GTX 560, 570, or 580?

[RavinRivie]

Okay, so I'm coming into more money from the sale of some things I acquired at low cost - so I am considering new upgrades now. I purchased a EVGA GTX 460 1 GB this past winter - overclocked to 800 MHz core (From 725 MHz) - with the intent to step-up to a GTX 560 when it came out. Well, now that all the cards are on the playing field I'm contemplating what I should do. I've been gaming with this 460 for awhile now - it's certainly a pretty decent performing card considering the cost. Typical games do fairly well, but at times I notice I get dips in FPS - and my standard FPS is not so high that it can handle these smoothly. I game at 1920 x 1200 and in games like Just Cause 2 I had to dial settings back quite a bit to get it smooth, and even still I get bumps here and there of irregular performance. I was playing Mass Effect again the other day and disappointed at how much it poked at times - though it has not seemed to do it anymore. I want to be able to max out all my games and maintain smoothness with no dips in performance.

Don't know if my CPU is considered a bottleneck - I think no, but it's an Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 (3 GHz). I'm just not sure what option is the wisest. I don't care about 3D anything and absolutely will not be doing it (The monitors you have to buy that support it are cheapy TN panels and I'd rather keep my non-3D S-PVA monitor - it's all a gimmick that will die out if you ask me, but I digress). Through my step-up plan I can purchase a GTX 560 for $80, or a GTX 570 for $181, or a GTX 580 for $331. I personally favour the 570, while the 560 is a cheap upgrade the performance boost is what - only 20%-ish at best? I think the 570 seems like the best balance of upgrade without being overboard (580 is clearly awesome but the price - ouch). I originally picked the 460 back when people were recommending SLI of these cards which bested the 480. I like the low temperatures and the relatively quiet fan - though when gaming intensely it's rather noisy, but I think temps level off at 75 *C-ish.

Is the 570 considerably more efficient and cooler/quieter than it's former iteration? For me not using 3D anything just standard gaming on a single display would a 570 generally max out most games smoothly? Or is the 580 what I'm looking for, and is it truly worth the huge pricetag? I need to decide soon since my step-up is running out and I definitely want to take advantage of it since that's why I went with this option.

 

[asantesoul]

GTX 570! Give it a slight overclock and you'll do nice with it...it will max out pretty much everything excluding crysis and metro 2033

 

[tony singh]

Yes asantesoul is right..
Get a GTX 570 , it is more than enough power for now...
If need arises, u can add another one when it becomes cheap enough.

 

[4745454b]

What options did you turn down? Its possible you turned CPU intensive options down, which would show you need more CPU not GPU horsepower. 1200 is a pretty high res and some games will make a 460 stumble.

You'll also need to consider your PSU. Perhaps you can't run the 570? Things to think about before leaping.

 

[asantesoul]

psu could be a concern..depends on how long you've had it as well...at load the gtx 570 pulls about 300ish watts...but a 550+ watt should work

 

[RavinRivie]

I have an ABS Tagan ITZ 800 watt PSU, 64 amps across six 12v rails. Power wise I'm pretty sure I can handle up to a GTX 580 solo no problem. On overclocking - I just casually bumped it to 800 figuring it would be stable and it has been. I'll mess around with that as well - although one crappy thing I just noticed, EVGA will only let me "step-up" to the GTX 570 HD - which looks like a GTX 460 actually where it exhausts inside the case. Except it has one of those itty bitty rear exhaust vents (Half of a single slot length instead of a full slot). I had a 460 like this before (A Zotac) and they ran super hot - and they usually do this for stuff like HDMI ports and the like which I could care less about (My monitor only has DVI). So I'm thinking I might have to just bypass the step-up option and just buy a GTX 570 outright if I went with such a measure.

I'll try and give their support a call and see if there's anyway I can switch to the standard GTX 570 instead of the HD version. EVGA has been rather good customer service wise in the past.

 

[4745454b]

He'll need because he is using the step up program.

 

[4745454b]

Possibly, that probably hasn't even dawned on him yet...

