upgrading from 560 ti

Do you need to or do you want to... I mean, I like getting upgrades but I would wait till the end of the year. Mainly because then you can compare your old video card to the newer games and then work your way from there.

However, if you insist on getting a new video card whit a 260 price range you coud get the Radeon 7950. Once you get this, you wont need to upgrade any after getting this card

Card:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131478

Do you feel that your 560Ti is holding you back at the moment? My gaming rig has two 900MHz
560Tis just now, it runs pretty well, but I'm not really yet playing the latest more demanding
titles, and only at 1920x1200 atm (most recent game I have is Crysis2).

Do you intend playing newer games like Crysis3? Do you plan on switching to a higher resolution
display? Do you want to crank up the detail settings and AA? If any of these are true then an upgrade
to a newer card is probably well worthwhile, with something like a 760 being the minimum I would
consider if you want to stick with just having a single card. Adding a 2nd 560Ti is only viable if the
games you're playing will not result in excessive VRAM loading, though some games do handle it
better than others (Crysis2 copes amazingly well, whereas Call of Juarez not so much).

What core clock speed is your 560Ti? Assuming it's a 1GB card, adding a 2nd lesser model (822MHz
typical) is somewhat slower than a single 670. Two better 560Tis like the ones I have (though mine
are still just 1GB cards) is better than a 670, and if oc'd they can beat a 680, as long as the task in
question doesn't require significantly more than 1GB VRAM.

On the other hand, a 2nd card means greater power consumption, so replacing your 560Ti with a
single newer card like a 760 means less power used. Also means you have a better upgrade path,
ie. add a 2nd 760 later on.

As to how much future proofing you want to have, you could always investigate the 4GB 760s that
some people have referred to recently, though if I was going to crank up the detail/res so much that
I needed more than 2GB VRAM, I'd be more likely to go for a 770 or 780 initially anyway.

I've gone a temporary different route, bagged several used 1.5GB GTX 580s; two of them can beat
a 780 (580s are comparatively cheap on eBay atm, eg. I won another 3GB 580 for 170 UKP today),
though again the VRAM size caveat applies.

What resolution is your monitor? Do you plan on changing it? What games are you playing atm
and what games do you think you'll be buying next? The more complicated the overall loading
(game newness, resolution, your desire for high detail/AA), the more a replacement newer card
with much more VRAM will be the wiser choice.

Btw, if there are any specific SLI tests I can run for you, let me know, I can pull my 560Tis no
problem, put them on a suitable target board.

Almost forgot - what's your mbd/CPU? Beware of upping your GPU power while only having
a lesser CPU to feed it, eg. if your current system is a S775 or AM2 setup. If you're planning
on a platform upgrade aswell, then for value I still reckon a used 2500K and a P67/Z68 board
is the best choice (so much easier to oc than IB/HW). Took me less than 3 mins to get my
used 2500K (cost 124 UKP) to 4.7GHz stable, on a used board that was only 45 UKP (Gigabyte
GA-Z68XP-UD4). The cooler is a used TRUE which cost 15. Multiply by 1.5 to get approx. $US.

If you want to buy all-new though, well I guess the sky's the limit.

Ian.

I am running 560 ti sli and as said it is still doing a decent job in most games although with slightly adjusted settings to compensate for the lack of vram. The latest games I have been playing are Bioshock Infinite / Grid 2 / Hitman Absolution and the cards hold up well at 1080p.

In your situation though as mentioned by mapesdhs it would be a decent performance increase going from a single 560 ti to a 760, not only because of the vram increase but the raw processing power as well. In regards to the 4GB vram it depends on what you want to do in the future as in all honesty I would expect a 760 to run out of processing power before it hit its vram ceiling at higher resolutions, and at 1080p I don't think you would get anywhere near it. If you were to sli them in the future at high resolutions then the 4GB might be more important due to the dual GPU being able to utilise it. As you mentioned you were planning on getting a third monitor for 5760x1080 resolution I think that regardless of the amount of vram available one 760 will struggle at that resolution without some serious sacrifices in terms of image quality. If you had 2 760 2GB cards then some games might be fine at that resolution but Crysis 3 with all the bells and whistles on will still require some compromise, the 4GB would probably fair better but again you mentioned sli is not an option anyway at the moment due to budget / PSU.

All in all the 760 will improve your performance but as with the first Crysis, crysis 3 is still a game that even the top end cards struggle to max out at high resolutions. At 1080p you will be able to run pretty much everything that is out on near to max settings, but go to the 3 screens and crysis 3 will require some compromise or a second card.

MEMOLFEX is right about the performance issues, unless one is playing something
such as Skyrim with mods that involve large & detailed textures but without necessarily
using lots of heavy AA.

Btw, in the UK a typical 760 is the equivalent of $315 US, and the 4GB version is $360.
By comparison, the 770s start at almost $500, with the cheapest 4GB 770 being $550
(1GHz 7970 is $470, quite a lot less). From there it's a huge leap up to the cheapest
780 at $805, and the cheapest Titan is $1200 equivalent.

Somehow I keep thinking the 770 should be 4GB by default, and there ought to be
an even availability of both 3GB and 6GB 780s, though I dread to think what the
pricing would be for a 6GB 780.

Bit of a gap though between the 4GB 760 and the cheapest 770.

Interesting to consider that when I bought my 850MHz 460 FTWs not long after
the 460 launched, they were 'top of the pack' at 187 UKP each (lesser 460s
were a lot cheaper at the time), yet now even the entry 760 is 198 UKP. It seems
like the whole pricing scale has shunted up by quite a chunk. Whatever happened
to what felt like the excellent value days of the 8800GT and GTX 460? I remember
my original new Gigabyte 8800GT was only 120 UKP. One could be forgiven for
thinking we hadn't just had a global recession...

Ian.

Best of luck!! If you could do some before/after 3DMark11 & Firestrike/Extreme runs,
that would be good. Firestrike Extreme inparticular ought to show up the VRAM limit
of the 1GB 560Ti compared to a new card.

Another GPU intensive test is the Call of Juarez benchmark, though I think it's limited
to 1080, but one can run it with heavy AA, etc.

And of course there's Unigine Heaven/Valley. I've not had time to accumulate many
Valley results yet, though I've made a start:

http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/uniginebench4.txt

Ian.

Yeah good luck dude. Hope the card works out well for you.

Just in case your interested but did a quick valley run with 560 ti sli :

Uploaded with ImageShack.com

Base for reference

With the texture quality set to max quality in NVIDIA Control Panel, what do you get
for 8X AA and 16X AF instead? (one has to set the AF in the NVIDIA panel I think)
That would match the settings in the 2nd table of my 'HIGH RES RESULTS' section.

Ian.

Here you go buddy.

Uploaded with ImageShack.com

Let me know if you need anything else

Hehe, that slaughters 5850 CF. I wonder why the min fps dips so low though...

Ah! Try running the test twice. I find that most of the Unigine tests don't cache their
data very well, just like the Stalker test, so one has to run them twice to get proper
results. On a 2nd run you should find the minimum is quite a bit higher, though
the avg won't change much.

Almost 2K at that those settings is sweeeet.

Ian.

Here you go buddy. 2 tests run back to back. The min fps is a one off dip on the 13th scene every time when it is just starting. Without that it doesn't go below 21. Anyway here are the results.

Test 1 :

Uploaded with ImageShack.com

Test 2 :
Uploaded with ImageShack.com

If you need anything else let me know

Fascinating! I wonder what's in that scene which causes the dip?... thanks for the info!

Ian.