660ti Upgrade help

kschaffner

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jan 2, 2006
Messages
1,099
I'm trying to figure out if it's worth upgrading now or waiting until the next architecture release. The majority of games that I play are H1Z1, CS:GO, and D3 RoS. I'm torn between the 970 and the 980, I just can't seem to determine if it's worth the upgrade or not. Any thoughts?

My Specs are:
i7 3770k
16GB DDR3-1600
MSI Z77MA-G45
600W PC Power & Cooling Silencer MK III
1x ASUS VG248QE 144Hz 1080p

probably useless specs:
850 PRO 256GB
850 EVO 500GB
NH-D14
MSI 660Ti PE/OC Twin Frozr
2x Dell P2311h 1080p
 
will you be playing any other game? because if its just those, then you can wait as those as piece of cake for a 660TI..
 
I have BF4 but haven't really played it much, maybe some BF3 but that always ran fine on my 660Ti, I've been playing my way through the Batman Arkham series and I have a lot of games that I want to play and have bought just haven't gotten to them quite yet Borderlands 2 and the Pre-Sequel, Metro 2033, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Watch Dogs, Tomb Raider, Rage, Mass Effect series, Dragon Age series, Shadow of Mordor, Assassin's Creed series. Honestly though I don't know when I will start playing any of those titles lol.
 
well.. then upgrade its advisable as you will lack of power to play a lot of games in that list.. i've had a 660TI@1425mhz core/1750mhz and the games mentioned in the original post+mass effect series are easily handled maxed out at that resolution and refresh rate. But Watch Dogs, DAI, Shadow of mordor, AC: unity, BF4 should be out of the play list due to vRAM limitation.. (specially taking into consideration the asynchronous memory controller of the 660TI which also will stutter and bottleneck the performance passed the 1.5GB Line)... unless you want to start to reduce a lot of graphic settings.. only Watch Dogs, Dragon Age Inquisition and Shadow of mordor are enough reasons to upgrade...
 
Hold the money in reserve and upgrade when you see a need for it.

If your games are playing fine at the IQ settings you want, stick to what you have.
 
How about you upgrade when you find you can't get a smooth frame rate anymore?

I've been sitting on my GTX 460 1GB (overclocked to 800 MHz) trying to justify an upgrade, but so far I have not been able to. The games I've been able to play ay 1080p in the last two to three years:

Matro: 2033 (medium)
Battlefield 3 (High)
Battlefield 4 (medium)
Borderlands 2 (high + mid physx)
Borderlands The Pre Sequel (high + mid physx)
Skyrim (mid/high with official texture patch)
Bioshock Infinite (mix of mid/high)
Titanfall (medium)
Dragon Age Origins (high)
Dishonored (mid/high)
Crysis III (medium)

So yeah, after almost five years I'm still not quite ready to retire my GTX 460. I expect it will happen sooner rather tha later, but there's no rush :D There will always be cards available for purchase!

Maybe when I get around to playing Shadow of mordor. That will probably kill my card dead!
 
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How about you upgrade when you find you can't get a smooth frame rate anymore?

I've been sitting on my GTX 460 1GB (overclocked to 800 MHz) trying to justify an upgrade, but so far I have not been able to. The games I've been able to play ay 1080p in the last two years:

Battlefield 3 (High)
Battlefield 4 (medium)
Borderlands 2 (high + mid physx)
Borderlands The Pre Sequel (high + mid physx)
Skyrim (mid/high with official texture patch)
Bioshock Infinite (mix of mid/high)
Titanfall (medium)
Dragon Age Origins (high)
Dishonored (mid/high)

So yeah, after almost five years I'm still not quite ready to retire my GTX 460. I suppose it will happen soon, but there's no rush :D

you have A LOT of willpower really... :eek:
 
How about you upgrade when you find you can't get a smooth frame rate anymore?

