody life support machine. I'll post findings tomorrow, hopefully with a big smile on my face.
If we are talking about future proofing we must talk about future releases, right? 2Gb GPU's are also faster today. Take a look here - that is for Metro 2033, but feel free to look at any of the different games.