560ti vs 6950

[romanrp]

I found both of these cards at about the same price.
On benchmarks, the 6950 seems to do better but I plan to OC both of the cards.
The only comparison of 560ti OCd vs 6950 OCd was when the 560ti was at 930mhz when I have seen people go at 1GHz with the 560ti (even the reviewer said so himself)
So which one will give me better performance at heavy games like GTAiv, crysis, crysis 2 and etc etc.
Keep in mind that I will OC both of these cards to the max.

560ti
http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Graphics+Cards/Nvidia+GTX+500+Series/nVidia+GTX+560+Series/MSI+GeForce+GTX+560Ti+Twin+Frozr+II+OC+1024MB+GDDR5+PCI-Express+Graphics+Card+?operation=shoppingCartAdd&productId=43660&context=

6950
http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Graphics+Cards/ATI+6000+Series/ATI+Radeon+6950/Sapphire+ATI+Radeon+HD+6950+2048MB+GDDR5+PCI-Express+Graphics+Card+?productId=43097

EDIT: This is for a bran new build btw.
I am planning to use this with a AMD phenom x4 955 OCd to about 3.8GHz .
And run the games at 1920x1080

 

[mrjericho1991]

hd 6950 will surely outperform 560 ti in every benchmark.and yes 6950 is way to go as you can unlock it into a 6970.

 

[Derbixrace]

yeah i would choose the HD6950 too, really good bang for buck and as already said, it unlocks to a 6970 easily.

 

[mrjericho1991]

and in future if you needed more.you could have its xfire which is simply awesome.just get hd 6950,you wont regret.

 

[romanrp]

These benchmarks show that the gigabyte 560ti SOC whoops the 6970 in most of the tests so it will probably whoop the 6950.
http://www.guru3d.com/article/gigabyte-gtx-560-ti-soc-review/
How reliable are these benchmarks?

 

[Derbixrace]

guru3d is reliable IMO but i heard that the 560 SOC was just a paper launch so it might take some time before it comes in stock

 

[romanrp]

Ah ok, but either way, I know the 6950 is better than 560ti at stock clock but from what i heard the 560ti over-clocks really nicely to the performance of the 570 while the 6950 is a poor overclocker (from what i heard).
Also the 560ti seems to run cooler and quieter.
So which one would be better after ocing?

 

[romanrp]

did you oc the card?
and which brand do you have?

 

[romanrp]

What temp does the card go up to with load?
Are there any negatives/drawbacks to it?

 

[asteldian]

I went with the GTX 560 myself. But then I am biased towards Nvidia. Despite AMD/ATI drivers being far better than they used to be, the updates still always seem to give me at least one failed download.
But ultimately, my reason for Nvidia is because they tend to get better support from games - for me in particular, I play Rift and AMD cards seem to be lagging badly in performance despite the quality of the cards, and while this will be fixed, it takes time and this is not an isolated incident. Nvidia grease some palms and so developers tend to make sure Nvidia cards pretty much always run well from release while AMD have to play catch up.

 

[romanrp]

I will probably go for the 560ti, better performance then 6950 when oced and runs cooler.
My cpu of choice will be the 955. I also plan to oc this. Will this card work well with the cpu or will the gpu get bottlenecked?
Thanks for the help guys

 

[asteldian]

It will run fine.
My only question is:
Are you getting a board that supports 2 card set ups? If so, unless you get an Nvidia chipset board then it means you can only multicard with AMDs as SLI is not an option. If this is the case you would be better off going with AMD 6950.

If only planning on ever using one card then it is a non issue

 

[romanrp]

I am not planning on sli or crossfire in the next couple of years.
And when I do that i will probably upgrade everything so it will be a non-issue.
Does anyone know how well the 6950 OCs?
I also heard some people hard artifacts to appear after unlocking it to a 6970 and they remained even after switching back to the original bios.
Is this true?
And sorry for all the questions guys. I just want to make sure I am spending my money well as this is my first time build .

 

[romanrp]

Thanks
The GTX560ti loses out in crysis even though crysis is meant to favor nvidia?
Whats that about?
But i think a mild oc will take care of that.

 

[romanrp]

Thanks for your help
Unless someone has something else to say,560ti it is.
btw,anyone got any idea how well this will perform in crysis 2?

