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Upgrading from GTX260 SLI

S

Spettro

n00b
Joined
Oct 22, 2010
Messages
6
I am in the shopping phase for upgrading my current video card set up, 2 GTX260s in SLI. I am currently looking at the GTX560Ti as a replacement. I have a couple of questions with which I hope the community can help.

1. Will I see an improvement in performance (i.e. how does 260 SLI compare to one 560Ti)? Note, I'm doing this in prep for BF3.

2. Should I be looking at a different Nvidia product? Ideally, I'd like to get one card now, and add a second for SLI later in the year when prices come down. The 560Ti seems a good SLI choice from the power and temp info I've been able to find, but I may be missing something?

3. If the 560Ti is the way to go, are there particular "flavors" to look at or to avoid?

My system was built 10 months ago with an eventual vid card replacement in mind, so that should not be a limiting factor. I do need to stick to Nvidia cards for this build, however, so no AMD this time around.

Thanks in advance!
 
What are your system specs?

Overall, I suggest you get a pair of cards for SLi. 2 GTX 260s in SLi perform around the same ballpark area as a GTX 560Ti. I don't expect a performance improvement and if you do get one I wouldn't expect it to be very noticeable. What's your budget? What will you be using the card for, if gaming what resolution will you be gaming on?
 
dx10 games like crysis, bc2, etc will run alot better with the 560ti than a pair of 260's due to better architecture.

as for dx9 games you will not gain much, if anything you could lose some fps, but it wouldnt matter because they would be high enough.

and dont forget, you're getting dx11 upgrade, so i say sell em and get a 560ti, but make sure to get the MSI 560ti hawk.

at 1ghz its nearly as fast as a gtx 580 stock at 1920x1200 with 4xaa, but anything over that res and AA you will see the performance go down.

i personally run all my games with 4xAA because for some reason anything over 4x the games begin to look blurry.
 
Lord_Exodia said:
What are your system specs?

Overall, I suggest you get a pair of cards for SLi. 2 GTX 260s in SLi perform around the same ballpark area as a GTX 560Ti. I don't expect a performance improvement and if you do get one I wouldn't expect it to be very noticeable. What's your budget? What will you be using the card for, if gaming what resolution will you be gaming on?
Click to expand...

I'm running an AMD Phenom II 965, 4gb RAM, and I game at 1920x1200. I hadn't really settled on a budget yet, although I'm probably trying to keep it under $300 for a card. My thought was to get one card now and then get a match for it when the fall release / holidays cause a price drop.
 
DualOwn said:
dx10 games like crysis, bc2, etc will run alot better with the 560ti than a pair of 260's due to better architecture.

as for dx9 games you will not gain much, if anything you could lose some fps, but it wouldnt matter because they would be high enough.

and dont forget, you're getting dx11 upgrade, so i say sell em and get a 560ti, but make sure to get the MSI 560ti hawk.

at 1ghz its nearly as fast as a gtx 580 stock at 1920x1200 with 4xaa, but anything over that res and AA you will see the performance go down.

i personally run all my games with 4xAA because for some reason anything over 4x the games begin to look blurry.
Click to expand...

I saw the Hawk on Newegg and I liked the looks of it. Do you know if anyone has a comparison between it and a "stock" 560Ti to see the difference in power draw, etc? I'm running a Seasonic X750 psu, so I don't think power will be an issue even with 2, but I'd like to be sure.
 
Spettro said:
I'm running an AMD Phenom II 965, 4gb RAM, and I game at 1920x1200. I hadn't really settled on a budget yet, although I'm probably trying to keep it under $300 for a card. My thought was to get one card now and then get a match for it when the fall release / holidays cause a price drop.
Click to expand...

Spettro said:
I saw the Hawk on Newegg and I liked the looks of it. Do you know if anyone has a comparison between it and a "stock" 560Ti to see the difference in power draw, etc? I'm running a Seasonic X750 psu, so I don't think power will be an issue even with 2, but I'd like to be sure.
Click to expand...

Okay so for the record your specs are;

Phenom II 965 @ what frequency stock?
4GB DDR 2 or 3
Seasonic X750PSU
1920x1200 LCD

If you have a budget of $300 and plan to add one at the end of the holidays I'm gonna vote for a 560Ti Hawk.

As for your 2nd question here is a great review http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/04/25/msi_n560gtxti_hawk_video_card_review/9. Your 750 Watt supply should be fine for this setup. When you go to SLi... Not so much, but I'm sure black friday or cyber monday you can get a better psu for dirt cheap.

I'm definitely gonna recommend the single card as a short term solution because I'm not convinced your gonna be as happy with a single card performance vs what you already have.

My last question is, if you are going to sell the 2 GTX 260s? You could probably get $80-$100 per card and I'm wondering if your budget includes what you are going to sell them for or if that will be extra. In that case you may have $500. If that's the case I'd recommend a GTX 570 Twin Frozr or Hawk type of card now and a second one later.
 
Lord_Exodia said:
My last question is, if you are going to sell the 2 GTX 260s? You could probably get $80-$100 per card and I'm wondering if your budget includes what you are going to sell them for or if that will be extra. In that case you may have $500. If that's the case I'd recommend a GTX 570 Twin Frozr or Hawk type of card now and a second one later.
Click to expand...

