I need some video card advice

[major347]

Ok it is time for a new video card or cards. I am on a budget. I want to spend around $250 for what I get. I was thinking of either getting a GF560ti or a pair of AMD 6770. I have a motherboard that will take crossfire. I have always had nvidia cards. Willing to go AMD for better performance through crossfire. Does anyone have any suggestions?

AMD Ph x4 955
4gbs Gskill DDR3 1600 running 1333 (faster timing)
Seasonic 750watt
asus board will do crossfire with both pcie at 8x
or one at 16x

[Krusty]

Well if you want to go xfire, just make sure your PSU can handle both, that you have the plugs needed. I haven't looked it up off the top of my head, but some of those cards take an 8-pin, and some take 2x 6-pins, etc. Make sure you have the physical connectors to power them or can get adapters.

2x cards will also generate a bit more heat, too. They can also be buggy in some games that don't support xfire as much.


Which brings me to the next: Does AH support xfire? If not you won't gain a benefit from 2 cards like that. It would run like a single card. Might check with skuzzy on it, since the search function is disabled until they fix it.

[ebfd11]

Which brings me to the next: Does AH support xfire? If not you won't gain a benefit from 2 cards like that. It would run like a single card. Might check with skuzzy on it, since the search function is disabled until they fix it.

Krusty AH does support crossfire, but using crossfire on a single monitor you wont notice any difference. Crossfire and SLI'd vid cards work best for triple or more monitors.

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/video_lookup.php?gpu=GeForce+GTX+560+Ti

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Radeon+HD+6770M

Going by those two benchmarks I would go with the GeForce personally.

Lawndart

[Krusty]

Krusty AH does support crossfire, but using crossfire on a single monitor you wont notice any difference. Crossfire and SLI'd vid cards work best for triple or more monitors.

"best" yes, but you'll also be able to turn it way up on a single monitor. You'll also be set if you can afford 2 more monitors in the future.

I have a good card right now, but only game on a single monitor. I make up for it by cranking all the details to max, the FSAA up, etc. I can run FRAPS and not go below the 30fps cap in FRAPs while flying.

So it still has its benefits

Depends on what you want to get out of it.

[cattb]

250.00 would get you a 1gig 6950 if you did some shopping, myself I would go with a single card other then a dual card setup. Also if your running a 32 bit OS like windows max memory is 4 gig.

I have no preference over ATI or Nvidia.

[major347]

I am going to do a three screem setup as soon as i win the lottery, but until then I want to be able to turn the eye up all the way. My power supply can handle the xfire setup.
Krusty thanks for reminding me that the 2 card setup can be buggy and since I do play several different games I had better stick with 1 card.

[Krusty]

Well if you can scrape a little more together, probably one of the best single-slot cards you can get in the $300 price range is the HD 6970:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150517

[zack1234]

I bought a 550ti and it was causing my pc to have boot up problems.
Just bought HD6970 it runs at 70 degrees and sounds like a hairdryer when running, everything runs on it Shadows etc.

I notice every now and then little blue squares on buildings while moving views.

[Krusty]

Zack: My 6970 is a bit loud at times, but my tower is under my desk so it's bearable. It's mostly drowned out by the multiple fans I have in my room so I don't melt into the floor (lotsa heat here right now, no central air).

the blue squares, I am convinced, are driver issues. They mostly went away with 11.6 drivers. They probably have even more recent ones. With 11.x drivers before 11.6 I got a lot of blue squares along borders of objects, along the edges of transparent textures. I'm pretty sure it's just the card is so new the drivers aren't fully fleshed out yet.

[zack1234]

I wear 7.1 headphones so noise is not a problem

Blue squares i have noticed are more apparent depending on map, hopfully its will be solved in future driver update 

In ROF there are no blue squares 

[Krusty]

In most of my others games as well there were none, but other odd little specs here and there. Artifacts, basically. Game-specific due to how that game does things and how the card tries to render them.