GTX & ATI graphics card questions

[aayjaay]

I asked a similar question here a couple of hours ago but it was very vague and I now have more of an idea of what to compare so here are a few questions about a graphics cards that I'm thinking of buying when my current computer eventually dies (pretty soon). My resolution now is 1360 x 768 but i'm hoping to play on a high resolution such as 1920x1080 in the future so I'd also like to know how these cards perform at these resolutions. To give you an idea of the games I'll be playing, here are some examples: GTA 5 (when it comes out), ARMA 3 (when it comes out), Battlefield games and other generally graphically intensive games.

QUESTIONS:

- GTI 560 1GB vs 2GB (differences//is it worth spending the extra money?//how much better is the superior card?)

- GTI 560 ti 2gb vs GTI 570 1.25gb (differences//is it worth spending the extra money?//how much better is the superior card?)

- How do these cards ^^^^ compare to an ATI Radeon HD7850?

I don't know my GPU price range as such, I just know my PC budget is £650-700. (Obviously I'm looking at cards in the price range of the cards I'm talking about above)

Other specs that I'm hoping of having in the new PC:

- i5 2500k
- 4GB RAM
- 80-250GB HDD + an external drive

Thanks for the help in advance

 

[hijaxhfx]

I don't know how they compare against that ati card but from i think i know the 2gb wont effect much, only you are running more than one monitor

 

[dudewitbow]

there are very few games that will ever use more than 1 gb vram at 1920x1080 i believe, the only notable one off the top of my head would be a large bf3 map where you are spectating the stage from above

 

[Ironslice]

GTX 570 > HD 7850 > GTX 560 ti 2GB

 

[Guest]

GTX 570 > HD 7850 > GTX 560 ti 2GB

oh, boy. is that going to draw some attention :lol:

 

[dudewitbow]

oh, boy. is that going to draw some attention :lol:

technically, its correct to some extent. its just that the gap between the 3 cards aren't as big, so the key question is is it worth it to pay x amount of $ for a slight increase in performance.

 

[mactronix]

Well to be honest without a budget its going to be a bit vague at best but here goes.

Forget the 560 its too slow or will be when you upgrade your monitor to a 1080p monitor. I strongly suggest you make this a priority.
The 2500K can easily over clock and is a very capable CPU even at stock clocks, you wont have to worry about any restrictions on what ever graphics card you end up getting.
People have differing views on the usability of extra memory on a GPU. the way I see it is that while 1GB is generally fine for 1080p now we are close to the time when it wont be.
I would always recommend getting 2GB over 1GB unless the price difference was such that your budget wouldn't allow it without compromising other components.

The 560Ti comes in many variations with the best versions being as good as a 570. the 570 is generally the better card but then its a different chip with more function units as well as more memory and bandwidth. Is it worth the difference ? well that depends on the price when you go to buy it. At Ebuyer now its about £50. to me defiantly not worth the difference.

The 7850 is slightly dearer than the 560Ti, but is slightly the better performing card at stock speeds. Both cards are similar in performance and over clock to the same levels of performance. No over clock is guaranteed though.
For me the 2GB of memory on the 7850 would swing things in its favour. Even though I do have a soft spot for the 560Ti.

Shopping carefully I think a nice set up built around an i5 2500K and a 7850 would be easily within your budget. look at 8GB Ram sets while you are at it as well.
Games need to store the info in your system Ram before it goes to the cards memory, makes sense that if the cards are starting to need more then the system does as well.

Mactronix

 

[Guest]

(this el cheapo rig is strictly for entertainment)
Intel Core i5 2320 £136.00
MSI B75MA-P45 £49.99 inc vat
Corsair CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9 8GB £42.47
Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB £53.30 inc VAT
XFX P1-550S-XXB9 PRO550W £49.99
Silverstone Tech. Presicion PS05B Black Mid Tower £34.78
Sony 24x Int DVD-RAM SATA £12.96 inc VAT
EVGA 2GB GeForce GTX 670 £299.60 Inc VAT

£679.09

think that will game? :lol:

 

[aayjaay]

Well to be honest without a budget its going to be a bit vague at best but here goes.

Forget the 560 its too slow or will be when you upgrade your monitor to a 1080p monitor. I strongly suggest you make this a priority.
The 2500K can easily over clock and is a very capable CPU even at stock clocks, you wont have to worry about any restrictions on what ever graphics card you end up getting.
People have differing views on the usability of extra memory on a GPU. the way I see it is that while 1GB is generally fine for 1080p now we are close to the time when it wont be.
I would always recommend getting 2GB over 1GB unless the price difference was such that your budget wouldn't allow it without compromising other components.

The 560Ti comes in many variations with the best versions being as good as a 570. the 570 is generally the better card but then its a different chip with more function units as well as more memory and bandwidth. Is it worth the difference ? well that depends on the price when you go to buy it. At Ebuyer now its about £50. to me defiantly not worth the difference.

The 7850 is slightly dearer than the 560Ti, but is slightly the better performing card at stock speeds. Both cards are similar in performance and over clock to the same levels of performance. No over clock is guaranteed though.
For me the 2GB of memory on the 7850 would swing things in its favour. Even though I do have a soft spot for the 560Ti.

