Graphics card advice

[Andreaz1]

Hello, I'm hoping someone here can give me some advice when it comes to GFX cards, as the title suggests. I had a Gainward GeForce GTX470 that went suicidal about two weeks ago. I need to look for a new one and this is where you will hopefully come in as I have a few guidelines and questions.

 

1. I'm looking to spend between 1,000 and 2,000 SEK which equals about $140 - $290, which will get me a high-end GeForce 650 or lower-end 660. Does anybody have any experience with these and/or any recommendations? ASUS, EVGA, Gainward, other? 650, 660 or maybe even go down to the 500-series or is there a reason I should look at something completely different? It's not often, but I only play racing games and getting good quality graphics is still important to me, it doesn't have to be top-of-the-line though.

 

2. What does the "Ti" in the name of a few of the cards mean?

 

3. Other specs include an ASUS M4A78T-E motherboard, AMD Phenom II X4 955 CPU and 4GB Kingston HyperX RAM. Can't think of the rest now, please ask if there is more you need to know. I have a Corsair HX 750W PSU, would this be sufficient for the cards mentioned above? Are there other technical limitations I have failed to notice and consider?

 

4. What would the performance be like compared to my old card?

 

5. I have only ever used Nvidia but what would be the AMD equivalent and are those something I should be looking at too?

 

I hope it doesn't seem like I am too lazy to do my own research but computer specs are a thick jungle to me and I would really appreciate the input of someone who is more experienced in this field than myself. (I also tend to over-analyze absolutely everything, which means making a decision for me on my own would take months...) Please ask if there is anything you need to know.

 

Thank you massively for any help

[Trund]

1) Unfortunately you can't that easily convert your currency into USD, prices will be way off then. In the USA you could easily get a 660ti for that money, over here in Europe it's completely different. Personally I'd still invest the money and go for a 660ti instead of a 650 or standard 660, the 660ti simply has an amazing price/performance value. Also, the cards you mentioned aren't exactly that much faster than the 470 you had.

As for the brand of the card it will depend on the card you want. Not all brands are good with all cards, it always varies. Some people are happy with Asus, some with MSI etc. Personally I like Palit a lot, I only had good experiences with their cards.

 

2) TI stands for titanium. It's just a name nVidia uses for the "faster" versions of a card, for example the 660ti is faster than the 660.

 

3) Your system should be completely fine, since you're looking for a mid-range card at most, I don't think that anything would bottleneck the GFX.

 

4) Officially nVidia claims that the 660ti is 58% faster than the 480. I don't know about other cards, but google would quickly give you benchmark results for those.

 

5) The Radeon HD 7870 or 7950 would be a good equivalent. They're both probably even slightly faster. In my opinion it's always a matter of taste, personally I prefer nVidia over ATI (or AMD to be exact), but that's because I had bad experiences with ATI. But it's always good to look at alternatives.

Edited March 23, 2013 by Trund

[Pat]

 

the 660ti simply has an amazing price/performance value.

Not when it costs $50 more than its closest comparable counterpart from AMD, the HD7870, which will actually outperform the GTX 660ti with a small overclock (and, unless I'm mistaken, Nvidia has been severely limiting overclocking on 600-series GPUs whereas AMD has embraced it with the 7000 series). If you want to match its price with AMD, you're looking at the HD7950, which is actually a GTX 670 competitor.

[sivispacem]

the 660ti simply has an amazing price/performance value.

Not when it costs $50 more than its closest comparable counterpart from AMD, the HD7870, which will actually outperform the GTX 660ti with a small overclock (and, unless I'm mistaken, Nvidia has been severely limiting overclocking on 600-series GPUs whereas AMD has embraced it with the 7000 series). If you want to match its price with AMD, you're looking at the HD7950, which is actually a GTX 670 competitor.

Well said. At this price point, AMD wipes the floor with NVidia.

[yoječ]

That's saying too much. HD7950 is better than GTX660Ti, but there's no huge leap IMHO.

[Andreaz1]

Thank you all for your input. I will take a closer look at the alternatives available that you discussed and compare them price- and performancewise.

[sivispacem]

That's saying too much. HD7950 is better than GTX660Ti, but there's no huge leap IMHO.

The GTX660Ti isn't at this price point though, it's around £30 more expensive. Isn't it?

[yoječ]

I assume you're talking now about HD7870, not HD7950. Yes, it is cheaper for a reason - it's slower. If anything, HD7870 XT might offer performance comparable to GTX660Ti (or even HD7950).

[Pat]

Yes, it is cheaper for a reason - it's slower.

They seem pretty evenly matched to me.

