Upgrading from a 560 ti worth the cost?

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hoch721

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Jan 11, 2009
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Hi all,

I built a PC primarily for gaming about 3-4 years ago (maybe older, I can’t remember). I tried playing the Battlefield Hardline beta, but it was pretty choppy, even on low settings (1080p). So, I'm looking for a GPU upgrade that will extend the life of this PC a few more years. These are my current specs:

CPU: i7 2700k @ 3.5 GHz
Mainboard: ASRock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3
Ram: G.Skill 8GB DDR3 PC3-12800
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti (1GB)
700w power supply

I’m looking at mid-to-higher end cards. I saw I missed out on a deal for a GTX 960 for about $180, and I’ve seen Radeon 280X in the same ballpark (not to mention 290’s for a few more bucks). I’m looking to keep it close to $200, but if it makes sense to go higher, I could (definitely not 300+ though).

--> Are cards at that level (150-250$) worth upgrading from a 560 ti? Are there one or two cards I should target?

I’m ignorant of how far graphics cards have come along relative to the rest of my PC. If some other component would become a bottleneck, than maybe I should start planning for a new build altogether?

Thanks!
 
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Justin Millard

Justin Millard

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Nov 22, 2014
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You will definitely get a noticeable upgrade. An R9 280X or GTX 960 will make a huge difference. Although if you are lucky you might even see the R9 290 appear within that price range.

The next major graphics cards to be released will be the AMD R9 300 series around the middle of the year. However there is not much concrete information about them, but at least you know that when they come out the other cards will drop in price.
The AMD cards are expected to be revealed at GDC next week so you will hopefully have the info you need then.

As far as the difference between the cards, the GTX 960 is small, quiet, and power efficient. Whereas the R9 280X is a bit bigger, but has an extra GB of RAM and more bandwidth. The GTX 960 is slightly better for games that use less than 2GB of VRAM whereas the R9 280X is excellent for games that require a lot of VRAM for high settings.
 
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Justin Millard

Justin Millard

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May 7 is when AMD has their next big conference.
Arguably though, the 560ti should be ok for a while yet. You can probably hold out until Nvidia's replacement for the 960 comes out late next year if you wanted to. Otherwise the AMD R9 370X and R9 380 should be promising budget replacements that sit on either side of the GTX 960 in the price range (I'm expecting the GTX 960 to get a decent price cut soon after AMD's new range comes out).
 
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Justin Millard

Justin Millard

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I am still surprised that you are getting choppy settings though. It seems like a good rig to me.
Are your temperatures good? Has updating Nvidia drivers helped in the past?

At the very least Battlefield: Hardline performance was meant to have been improved in the last round of Nvidia drivers that came out this month, and Battlefield: hardline itself should become better optimized over the next two months.

Next time you play the game you might find it plays fine at medium-high settings.
 
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Martin1982

Martin1982

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It can be missing vram the 560 only have 1gb

 
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