Shopping carefully I think a nice set up built around an i5 2500K and a 7850 would be easily within your budget. look at 8GB Ram sets while you are at it as well.
Games need to store the info in your system Ram before it goes to the cards memory, makes sense that if the cards are starting to need more then the system does as well.

Mactronix

Thank you for the detailed reply I have a couple of questions though. When you said forget the 560, did you mean the 560 non ti or the 560 in general (e.g. 560 ti 2gb)? Also, you said that you would prefer the 7850 over the 560ti because of its 2gb of vram but the 560ti has a 2gb version as well. Do you still think 7850 > 560 ti 2gb?

About the RAM, unfortunately I only have a budget of £700 at the most (to be honest, i'd like to spend as little as possible) and 8gb of RAM would be a stretch. Would I still be able to run these games at ultra settings for example with 4gb of RAM? (I think I've seen people doing it on YouTube and getting good frame rates with 4gb on BF3, not sure though).

---------------------

EDIT: "Intel Core i5 2320 £136.00" -- Is this a good core though? Like, enough to run all of the games mentioned on really high settings at a high FPS. Which one's better 2500k or 2320?

Also, this would cost around £700 I think:

-i5 2500k
-GTX 570
-4GB RAM (< is this enough)
-250GB HDD
+all other things

Don't know which rig would be better though, your suggested one or this.

 

[Kamen_BG]

The HD 7850 is generaly faster than the 560 Ti and it also overclocks better.The GTX 570 on the other hand is more powerfull than the HD 7850 but also consumes a lot more power.When the HD 7850 is overclocked it reaches GTX 580 speeds which is also as fast as an overclocked GTX 570 (maybe a a few percent slower).

VRAM isnt a big deal in most games at low resolutions but when you upgrade to a 1080p monitor and start playing games like Battlefield 3 you'll see that youre using 1.5+ GB of video memory.If you havent got that much the game will run a bit slower.

RAM doesnt really matter for videogames as they are often limited to using 2 gigabytes.IMO save some money and get a good 4GB Kit.It should be enough if you arent doing a lot of things while gaming.

(i might of made some mistakes here and there sorry for that but its really late )

 

[aayjaay]

The HD 7850 is generaly faster than the 560 Ti and it also overclocks better.

Thanks for your answer How much faster is it? Like what FPS difference would I see? Also, when you said the 570 consumes a lot of power, is this a 'electricity bill changing power' or 'get a better power supply' type of thing.

Also how hard is it to overclock CPUs and GPUs? I don't know how to do it so does it cost a lot to get someone else to do it? Sorry, I'm a bit of a newb, heh.

 

[mactronix]

Yes I meant forget the Non Ti version as its that bit too slow really.
Yes its true you can get a 560Ti with 2GB and I should have included that, my bad. I would still say go with the 7850 because its better on power and is newer tech.
The Ram is not a deal breaker its just that its not really that much more for a decent set of 8GB compared to a decent 4GB set. However a budget is a budget and if you can only afford 4 then it wont make a huge difference at all more a case of using any spare budget to optimise things and make the build better prepared to withstand the possible demands of future gaming.

Stick with the 2500K, its the one thing I would point blank refuse to change. There is the Ivy bridge version to consider but that depends on what motherboard you are looking at getting. You would need a Z77 chipset motherboard to rum an Ivy bridge CPU.

As I said I really don't think a 570 is extra money well spent compared to a 560Ti or a 7850. but if you want the extra performance and would prefer to spend your budget that way then it is after all your build.

Mactronix

 

[mactronix]

Ok so your getting some conflicting views now so we will do it this way.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Zotac/GeForce_GTX_560_Ti_Amp_Edition/26.html

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7850_HD_7870/26.html

At the bottom of each page is a drop down menu. Go to the performance review of each review and compare the different cards.

The first link is a factory over clocked 560 Ti
The second link is the 7850/7870. One thing to note is that the 560Ti listed in the 7850 etc review is a standard clocked card which is slower than the factory over clocked one in the first review.

Mactronix

 

[aayjaay]

Yes I meant forget the Non Ti version as its that bit too slow really.
Yes its true you can get a 560Ti with 2GB and I should have included that, my bad. I would still say go with the 7850 because its better on power and is newer tech.
The Ram is not a deal breaker its just that its not really that much more for a decent set of 8GB compared to a decent 4GB set. However a budget is a budget and if you can only afford 4 then it wont make a huge difference at all more a case of using any spare budget to optimise things and make the build better prepared to withstand the possible demands of future gaming.

Stick with the 2500K, its the one thing I would point blank refuse to change. There is the Ivy bridge version to consider but that depends on what motherboard you are looking at getting. You would need a Z77 chipset motherboard to rum an Ivy bridge CPU.

As I said I really don't think a 570 is extra money well spent compared to a 560Ti or a 7850. but if you want the extra performance and would prefer to spend your budget that way then it is after all your build.