 

[RavinRivie]

Perhaps I should define overclocking as I do it a little better...I open up MSI Afterburner, turn the MHz slider up a little bit - and make sure everything runs stable and that's it. I'm way too nervous to mess with voltage, I know that's what fries cards. I only did it with this card to help it along since it was getting a little sluggish in some games. I doubt I'd mess with a 570 OC wise. But is this still a problem stock clocked?

I've been with Team Green for about 8 years, personally never liked AMD at all and now that ATI is AMD all the more reason I have issues with them. I remember before buying my GTX 460 I considered the 5870/5850, but people kept complaining of stuff like Grey Screen of Death and Vertical Screen of Death. Ugh, I just feel like switching from green to red is just swapping off one problem for another type. Don't Nvidia cards still thoroughly dominate heavily in some games (Like with the 560/460 doing better than say the 6970) and in others it's more of a toss up?

I'm not saying I won't consider it, but I'd need some convincing. Bugh...things like this make me hate upgrading. Always with what I have is reliable and I get something else and it has issues but what I'm using isn't fast enough...and even if I went and bought a GTX 480 instead then I'm to the heat and noise that I don't want. Argh...

 

[4745454b]

No, the 6970 would kick the cr@p out of a GTX460. Generally the AMD cards provide a similar performance at a lower price. They wouldn't be able to compete if they didn't do that because of beliefs like yours.

Yes, the initial batch of 58xx cards had the GSoD problem, but they fixed that. I can remember buying my first new setup and trying to decide between the options. I was going to get an NF4 SLI board with the 7900GT. About 2 days before I pulled the trigger I read about the massive failure rate on those cards. They used ram that couldn't quite operate at the frequency they put it at and the cards started dying. I switched to an AMD CF board and bought the x1800xt. Similar performance, but without the dying problem. Glitches happen, just ask Intel.

 

[RavinRivie]

Well I'm still running a rather "old school" mobo - EVGA 750i FTW. So yeah, I'm using an nForce - I'd never be able to Crossfire any AMD and while they make new mobos in LGA775 that are CF or SLI I just haven't seen the need since this one works fine. Always figured I'd do it if I went with an i7, but I question the value of doing something like that as well since quad cores don't benefit gaming really.

Benchmarks seemed to show better than average for the 6970 - usually people advise me to ATI and I look and their benchmarks are lower by a good margin than the Nvidia card I'm looking at and at best almost equal. People suggested the 5770 instead of the GTX 460 I recall, but benchmarks ruled slightly in favour of the 460 every time and in some cases it really went in favour of it. The other thing about ATI I know has always been the drivers - so many being "meh" and whatnot. The 6970 looks roughly equal to the 570 and sometimes close to the 580 - but the 580 pulls ahead in several games. Seems to me like AMD is having trouble keeping up with Nvidia these days since their 6xxx series has been second to most Nvidia stuff. And perhaps they will release a 7870 which is faster than the 580 - but by then Nvidia will be working on the 680. The whole idea of value pricing never appealed to me, I would never use an AMD processor for that same reason - I have the money to buy nicer so I'd rather have the nicer and faster option. Plus it seems silly that AMD keeps throwing more cores into their processors - games don't use quads, and they certainly won't use six cores either.

It did seem like some people talked of GTX 5xx cards popping the VRM out of the box (I have no idea what this is other than knowing it's something that keeps breaking on some - mostly over clocked cards). I don't know how much of that is being exaggated - because I see lots of overclockers complaining of it. But I'm truly not a real overclocker, so I question how much something like that would affect me. I remember the other reason I didn't like the 69xx series - reference design had that horrible tiny slot exhaust. I don't care what anyone says, I had a card with that design and it ran super hot - I got one that didn't and it runs super cool (Same chipset - both GTX 460s, the hot one was a Zotac my cool one is an EVGA)...the Asus mentioned does look nice in regards to heat dissipation but it's a three-slotter. I don't know if I can fit that in my case with my sound card - but otherwise I strongly hestitate to consider any tiny slot exhaust.

I need to decide soon though, as my step up ends the 13th. Does the GTX 570 HD have any difference to the VRMs or anything or is it the same as the rest?

 

[4ktv]

If "The whole idea of value pricing never appealed to me" then get the GTX 580 for sure.