I've been sitting on my GTX 460 1GB (overclocked to 800 MHz) trying to justify an upgrade, but so far I have not been able to. The games I've been able to play ay 1080p in the last two years:

Battlefield 3 (High)
Battlefield 4 (medium)
Borderlands 2 (high + mid physx)
Borderlands The Pre Sequel (high + mid physx)
Skyrim (mid/high with official texture patch)
Bioshock Infinite (mix of mid/high)
Titanfall (medium)
Dragon Age Origins (high)
Dishonored (mid/high)
Crysis III (medium)

So yeah, after almost five years I'm still not quite ready to retire my GTX 460. I expect it will happen sooner rather tha later, but there's no rush :D There will always be cards available for purchase!

Maybe when I get around to playing Shadow of mordor. That will probably kill my card dead!

I have a GTX460 in the closet for a backup card. I tried using it for a lot of the games you just mentioned when I was swapping GTX970s and waiting for cards to be in stock... In now way was it capable of performance I find enjoyable. I admire your ability to deal with such trash FPS and not be bothered :eek:

Hell I went from a 660 to a 970 and thought that was a huge upgrade.
 
I have a GTX460 in the closet for a backup card. I tried using it for a lot of the games you just mentioned when I was swapping GTX970s and waiting for cards to be in stock... In now way was it capable of performance I find enjoyable. I admire your ability to deal with such trash FPS and not be bothered :eek:

Hell I went from a 660 to a 970 and thought that was a huge upgrade.

well I have a overclocked GTX 560(yes its like a GTX 460 overclocked) at 950mhz and its a pretty capable card for subFullHD gaming.. of course not 60FPS with ultra settings.. but depending on the game at medium/high settings in semi modern tittles (of course you have to keep aside games like watch dogs or shadow of mordor) but the rest its able to deliver "acceptable" (for a lot of people not me:D) frame rates.. my 7 years old sister use with a 1440x900 display and sometimes I test games there.. just fine mostly of time.. with as mentioned a couple of unplayable exceptions..
 
Yeah dude, as long as it's over 40fps, it's smooth enough for me. And I don't need MSAA, since it doesn't do jack for games like Borderlands and other UE3 games anyway. I also have 16GB of ram (gonna have my 2500k for at least another few years, so I'm prepared), which I'm sure the games use as a massive cache to make up for my paltry 1GB VRAM!

FXAA injection (plus sharpen filter) and SMAA have truly been the reason I have not needed to upgrade. I was looking forward to using the outstanding 16x CSAA over my old 4850 (which was fairly efficient at 4xMSAA, but too slow for 8xMSAA), but deferred renderers made it a non-feature.

Nvidia claimed that Fermi's massive compute ability would give it a long life, and they weren't kidding! Shader-based FSAA, Shader algorithm improvements in Ambient Occlusion, available to any card that could execute DX10 code path! And of course all the tessellation you can eat! It's one of the reasons they're having trouble convincing people like me to upgrade, so they push new shiny like triple-display, 1440p and now 4k + G-SYNC :D

And I've never enjoyed games like Crysis and Far Cry that tend to push the envelope, so I guess I have an easy list of games there.
 
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At your resolution a 970 wouldn't really be a bad choice especially if you can grab one used for cheap. I'd also recommend a 290(x) if you're not really tied into physx, gsync and what not.
 
Do any games run into the memory limit issue on 1080p or is it mainly at 1440p+? I would like to add gsync to this monitor at some point in time.
 
Do any games run into the memory limit issue on 1080p or is it mainly at 1440p+? I would like to add gsync to this monitor at some point in time.

most of the games mentioned in your second post will run into memory limit at 1080P.. and adding the fact that the 660TI start to receive bad performance hit after the use of 1.5gb it make it worse.. that was the main reason I had to upgrade that card.. BF4, Watch Dogs, Dragon Age inquisition, Metro 2033, shadow of mordor, all will cause you issues with a 660TI with the use of high/ultra textures and non-shader based AA..
 
So it's down to a gtx980 then, it's only a matter of waiting for the amd cards to release to check for better prices on the nvidia lineup or wait until the next generation of cards to come out.
 
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