[yoječ]

This is a purely theoretical comparison. Game benchmarks results are much more useful. TechPowerUp has a pretty neat comparison chart: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Powerco...rbo_Duo/26.html

[Pat]

I don't think it's fair to compare the two without factoring in overclocking, though, and - as I've already said - unless I'm mistaken, Nvidia has made the 600-series GPUs very difficult to overclock. Last time I looked at GTX 670s, I was completely unable to find one that was not voltage locked. Compare this to AMD, who has actively embraced overclocking, and the fact that the higher 7000-series GPUs are notorious for being excellent overclockers. That chart lists the HD7950 below the GTX 670, but I have seen people get the HD7950 up to GTX 680 specs without even increasing the speed of the fans, and still getting decent operating temperatures.

 

If you could clear up just how open 600-series Nvidia GPUs are to overclocking, that'd be swell.

[sivispacem]

The voltage lock issue is easily solved with a soldering iron, but invalidates your warranty apart from in a few special cases. Even for most power users the voltage limits allow you a sizeable overclock- you'd be looking at water blocks and the like before you really hit the limits of the voltage locks; at least, that's the case with the 680, anyway. You can get 15-20% more performance out of the 680 before you start running into issues and those are- on reference boards- almost solely heat related. I don't know if the other cards in the series are different though.

[yoječ]

The problem with 600 series is throttling. From what I heard some of the cards throttle when they hit 70C (!). I'm not sure if that's the case with all the models.

[Andreas]

@Andreaz1: Do you have a link to a store that you prefer? It'd be better that way because then we would know how much the hardware exactly costs in your country. But if it's indeed $140-$290 then I would say that something like a HD7950 would be good - it costs less than $300 and you can get one with a custom cooler. A link to a store in your country would be nonetheless nice, and make it easier to find a product with a good price-performance ratio.

 

 

Officially nVidia claims that the 660ti is 58% faster than the 480. I don't know about other cards, but google would quickly give you benchmark results for those.

The performance of the GTX480 equals to the one of the GTX570 which in turn is around 15% slower than a GTX580. The GTX660Ti is in Full-HD maybe 5-10% faster than a GTX580. So if you calculate that then the GTX660Ti is around 20-25% faster than a GTX570 or GTX480. I guess that there are three possibilities why the 'GTX660Ti = 58% faster than a GTX480' statement isn't true.

1. 1. You have confused one statement of NVidia with another one.

2. NVidia claimed something that isn't true so in other words, they lied.

3. NVidia wasn't talking about the practise but rather about the theory.

[Andreaz1]

 

@Andreaz1: Do you have a link to a store that you prefer? It'd be better that way because then we would know how much the hardware exactly costs in your country. But if it's indeed $140-$290 then I would say that something like a HD7950 would be good - it costs less than $300 and you can get one with a custom cooler. A link to a store in your country would be nonetheless nice, and make it easier to find a product with a good price-performance ratio.

I use Dustinhome (Google translation), which apparently has some sort of campaign on Nvidia cards right now, and Komplett (Google translation).

[Andreas]

What PC case do you have? I have found a Gigabyte Radeon HD 7870 2GB GDDR5 on this website for 1990 SEK, and that's a decent graphic card but it's with 28 centimeters a bit long.

Edited March 23, 2013 by Carl CJ Johnsons Brother Brian

[Trund]

@Andreaz1: Do you have a link to a store that you prefer? It'd be better that way because then we would know how much the hardware exactly costs in your country. But if it's indeed $140-$290 then I would say that something like a HD7950 would be good - it costs less than $300 and you can get one with a custom cooler. A link to a store in your country would be nonetheless nice, and make it easier to find a product with a good price-performance ratio.

 

 

Officially nVidia claims that the 660ti is 58% faster than the 480. I don't know about other cards, but google would quickly give you benchmark results for those.

The performance of the GTX480 equals to the one of the GTX570 which in turn is around 15% slower than a GTX580. The GTX660Ti is in Full-HD maybe 5-10% faster than a GTX580. So if you calculate that then the GTX660Ti is around 20-25% faster than a GTX570 or GTX480. I guess that there are three possibilities why the 'GTX660Ti = 58% faster than a GTX480' statement isn't true.

1. 1. You have confused one statement of NVidia with another one.

2. NVidia claimed something that isn't true so in other words, they lied.

3. NVidia wasn't talking about the practise but rather about the theory.

I didn't confuse anything, I only quoted nVidia -> http://www.nvidia.de/object/geforce-gtx-66...0120816-de.html

 

It's German, but it says that the average performance increase is 41% compared to a 560ti and 58% compared to a 470.

 

Anyways, it's a matter of taste whether you take AMD or nVidia, some people prefer AMD some nVidia, personally I just prefer nVidia because it has (for me) the better quality and the better overall package, it usually causes less trouble as well.

 

Usually if you want pure performance I'd suggest AMD, for the better overall package go for nVidia. Just my opinion.