Graphics New video card or keep what I have

I have a choice I can keep my 3 260 GTX SC video cards in SLI or I can try replace it with a 560 GTX 1GB 256bit interface. I am running my display at 1650 x 1050. How will this card benefit me better than what i have? I am not concerned with power consumption. I play WOW, NFS, LFD, and COD. My rig is in my SIG and I do play all these games in 3D but WOW.

 

If you upgraded to a GTX560Ti you would see a big improvement, however it's arguably not necessary based on what games you are playing... surely they all run well on a single GTX260 at that res? I used to run games on my GTX260 @ 1920x1200 and it just powered through them, even Crysis.

 

I went from a single 260 SSC to a mildly overclocked Zotac 560 & saw a massive difference, however I doubt you'd see a significant jump in performance from 3 way SLi to single 560 - that's assuming it's a 560ti - might actually end up being worse if it's not a ti.

 

With the cumulative saving in electricity you could buy a better display!

 

Are there any advantages in DX 11 that i'm not getting?

 

I'd be surprised if you saw any improvement really, so long as in what you do play already scales well with SLI. Why have you chosen a 560? Just out of interest.

DX11 is offering you very little extra really.

 

You won't get any benefit from DX11 playing these games, but that in and of itself is not a reason not to get the 560Ti - it's nice to have the option if you choose to try some newer games. The rest of your system would certainly cope.

 

I only had enough money to get the 560 not the TI version I am a bit poor atm I am asking because I have not opened it and and am still able to return it.

Would it make a difference in newer games? As I may try to get some newer games, or should I return the card and get something to make my system run better not sure what the best option is. Opinions please

 

If you're strapped for cash I would definitely suggest returning it - no point dumping money on something you don't really need! (I'm an expert in that btw )

 

I'd get the 560, as I always prefer one very good card to two (or in your case 3) average cards. If power saving is not reason enough, less heat in your case and fiddling around trying to get SLI to work should be enough.

 

Does anyone have a 560 and a suggestion for free video benchmarking programs so that we can compare results? Just a thought if anyone is interested.

 

I upgraded from 2x 9800GTX+'s to a 560TI. I Kind of wish I'd gone for a 2GB model but I'm very happy with it as like you I have a 1680x1050 monitor and very few games make use of more than 1GB at that res.

It generally has a little more GPU grunt than both those cards and games do run smoother as they are coded with these generations in mind and of course the extra memory helps. If you did get one you could use one of the 260's as a Physx card as games like Arkham City are more PhysX demanding now. I have to overclock my CPU to get smooth framerates with everything turned to max (due to PhysX) in that game but a 260 might help alleviate the need.

What games do you play?

 

Been reading an argument on extremeoverclockers, as to whether a GTX570 was better than 2xGTX260. That didn't seem to reach much of a conclusion, but doesn't make it sound as though 3xGTX260 to a 560 is likely to be an improvement.

 

I'm going to look for that thread now. Thanks for letting me know about it.

I for one would like to find someone with a similar system to me that had a 560 or even something better to run a free GPU bench marks against.

 

I have a 560 and it runs all my games (L4D, Alan Wake, BF2, Crysis and many more) at 1080p quite happily.
Surely you could sell on your 260's and cover the cost of the 560 and also save yourself some electricity in the long run? Tri-sli has very little advantage over sli so your 3rd card is probably just wasting electricity, especially at your monitor resolution.

 

I game at 1920 x 1080.

I went from a GTX280 to two in SLI, and upgrading to a single GTX580 gave a massive improvement.

Based on the theory that scaling in 3-way SLI is sporadic at best in most games, I'd go for the upgrade. For the money you won't see a lot of extra frames in every game, but you will get more consistent performance, much less noise/heat, a fraction of the power consumption, and the option to grab a second card for peanuts for near 100% scaling down the line, once you've bought some extra monitor real estate.

 

My system could be considered similar, what clocks do you have your CPU at?

 

This is a key issue. ti v standard 560 is quite significant. The original spec v ti I think there would be some improvement but not quite night & day. I suspect the improvement would be diminished with the non-ti.

 

I am running it at 3.3 Ghz. I just ran FurMark 1.10.1 and got a score of 2095 points (34 FPS, 60000ms) @ Resolution: 1680x1050 (FS) - AA:8 samples, FPS: min:34, max:37, avg:34 - OPTIONS: DynBkg.


If you would be kind enough to run FurMark or suggest another free DX9 GPU test please let me know i would be interested in the comparison.

And Thank you in advance.

 

Just done a furmark bench, results were Min 15 Max 16 avg 14 (strange considering the avg is lower than the min). I'm not so sure that Furmark is really designed to give a realistic representation of gaming performance. It's really for stressing the GPU.

Do you have any games with built in benchmarks like Arkham Asylum/City, Mafia 2, Metro 2033 or World in Conflict?