Card Upgrade- Is It Worth It?

[:FI:Murph]

Right now I'm using a GTX 460 2gb and it's working fine (except for ClOD, of course). I'm thinking of upgrading to a GTX 560 2gb, which I can get locally for a little over $200 USD. Would I see a big enough improvement for it to be worth doing? I can't seem to find any direct comparison charts for both cards.

[:FI:Wolfhound]

Murp i have 2x GTX 560 2gb in sli, working perfectly for me, i haven't tried them on Clod, but i can play Rof on nearly max settings with everything on high or very high with no more than 30% useage

NZXT Sentry LX Fan Controller,
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit SP1, Operating System
8GB (2x4GB) Corsair Vengeance DDR3 PC3-12800 (1600)
Intel Core i7 2600K Unlocked, 1155, Sandy Bridge , Core, 3.4 GHz, GPU 850Mhz, 8MB Cache, 95W, OEM
Corsair Hydro Series H70 High-performance CPU Cooler
1000W Silverstone Strider Silent, Modular, 80 PLUS Silver
Asus Maximus IV Extreme Rev.3.0, Intel P67, S 1155
2 x 2GB Palit GTX 560, 40nm, 4002MHz GDDR5, GPU 810MHz, Shader 1620MHz, 336 Cores, 2 x DVI, D-Sub, HDMI
Coolermaster HAF 932 Advance Black Full Tower Case with USB 3.0
120GB OCZ Technology Vertex 3, 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Sandforce SSD

[:FI:Sneaky_Russian]

MSI twin Frozr cards are well worth checking out

Had a MSI GTX 460 HawckOC 1Gb (factory overclocked) on the old MB, would easily run RoF, CloD and an MMO using Crysis engine. runs very cool (46c on load), so cool in fact it kept setting off the fan alarm at boot up on new ASUS MB. I replaced it with an ATI 7870 (no more Water=4:( ),so the 460 will be going in the "B" rig.

As far as SLI / Crossfire goes, my supplier recommends one mother of a high end card, rather than 2 mid range GPUs.

I know that my OC Hawk would match a regular 560, so I wouldnt expect that great a difference.

May be an idea to try Afterburner before committing to buy a new card

[:FI:Murph]

I do use afterburner and I'm getting good results with it, just wondered if I would see even better with the 560. My MB is not set up for SLI, just crossfire, and like you Andrew I have heard that a single fast card is better than two lesser cards, especially for games like il2 and ROF that are not set up to use SLI anyways.

[:FI:Sneaky_Russian]

what score does Windows Experience Index give?

Graphics AMD Radeon HD 7800 Series 7.9
Gaming graphics 9965 MB Total available graphics memory 7.9

(now thats off thescale for what Windows measures

or compare online - overall only 10-15% faster
http://www.hwcompare.com/10991/geforce- ... e-gtx-560/
(useful site 0 you can select any 2 cards from the drop down at top)

The 460 is a very competent card for the stuff we're most likely to run.
I'd say fatten up the piggy bank and wait for an affordable GTX 580*, but check your PSU has enough power in reserve to run it in comfort. uses around 90watts more than 460).

There are deals out there on EBay Just dont buy stuff from China!it will probably be a fake.
Be patient with the 460 and for maybe 25% more than you would spend on a 560 for a 15% boost you could have a card twice as fast.

I'll say here that the 580 is the card i should have got! While the 7870 is fast and capable, Nvidea drivers and CP are IMO far better. their cards are competetive buck for buck.... but you wont get PERFECT WATER with ATI

Put it this way you could install a 560 and be happy with the results, but will you feel the same 1 year down the line? (especially when the price of 690s* starts to drop!)


* Worlds fastest gpu at time of release

[:FI:Scott]

RoF is set up for multiple GPU's- there is a checkbox in the graphic settings to enable SLI/Crossfire. Neither IL2 or CoD benefit from it though. Having been down the SLI route I wouldn't do it again though- more heat, more power consumption, and more noise for generally marginal gains (if any) over one big card and especially with flight sims.