GTX 260 core 216 are only worth $60 used on the forums here.
 
You're looking at spending a fair amount of money for more than likely no performance gain. Have you considered waiting to see if your current SLI setup runs BF3? If the BF3 demos were run on a gtx580, and 260 SLI is about the same as a gtx480....a 580 isn't a whole lot faster than a 480 (about 10% in most games), and the demo was most likely run with everything on max settings.
 
jhokie said:
IMO you should at least consider Crossfire 6870. You'll have to switch to AMD but check this comparison with a single 560 TI:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/301?vs=314

Crossfire 6870 beats any single GPU out there including GTX 580... for just over 300$ that really can't be beat.
Click to expand...

gtx580 is still the better gaming experience than crossfire 6870.

why did you post 460sli vs 6870 crossfire in that link? its irrelevant.
 
DualOwn said:
gtx580 is still the better gaming experience than crossfire 6870.

why did you post 460sli vs 6870 crossfire in that link? its irrelevant.
Click to expand...

Meant to post 6870x2 vs GTX 580...
Here it is: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/301?vs=305

I'm not so certain the GTX 580 is a better gaming experience. It's definitely not a faster experience. And is the GTX 580 worth the large increase in cost? Don't get me wrong, I'm sure the GTX 580 is a good card. Personally I think there are better choices out there than a single 580 at 500 dollars. I think the GTX 580 slots in great if you want to go 2 card SLI and have 1,000$ to burn.
 
jhokie said:
Meant to post 6870x2 vs GTX 580...
Here it is: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/301?vs=305

I'm not so certain the GTX 580 is a better gaming experience. It's definitely not a faster experience. And is the GTX 580 worth the large increase in cost? Don't get me wrong, I'm sure the GTX 580 is a good card. Personally I think there are better choices out there than a single 580 at 500 dollars. I think the GTX 580 slots in great if you want to go 2 card SLI and have 1,000$ to burn.
Click to expand...

I'm not very experienced with CF or SLI, but I've been researching about 'em recently and one thing for sure is that benchmarks aren't everything. FPS numbers and how smooth the game plays could be totally different, with CF/SLI there's the micro stuttering issue.

An article posted recently in the general video cards forum showed that CF setups could have a reasonably high chance of suffering from micro stuttering because of the FPS isn't running at a smooth pace (has high peaks/low dips). They did praise tri-fire CF setups though for being able to run games in a much smoother way.
 
metallicaband said:
I'm not very experienced with CF or SLI, but I've been researching about 'em recently and one thing for sure is that benchmarks aren't everything. FPS numbers and how smooth the game plays could be totally different, with CF/SLI there's the micro stuttering issue.

An article posted recently in the general video cards forum showed that CF setups could have a reasonably high chance of suffering from micro stuttering because of the FPS isn't running at a smooth pace (has high peaks/low dips). They did praise tri-fire CF setups though for being able to run games in a much smoother way.
Click to expand...

Agreed, it definitely is a potential issue. Some people are not bothered by it however, and it may also vary by game. Since OP already has a dual GPU setup he's probably ok with it.

IMO if you're a hardware enthusiast you've got to at least try a multi-gpu setup at some point... I say you should grab another 6970 and see what happens ;) I would bet that would beat any Southern Islands single GPU setup with no problem. Worst case scenario you could RMA that sucker.
 
jhokie said:
Agreed, it definitely is a potential issue. Some people are not bothered by it however, and it may also vary by game. Since OP already has a dual GPU setup he's probably ok with it.

IMO if you're a hardware enthusiast you've got to at least try a multi-gpu setup at some point... I say you should grab another 6970 and see what happens ;) I would bet that would beat any Southern Islands single GPU setup with no problem. Worst case scenario you could RMA that sucker.
Click to expand...

My original order was for 2 lightning 6970s, but one of them was defected and had to return it =( They're pretty uncommon these days too.

I'm only on 1080p and thinking about going even tri-fire one day lol, but I'm going to see how well my card can handle Skyrim with mods and will hopefully do a whole CPU/GPU upgrade by the end of the year or beginning of 2012 when IB and the new GPUs are out.
 
Wow, thanks everyone for the great information. I didn't mean to disappear, but work got the better of me.

To answer some of the questions:

System:
ASUS M4N98TD EVO AM3 NVIDIA nForce 980a SLI ATX AMD Motherboard
AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz
Corsair Dominator-GT DDR3 4gb
Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB
SeaSonic X750 Gold 750W PSU
a couple of blu-ray optical drives
and, of course, the 2 x XFX GX260XADJC GeForce GTX 260

My board is SLI centric, which is why I'm not going CF this time around. I'm not bothered by micro-stuttering to my knowledge (if I don't know about it, it can't be bothering me, lol). My goal in building the machine was to upgrade the vid cards after about a year. It would appear that the 560Ti Hawk in SLI may very well be the way to go, but I also found the advice about my system being able to handle BF3 as is intriguing - do you think that is possible? I hadn't seen spec recommendations yet so I wasn't certain.

Thanks again for all the input!
 
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