Graphics Cards Suggestions for me

spirit

spirit

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Staff member
Hi all!

OK so as some of you know, I currently don't have a GPU in my 2500K rig, and I've decided I'd like to buy a graphics card soon. I don't really do an awful lot of gaming, but the one game I do play, Dirt 3, does require a decent GPU so I'd need a fairly good card. I'd like to play Dit 3 @ 1920x1080 and high/ultra settings if possible. My budget is around £200 and I've picked out a few cards which I am interested in.

Radeon 6870 (1GB), ~£140
MSI Twin Frozr II GTX 560 Ti (1GB), £165
MSI Twin Frozr III GTX 560 Ti 448 (1.2GB), £180
EVGA GeForce GTX 570 (1.2GB), £200

I'm not sure when I'll be buying, but hopefully soonish as I am looking to build one of my mates a PC in the near future and hopefully I'll get some cash from that. I know things are likely to change because of Kepler and suchlike, but which of the 4 cards above would give me the best price to performance ratio?

Thanks
 
Out if the cards there I would go for the 560 TI but I would get the 2gb. It may not be an absolute necessity now to have 2gb but I would rather have too much now than too little later down the road.
 
The 560 Ti was one I was seriously considering. :) Any real performance difference between the MSI 560 Ti and the MSI 560 Ti HAWK? It's only £9 or so more, so would it be paying the extra or not?

6950 looks tempting, especially at £150 - isn't it meant t be faster than a 560 Ti??
 
Still considering, it's only at £150 for one week, then it's back at £180, and for £180 I think I'd rather have the 560 Ti 448 to be honest.
 
vistakid10 said:
The 560 Ti was one I was seriously considering. :) Any real performance difference between the MSI 560 Ti and the MSI 560 Ti HAWK? It's only £9 or so more, so would it be paying the extra or not?
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the hawk is the same as the regular MSI TF cards but with a mild oc out of the box. You can do it yourself for free.

vistakid10 said:
6950 looks tempting, especially at £150 - isn't it meant t be faster than a 560 Ti??
Click to expand...

Yeah but not much. Also the 560 TI OCs better if that matters to you. I have owned both and I like the 560 better.
 
byteninja2 said:
Holy cheese, wait! Wait, wait, wait for the kepler 660, the 670 just came out!
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The 660 comes out Q3'12, and if I'm not buying until September/October time then that's fine, but if I get the money before then I'd like to buy pretty much as soon as I get some money.

salvage-this said:
the hawk is the same as the regular MSI TF cards but with a mild oc out of the box. You can do it yourself for free.
Click to expand...
Thought that may be the case. Is there a significant performance difference between a 560 Ti and a 560 Ti 448 though?

salvage-this said:
I have owned both and I like the 560 better.
Click to expand...
Yeah I thought you had got rid off your 6950s. Why do you prefer the 560? Better driver support?
 
I have used intergrated chipset amd catalyst drivers from 09 and they were pretty bad, my nvidia drivers from 09 are good, lots of options and simple, and the amd llano drivers are good.
 
vistakid10 said:
Thought that may be the case. Is there a significant performance difference between a 560 Ti and a 560 Ti 448 though?
Click to expand...

From what I looked up the 448 seems to be a bit faster than the standard 560 TI. 6ish FPS in BF3 closer to 10 in Dirt 3. I thought about going for it when I switched over from the 6950 but I like having the 2gb of VRAM for BF3. OCed I can just play it at maxed details and it uses 1600mb of VRAM on bigger maps.

vistakid10 said:
Yeah I thought you had got rid off your 6950s. Why do you prefer the 560? Better driver support?
Click to expand...

I am in the process of selling it now. I switched to get better Linux support. To be honest I got better windows drivers as well. If the driver needs to be reset (because of an OC) the nVidia driver will not lock up my entire system like the AMd driver did.

Physx was a plus too. Batman looks a lot nicer with an nVidia card.
 
byteninja2 said:
I have used intergrated chipset amd catalyst drivers from 09 and they were pretty bad
Click to expand...
That's the main reason I'm sceptical about buying AMD. Have the drivers improved? I remember they used to be quite unstable, but that was a while ago.

salvage-this said:
From what I looked up the 448 seems to be a bit faster than the standard 560 TI. 6ish FPS in BF3 closer to 10 in Dirt 3.
Click to expand...
May be worth the £15 extra then if I get 10 extra FPS. We'll see how I do for money. I can always grab a GTX 560 Ti and overclock it. I've used MSI's Twin Frozr II 560 Ti before and I liked it a lot, and I had a play around with their Afterburner software too.
 
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the drivers are stable at stock clocks for sure. Once I got into OCing they were still not all that bad I just like how my 560 TI works better. If I had perfect support for Linux I would not have switched.
 
I'm using Windows so really driver support shouldn't be an issue then I take it? Also not looking to overclock just yet but I may want to in the future so I'd like one with aftermarket cooling such as the Twin Frozr coolers.

I think I may ultimately go with a 560 Ti or 560 Ti 448 though. :)
 
The Radeon 78xx cards are pretty expensive over here (most over £200) and not many stores stock them here.
 
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