If I could get a GTX 570 or HD 6970 for 180 right now I would. ( This is the whole value pricing thing that you don't like.)

 

[4745454b]

While I've had a CF capable MB ever since then, I've never used a multi GPU setup. But I like having the ability if I ever wanted to.

Seems to me like AMD is having trouble keeping up with Nvidia these days since their 6xxx series has been second to most Nvidia stuff.

Not when you look at price points. The GTX460 and 6850 are mostly equal in performance. I don't even have to look at newegg to see which is cheaper however. The 6970 and GTX570 tend to be the same price, but as you said the 6970 is faster.

The whole idea of value pricing never appealed to me, I would never use an AMD processor for that same reason - I have the money to buy nicer so I'd rather have the nicer and faster option.

Which is fine, thats what the high end stuff is for. Please don't forget that not everyone can do this, and there is (usually) nothing wrong with buying the second or fourth option.

 

[d1rtyju1c3]

Why not just purchase a second 460 and run SLI. You can pick one up for about $160 and it would perform as good as a 6970 or better if you overclock them. Just a thought.

 

[Ramar]

Noone has mentioned the bull in the china shop? I loved my wolfdale too dude, but your CPU is a massive bottleneck for gaming these days. Every game benefits from quad-core, some to a huge degree.

As for being scared off from the 570, there's nothing to worry about. It doesn't like to be overvolted, easy as that. Most of us are from a time when overvolting a graphics card was unheard of because it was stupid. Besides blowing the chip, adding voltage to anything exponentially decreases the product's life span regardless of how well-made it is. If you REALLY need to overclock, just keep it under 1.2V and you'll be fine.

 

[RavinRivie]

Noone has mentioned the bull in the china shop? I loved my wolfdale too dude, but your CPU is a massive bottleneck for gaming these days. Every game benefits from quad-core, some to a huge degree.

No, there's nothing wrong with my CPU. It's not a bottleneck - I was looking at getting a Core i7 some time back at great expense. Most games are not multi-core so all it does is make the cpu work less. I've read plenty where people asked this same thing and everyone said dual cores are still fine for gaming - games are only just now starting to support dual cores. People generally recommend other upgrades but not the CPU. Quad cores are best for people who are doing lots of Vegas, Photoshop, AutoCAD, encoding, etc - gaming is hardly a worthy reason to purchase a super fast quad core. A faster dual core for gaming is better than a slower quad core. Sorry, but thinking quad cores improve game performance is foolish. Some games go almost completely on one core and don't access the others. Very few games benefit from a quad core, sorry if you bought one and advocate them as justification for having bought one and not seeing the improved benefit, but I've thoroughly looked into this and decided against it for the very reasons I mentioned.

To the suggestion of another GTX 460 - I initially was going to do this. For awhile I did with two Zotac GTX 460s. Performance was pretty good, but I didn't have Just Cause 2 or Mass Effect at the time to test on it. Performance was pretty good, but I just don't know. SLI limits my expandability options. If I need two to play games today it won't be long before the two won't be able to play new games without turning settings down. I'm becoming more sold on the idea of one powerful card than two cheaper equally powerful (or marginally more powerful) cards.

But anyway I don't want the crappy GTX 570 HD that EVGA offers so my only step up option is the GTX 560. Elsewise I'll just sell my card and buy whatever. Anybody releasing any new cards soon or are we going to be set for a few months?

 

[Ramar]

No, there's nothing wrong with my CPU. It's not a bottleneck - I was looking at getting a Core i7 some time back at great expense. Most games are not multi-core so all it does is make the cpu work less.

http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,794274/From-Medal-of-Honor-to-Civ-5-17-Games-that-already-benefit-from-six-cores-CPUs/Practice/

There's a nice collection that scale from 4 to 6 processors with a decent margin, just because it was an article that came to mind. The list of games that scale from 2 to 4 threads is much wider.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sandy-bridge-core-i7-2600k-core-i5-2500k,2833.html There's a couple, and one that was coded poorly.

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/desktop-cpu-charts-2010/Gaming-Left-4-Dead-2,2433.html

I hate to link-flood, but ah, I didn't want to be accused of not having enough sources.