[:FI:Sneaky_Russian]

RoF is set up for multiple GPU's- there is a checkbox in the graphic settings to enable SLI/Crossfire. Neither IL2 or CoD benefit from it though. Having been down the SLI route I wouldn't do it again though- more heat, more power consumption, and more noise for generally marginal gains (if any) over one big card and especially with flight sims.

I get the impression that crossfire and SLI was a stop gap measure. Back in the day 2 8800s in sli were the mutz nutz; I think now GPU design has surpassed the need for it.
To do a state of the art build with SLI these days you'd need a 2Kw PSU too But at least you could run yoour central heating from the PC.

[:FI:Murph]

I guess that answers my question- probably not worth the money right now. I'll keep overclocking the old girl a while longer.

[:FI:Scott]

RoF is set up for multiple GPU's- there is a checkbox in the graphic settings to enable SLI/Crossfire. Neither IL2 or CoD benefit from it though. Having been down the SLI route I wouldn't do it again though- more heat, more power consumption, and more noise for generally marginal gains (if any) over one big card and especially with flight sims.

I get the impression that crossfire and SLI was a stop gap measure. Back in the day 2 8800s in sli were the mutz nutz; I think now GPU design has surpassed the need for it.
To do a state of the art build with SLI these days you'd need a 2Kw PSU too But at least you could run yoour central heating from the PC.

I would agree with that all day long.

A stop gap measure that involved Nvidia and Ati selling two cards instead of one too.

[:FI:Wolfhound]

Well , i dont understand the whole rigmarole behind it, it works for me that's all i can say, no graphic gliches ,smooth as a baby's arse

[:FI:Sneaky_Russian]

A stop gap measure that involved Nvidia and Ati selling two cards instead of one too.

haha yes , but now you can buy one card for the price of two

Well , i dont understand the whole rigmarole behind it, it works for me that's all i can say, no graphic gliches ,smooth as a baby's arse

It works fine of course , but 2 cards will never be twice as good as 1 card, maybe 70% faster with a decent setup.

(Gustafson's Law: people typically are not interested in solving a fixed problem in the shortest possible period of time, as Amdahl's Law describes, but rather in solving the largest possible problem (e.g., the most accurate possible approximation) in a fixed "reasonable" amount of time. If the non-parallelizable portion of the problem is fixed, or grows very slowly with problem size (e.g., O(log n)), then additional processors can increase the possible problem size without limit.)
or in laymans terms , you can hire an infinite number of monkeys , or you can hire Shakespeare.

[:FI:Bluebell]

Quite frankly, until someone gets an infinite amount of monkeys and writes something then its all shite.




Vin

[:FI:Scott]

A stop gap measure that involved Nvidia and Ati selling two cards instead of one too.

haha yes , but now you can buy one card for the price of two

Well , i dont understand the whole rigmarole behind it, it works for me that's all i can say, no graphic gliches ,smooth as a baby's arse

It works fine of course , but 2 cards will never be twice as good as 1 card, maybe 70% faster with a decent setup.

(Gustafson's Law: people typically are not interested in solving a fixed problem in the shortest possible period of time, as Amdahl's Law describes, but rather in solving the largest possible problem (e.g., the most accurate possible approximation) in a fixed "reasonable" amount of time. If the non-parallelizable portion of the problem is fixed, or grows very slowly with problem size (e.g., O(log n)), then additional processors can increase the possible problem size without limit.)
or in laymans terms , you can hire an infinite number of monkeys , or you can hire Shakespeare.

So you are screwed both ways, the only difference is card prices have a set pattern- cream off the 'I must have it because it is new' brigade and soon thereafter a fall off to the world of the sane. Look at 680 prices from where they were a couple of months ago. tbh the 570 I have reminds me of my old (fondly remembered) 8800GTX, it just keeps on delivering, often hitting way above its weight. I'm not changing it out until I really have to.

[:FI:Sneaky_Russian]

Well, one big + is it's a buyers market right now.