GTX560Ti Question

[Mace2004]

Looking to upgrade my two-year-old homebuilt from an nVidia GTX 260 Core 216 to an nVidia GTX 560Ti.  I've got several 560Ti models within my desired price range but am looking for some recommendations to help choose between two.  

The first is a 1Gb model that is factory OC'd (900MHz core, 1800MHz shader).  The other is $30 more with 2Gb memory but isn't OC'd (822MHz core and 1,645MHz shader).  So, the question here is which is more important to AH, the faster clock or the extra memory?  I'm leaning toward the 2Gb card because I'm assuming I can OC it myself as I have with my current GTX 260.  Any comments, recommendations, opinions, or dirty jokes?

I'm currently running Win7/64 OS on an OC'd E8500 (3.16GHz) processor reliably running at 4.3GHz, an EVGA 790i FTW motherboard (PCIe 2.0) and 4GB of OCZ DDR3 memory so I'm pretty sure I don't have a processor or memory bottleneck which points to the GTX260 as the cause of low frame rates during times of 20+ cons.  I run Alacrity to shut down excess processes leaving me with a pretty bare-bones OS during gameplay.  Power supply probably isn't an issue either as it's an OCZ 700W unit and the minimum power supply requirement for both the 260 and 560Ti is 500W.  I also run two monitors (probably another issue dragging down the 260) and like my graphics with all the candy and highest resolution.  

Thanks for your inputs.

[Dragon]

If you want to sell the 260, let me know.

[Debrody]

If you use more monitors when playing, i would get the 2GB one and OC it myself. More memory helps with ulta-high resolutions.

[Mace2004]

If you use more monitors when playing, i would get the 2GB one and OC it myself. More memory helps with ulta-high resolutions.

The more I look at it the more I think it's the way to go.  All the reviews I've read say that the 560Ti has lots of headroom and should OC well.  One of the reports took an nVidia reference card with stock settings and OC'd it over 1Ghz, higher than they could get an Asus card that was already OC'd. The Asus had dual fans, larger cooling unit and, allegedly, higher quality contents but was beat (slightly) by nVidia's reference card.

Part of the question though is somewhat theoretical.  I know that lots of folks claim that AH isn't that graphics intensive but it does have lots of textures to load into memory (terrain, skins, etc.) but I've never seen a comparison that really tells you where you get more bang for your buck with an appropriate card or other combinations.  It's easy to say "add four more G's of RAM" or get a bigger CPU or faster (or bigger) graphics card, etc., but I wonder where most people actually experience bottlenecks.

[BaldEagl]

First I'd go for more memory and OC myself but you'll void the warranty doing so.  That might be a big deal with a lifetime warranty like an eVGA card would likely have.  Regardless of that the 560 with 1 Gb in stock clock speeds should run the game with everything maxed.

Currently your 260 is the bottleneck.  Running more than one monitor is chewing up the 260's power.  Unless you're eating up RAM with other processes/applications running with AH it will never be the bottleneck and your CPU has enough juice to keep it from being the culprit.

BTW, even a 700W PSU is marginal.  I lost my 750W PCP&C recently running a similar set-up to yours (eVGA 780i, E6750 2.66 OC'd to 3.2, 4 Gb DDR2 800 Kingston HyperX, 512 Mb GTS 8800, Soundblaster X-Fi, 22" Monitor, 6 drives, Win XP Pro) and switched to an 850W Corsair.  I run solid 60 fps in all conditions, 1024 textures, all settings high, no shadows.

[Mace2004]

Thanks for the inputs guys.  I went with an MSI 560GTX with 2Gb of VRam.  This is a nice model with a factory OC that is only a bit less aggressive then the OC'd one I had mentioned in my first post. I think this is giving me the best of both worlds and it should arrive by Thursday.  Haven't made any changes to my computer since I built it two years ago so am looking forward to the install along with seeing how well it drives my 26 and 22 inch monitors.

[BaldEagl]

So is it in?  How's it working?

[Mace2004]

Yep, got it a couple of days ago and installed it yesterday. I have to say it's a very well made card.  I had family over yesterday though and didn't get a chance to do much more than clean my old drivers, install the card and new drivers and then check that it was working correctly. This morning I OC'd it.  

Here are the reference, factory OC and my current OC stats:
Core: 822, 880, 950MHz
Shader: 1644, 1760, 1900Mhz
Memory (effective): 4000, 4008, 4500MHz
Bumped up the core voltage a bit to 1.062

Overall, the GPU core is now OC'ed (from reference) by 16% and memory by 12.5% which is pretty darn good.  Not as good as the 35% OC I run on my E8500 CPU but the card obviously has lots of overhead available to play with.