 

[romanrp]

Thanks,560ti is one of nvidias top end cards, so will I be right in saying that I should expect crysis running smoothly on max/near max settings?
That video was dx9, so dx11 will run worse?

 

[g00fysmiley]

given the choice stricktly for gaming i'd probably go with the 2 gig 6950 as you cna suually unlock it to a 6970 in the 2 gig vertion , and in some titles the memory will be useful

now for a computer as a whole as i need cuda (i do alot of photoshop work) so i'd go 560... but if you only need gaming 6950 is a more powerful card esp if you use the unlock tool . (of coarse also if you plan to do folding at home 560 there too folding is good help the world on your computer's offtime)

 

[romanrp]

Better as in more FPS on directx11?
or were you being sarcastic lol?

 

[g00fysmiley]

^
calm down g00fy....

me i'm always calm just giving my opinion on the matter, i liek the idea of a 6950 and unlockign to a 6970 and the performance after is pretty impressive.. but i've got my 2x gts 450's in sli for cuda and i love em really for his resolution and titles listed either card will make him happy. just think the 2 gigs give a little mroe room for growh (assuming he's gonna keep the same card for a few years, if he plans to keep it 12-18 months then eiter will still be fine at that point)

and the last part was trying to get more people into folding , cause folding is good for everybody

 

[may1]

OP, too bad, ebuyer was doing a deal with the 560 ti only last week (when I bought my 560) for £195...

Although the 560 is a good card, has good temps, runs cooler and requires slightly less to run than the 6950, I'd go with the 6950 if I were you.

This is because your resolution is at 1920x1080 so you'll appreciate the large VRAM 6950 offers compared to the 1gb version 560Ti as VRAM size matters a lot in large res. Ofc there are reviews on the internet that suggests the 560 to outperform the 6950, but these reviews aren't perfect, and I wouldn't place 560 to be a superior card in terms of graphical performance compared to the 560.

While both cards can be oc'ed, don't expect the 6950 to draw out performance equal to the 6970. Reason why the card is locked at 6950 is because it is usually the case that there are some faulty bits in the card that causes problems at 6970 level performance (I remember the time when I bought a Piix2 550 in the hope of unlocking it, but failed...), I'm not a big fan of Oc'ing GPUs.

With regards to new games, I've tried the crysis 2 beta on my rig with the same setup you are planning (560ti with X4 955), on 1280x1024 res, maxed out on dx9, runs butter smooth and I've seen on youtube etc that on higher res runs pretty smooth as well (the beta is capped at 62.5 fps) so you won't have problems running the most recent games for at least a year or two on both cards, and given the FPS gains are very limited comparing these two cards, it's really upto your preference on brands.

 

[romanrp]

"While both cards can be oc'ed, don't expect the 6950 to draw out performance equal to the 6970"
Thats my main concern, I have seen many 560s to match/exceed the performance of the 570 which costs £60-80 more while remaining at cool temperatures.
I am also planning on putting the 1080p monitor on my family rig so i might get a 1650x1050 montitor so the 2G of ram wont make a difference.
And is your 955 OCd? And whats the performance like on other games?

 

[17seconds]

There is no benefit to 2GB of memory vs. 1 GB of memory, particularly at 1080P. All the reviews of the 6950 1GB confirm that.

 

[g00fysmiley]

currently yes 1 gig at 1080 p is all you need, i more was looking to 2-3 years down the road when we step up to a higher resolution, also if he ever does a multi monitor setup then it might come in handy. really it boils down to how long he plans to keep the card going, also he jsut noted hemight change over to a 1650x1050 monitor makign the 2 gigs go from a very small almost insignifigant gait to a completely inisgnifigant factor (at that res) but such is life tech always changes and goes up, i rember thinking my old diamond viper card with its whopping 8 megs of ram was complete overkill and i'd never be able to utilise it

 

[17seconds]

There are just too many negatives associated with AMD these days, from a lack of PhysX, to poor driver support, to poor 3D vision options, etc. They don't even have the power consumption advantage these days, and heat and noise are definitely less attractive factors vs. the GTX 500 series. Add in the fact that AMD the company is in the process of being sold, and it feels like a sinking ship.

 

[romanrp]

^^
Hmmm I wonder what will happen to the prices of amd cpus if amd goes bust.
And if amd goes bust, then we will all happily pay £3500 for 2ghz core 2 duo.......