Mactronix

Yeah, so I guess for me it's between the 7850 and the 560 ti 2gb. I'm using custom building websites and on one, it's cheaper to go with a 7850 than a 560 and on the other, going with the 560 works out cheaper than going with the 7850 on the other site. Really confusing I wont be building this PC for a while though so these prices may fluctuate.

I don't know if its been answered already but if I did go with the 7850 over the 560, HOW much FPS change would I see? In other words, HOW much more powerful is it?

Man, I'm asking so many questions, ha ha.

 

[mactronix]

Generally its single figures 4-5 but its all game dependant. take a look at the reviews I posted.

Mactronix

 

[aayjaay]

Generally its single figures 4-5 but its all game dependant. take a look at the reviews I posted.

Mactronix

Where could I see the reviews? I'm pretty new to this website.

 

[jimpz]

The other thingto remembr about the 560Ti, is there are 2 versions, the most commone one has 384 Cuda cores & there is a version wit (about) 440 Cuda cores.

While this can vary , depenng on the site doing comparisions/reviewsusually the HP7850 & 560 ti 440 are close, the 560 ti 384 trails. The 570 beats them all. Generally each one can be OC'd to close to the next higher level, but, to me , this is negated by the fact that you can OC the higher level one.

The 7850 runs NOTICIABLY cooler than the 460 & results in a cooler system. I researched the 560 (all versions) & the HD7850 to replace my 460. My temps in a NZXT Phantom are 7-10C cooler w/ the 7850. Plus you only need one 6 pin PCI-e power plug (although there are 2 plug versions available. It OC's very well.

JimPz

 

[JackNaylorPE]

The GTX 560 448 is a crippled GTX 570, essentially a 570 that had a bum SM.

The 570 was noted for a weak VRM in the reference cards, the non reference versions with 8 phase VRM's were fine tho. The 560 Ti's with beefed up VRM's (usually factory OC'd to 90Mhz) were extremely overclockable (30=% over reference) and had great scaling..... they got 862 fps in SLI compared to the 570's 873.

The 7850 performance wise of the 900 Mhz 560 Ti was with 2 or 3 fps in Guru3D's game test suite totals. Either one is a good choice... cost per frame should be the deciding factor.

 

[fritz7]

But you also have to realize how much cheaper the 7850 is than the 570. Usually around $40-50 cheaper - and the performance of the 7850 is almost on par with the 570. Plus, like others have pointed out, the 7850 overclocks very well.

Not too mention less power usage and temperatures

 

[aayjaay]

How much of a performance difference is there when taking CUDA cores into account with the 560?

Also, if I was going to go for a 560 ti then how would I tell the difference between a 384 and a 448 when buying the actual card? I'm thinking of building a PC on a website like these and I'm not sure which type of 560 they're selling:

http://www.computerplanet.co.uk/custom/intel-sandy-bridge/step1.html
http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/computers/intel-ivy-bridge-pc/

Also, JackNaylorPE, are you basically saying that 570 > 7850 ~=~ 560 (448) > 560 (384)?

 

[Earnie]

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/547?vs=549

 

[dudewitbow]

Also, JackNaylorPE, are you basically saying that 570 > 7850 ~=~ 560 (448) > 560 (384)?

in a sense that how it relatively works to some extent. but imagine the > arrows to be worth around 4-5 fps at most. the difference is small.

 

[aayjaay]

But you also have to realize how much cheaper the 7850 is than the 570. Usually around $40-50 cheaper - and the performance of the 7850 is almost on par with the 570. Plus, like others have pointed out, the 7850 overclocks very well.

Not too mention less power usage and temperatures

Yeah, on this website the 570 is really cheap though? (cheaper in fact than the 7850!): http://www.computerplanet.co.uk/custom/intel-sandy-bridge/step1.html&builder=1

It has two 570s; (KFA2) and (PALIT) - any ideas on what these things mean? Still, they're both cheaper than the 7850. Hmmm

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/547?vs=549

What do the ratings stand for? Are they all FPS? For example, in one of the Skyrim benchmark things, the 560 is beaten by the 7850 by around 30 fps :O

 

[dudewitbow]

Yeah, on this website the 570 is really cheap though? (cheaper in fact than the 7850!): http://www.computerplanet.co.uk/custom/intel-sandy-bridge/step1.html&builder=1

It has two 570s; (KFA2) and (PALIT) - any ideas on what these things mean? Still, they're both cheaper than the 7850. Hmmm



What do the ratings stand for? Are they all FPS? For example, in one of the Skyrim benchmark things, the 560 is beaten by the 7850 by around 30 fps :O

most are fps, some are times and values for benchmarking. the possibility on why the gtx 560 failed the high resolution test to the 7850 was likely due to Vram issues. large world games like 2+ gb of vram, everything else is usually fine with 1, which you can see.

 

[aayjaay]

Ahhh yes, I see. The 560 on that comparison was 1gb model. The 2gb model probably would have been close to tying it up with the 7850.

Still wondering, what is the 560 with 448 cores actually called? Does it have a different name to the 560 with 384 cores?