It has run perfectly stable during two hours of stress tests and about three hours of flying.  I've seen reports of this card being overclocked to over 1Ghz but wanted to see how it would work with these numbers first and right now I see no reason to do more although I'll probably experiment to see how high I can get it and then reset it to my current settings.  With the current OC the card idles at 44degC and ingame (AH) goes up to the low 50's.  Using MSI Kombuster and OCCT stress tests it peaks higher than in game as you'd expect but it's not extreme.  With Kombuster it peaks at 74degC and in OCCT it got as hot as 79degC.  Maximum temp according to MSI and Nvidia is 99degC.  For performance comparison my GTX260 scored 17,869 in 3DMark06 and this one hits 20,079.

I went on line with AH this afternoon and evening looking for a few really big fights similar to where I would see reduced framerates with the GTX260 and, of course, no hoards were to be found.  No late-war hoards? What is this game turning into??? :-).  I did eventually get into some larger groups of 10-15 aircraft and the frame rate stayed locked at 59fps so I bumped up all the eye candy including shadows and Anti-Aliasing and have yet to see less than 59FPS except for one possible stutter which I got in a fight.  I'm not sure about that one though, there was a jaggy in the Net Status (Variance) so this was probably a connection issue vice graphic card related.  Of course I still need to fly this card more with lots more smoke, flames, ack and airplanes to see if it really copes as well as it appears to right now but I'm very impressed with it.  I had played with the shadows with the 260 and it handled them pretty well although it was obviously impacting performance at times.  I had the same issues with AA before but from what I'm seeing right now the 560 will run full Anti-Aliasing AND shadows which is really impressive.  Of course neither the shadows or AA are really necessary, I don't really notice either unless I'm looking for it.

I think this card is a great deal given the memory and factory overclock but then you have to consider how easy it is to overclock it even more. It runs $270 which is only about $40 more than my GTX260 cost two years ago.  Regarding the choice between 1Gb and 2Gb I can't really say for sure whether it's the extra memory or the speed but it's handling everything right now in AH.  I can say that looking at my GPU memory monitor while in AH the card does appear to be using more than 1Gb so maybe that's telling me it is the memory but I just don't know for sure. On the down side, although it's a really great performer in the $200-$300 graphics card bracket it still isn't a $700 extreme graphics card. When testing in 3DMark11 it doesn't do well at the "extreme" settings with frame rates down about 15-25fps. The upside is that it does work well in the "performance" catagory where it'll deliver 30-40fps so if you use your computer for high-end 3D games it'll probably work well provided you don't max everthing out and you still have the option of adding a second 560 in SLI later on.

Here are my current graphics settings:
Resolution: 1920x1200
Max Texture Size: 1020
Anti-aliasing:  FULL
Object detail: to the left under "L" in Detail
Ground detail range: 4miles
Detailed Water: On
Detailed Terrain: On
Local Water Reflections: On
Bump Map Terrain: On
Object Self Shadow: On
Smooth Shadow: On
Shadow Texture Size: 8192

[BaldEagl]

Glad to hear it's working out for you.  I was looking at the same card myself but the budget's tight and I really really need to replace my laptop first.

[Mace2004]

Glad to hear it's working out for you.  I was looking at the same card myself but the budget's tight and I really really need to replace my laptop first.

You can check out the reference designs which are running about $200-$220 IIRC.  They're 1Gb but I've seen reports of them being easily overclocked as well.  Also, I still have the GTX260 if that's an improvement over what you have now.

[Thorns]

FYI...I have a GTX 260.  I run everything full on and the highest resolution just like you have stated above.  My frame rate never drops below 60-59 fps no matter what or where in the game.  One difference...that might be a big one, I have a Core i7 920 1366 running at 3.8 Mhz.  Just thought I might add the vid card runs AH pretty well.     

[TnDep]

Glad to hear it's working out for you.  I was looking at the same card myself but the budget's tight and I really really need to replace my laptop first.

BE I run AH for 3 years with a 5 to 20 FR in the MA.  I finally broke down, my new comp. components will be here in 1 day.  Can't wait

[BaldEagl]

BE I run AH for 3 years with a 5 to 20 FR in the MA.  I finally broke down, my new comp. components will be here in 1 day.  Can't wait

The game runs fine on my old 8800 GTS 512.  I run all settings high, hi res 1024 textures but no shadows.  I can run shadows but not smooth shadows and without that they look like crap so I leave them off.  Never drop below 59 fps.  The only reason I was looking at another card is so I could run smooth shadows but it's not that big a deal.

What did you get?  Whatever it is you're probably going to love it.

Nevermind.  I just saw it in the other thread.  Yep, you're going to be amazed what the game really looks like.