Upgrading my GPU, 5850 to a 660Ti or...?

[renhoelder]

Hi,

well, it's seems to be time for me to upgrade my trusted 5850, who has served me well. I'm playing at 1080p and some games are beginning to tax the 5850 beyond its limits at this resolution (with eyecandy).

So I thought of upgrading. Found a, imo, pretty good deal for a MSI GTX660Ti PE http://se.msi.com/product/vga/N660Ti-PE-2GD5-OC.html for ~ 220€

The MSI model should be a good performer with a near silent cooling system: review http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/M...Power_Edition/

As I'm not planning on going to play at any higher resolution, this GPU should suffice. 7950s start at ~270€ here and don't seem to come with a more noisy cooling system.

So the 660Ti seems to be a pretty good bang-for-buck?

[Finicky]

Looking at that review, I seriously don't understand why these things never compare the performance to older cards in the charts... What good is it to someone with a card that needs replacing to see how it compares to only other brand new cards...

I'd suggest you go for the gtx670 if you can afford it.
They gimped the bus width on the 660ti (and the bus width and therefor bandwidth on the 670-680 wasn't stellar to begin with for cards with this much calculating grunt)


As you can see the bandwidth bottleneck can and will rear it's ugly head even at 1200p compared to cards with better bandwidth (like the 7870).
Minimum framerate should always be your focus when looking at an upgrade, you won't notice or care for when the framerate goes over 60 on your 60hz monitor, but every frame under 60 , let alone 30 will be painfully noticable in the form of slowdown/stutter.
I really don't understand why nvidia decided to gimp their entire 6xx line like this, I guess it's so they have something to hype when they push gk110 next year:\

One of the key features and reasons to get an nvidia card these days (other than driver stability and compatibility obviously) is SGSSAA supersampling support, the magic pill that turns the ugly jaggies and moiree glitchyness of those deferred rendering engines into actual respectable image quality. You can't get this on AMD, but it does require a lot more bandwidth, which nvidia chose not to give the 660Ti.

If you buy a powerful modern card it will be to use sgssaa in most games (else these cards are overkill for the majority of console ports and pc games and your 5850 is still fine) , so there is little use for a card that is bottlenecked like this.

hand it to Nvidia to design a card around looking good on review benchmarks (dynamic overclocking, nice average fps at 1080p) instead of something that caters to the needs of high end users.

[mashakos]

gtx660ti vs gtx580
guess which one is cheaper and has double the performance?

[Finicky]

gtx660ti vs gtx580
guess which one is cheaper and has double the performance?

Neither has double the performance of the other... They are pretty close in performance.

580 is way more power hungry and runs way hotter, does better at high res with AA, 660ti is a 1080p no AA only card that performs similar to a gtx 580 at that resolution (but is bottlenecked with AA), neither are a smart buy.

[renhoelder]

As I said, I'm not going to be playing anything in a resolution above 1080p any time soon.

As for the GTX670, the cheapest I found at the moment available here, is about 345€ which is about 120€ more. Is the performance gain that big, considering the resolution I play at?

The 580, as said is more power hungry, runs hotter, seems to be noisier and from what I gathered isn't that much faster. Plus the shop prices here start at about 270€ for the cheapest 580 and the aftermarket, well, if one can find a model, then it's price wise almost in the 200€ region, they ask about 180€ for the 570 used.

The next generation Nvidia, Maxell, was pushed to 2014 and 2013 should only see a Kepler refresh, don't know if that's worth waiting for. AMD Tahiti LE should be out soon, will have to see how that turns out.

[Sakkura]

GTX 670 is perhaps a bit overkill for 1080p. How about a Radeon HD 7950? Should be noticeably cheaper and AMD have their whole bundle thing going on as well.

[renhoelder]

7950s are atleast 60€ more expensive, and that's for the cheapest model, getting one of the better models jacks the price even more.

[Sakkura]

7950s are atleast 60€ more expensive, and that's for the cheapest model, getting one of the better models jacks the price even more.

That's still cheaper than the GTX 670 though. The 7950 is between the 660 Ti and 670 in performance.

[mashakos]

Neither has double the performance of the other... They are pretty close in performance.

580 is way more power hungry and runs way hotter, does better at high res with AA, 660ti is a 1080p no AA only card that performs similar to a gtx 580 at that resolution (but is bottlenecked with AA), neither are a smart buy.

a gtx580 is equivalent to a gtx670, this is from first hand experience on a friend's rig. I will post some crysis warhead benchmarks later.

Power hungry? Perhaps, if you have a 400w psu. Does not run hot though, in fact it has lower temps than my old gtx280. The 580 was a phenomenal card and a huge comeback for nvidia after the gtx480 fiasco (perhaps you are remembering accounts of that card)

[Finicky]

...
The gtx 580 is a 270W gpu, the gtx 660 ti is a 150W gpu (170W for the 670), For once nvidia have power efficient gpus again, it's a miracle.
Gtx 580 and 670 are not even close in heat, noise and power consumption. (and power bills)

Skipping a process node and going straight from 40 to 28 nm + a brand new more efficient architecture equals significant power efficiency gains, who'd ve thunk.

It's good that the dark ages of the 40nm era are finally over and we have gone back to gpus that don't need a leafblower to keep them cool. At least for 6 more months, until nvidia releases GK110 and the 512mm^2 die and crazy clocks madness can start all over.

The gigabyte version of the gtx 670 with the 3 fan 'windforce' (what a terrible name) cooler is even supposed to be quiet under load.

If your benchmark for noise and heat is a gtx 280 then idk what to say... why not compare it to a geforce 6800 ultra, or a category F tornado, or the tsar bomba.


gtx580 may have been a fast card (and still is) but buying one now is madness.

@Sakkura, but what is the point of upgrading just to play at 1080p with no AA? He doesn't really need an update that badly then unless he wants to play planetside 2 (can't think of a single other game that wouldn't run well enough on a 5850 at 1080p no AA)
If he goes with the AMD card... no SGSSAA support...
It's just crazy, nvidia has a good AA solution but no bandwidth, amd cards have mem bandwidth in spades but dogshit AA support and no SGSSAA.
I'm an AMD user and the AMD SSAA solution works for very few games for me (at a way bigger performance hit too).
Downsampling is an option on AMD, but idk what monitor he has and if it supports it (mine doesn't).

Also as amd user and amd fan for over 10 years, my personal opinion: stay the fuck away from amd, their drivers are shit.
Please don't make me write down a list of the many many many games that had huge performance issues (nasty stutter, low fps regardless of settings, shadow glitches and missing shadows) on AMD cards these past few years.

If prices weren't so stupid right now and nvidia didn't gimp their memory bus then I'd be buying a 660 ti (well no cos of the memory bus) , or 670 myself.

[Sakkura]

@Sakkura, but what is the point of upgrading just to play at 1080p with no AA?

Dafuq? 7950 supports AA just fine.

[Sakkura]

a gtx580 is equivalent to a gtx670

Hell no. The GTX 670 is at least 20-30% more powerful, and uses much less power -> less noise, easier on the PSU.

[mashakos]

Hell no. The GTX 670 is at least 20-30% more powerful, and uses much less power -> less noise, easier on the PSU.

hell yes. :)

[Sakkura]

hell yes. :)

Review data says otherwise.





Source 1/Source 2. And a quote from the second review:

GeForce GTX 670 is a phenomenal little board that blows right past the GeForce GTX 580

[Grizzly]

Obligatory chart.
That chart basically ranks GPUs according to their performance and puts similar performancing GPUs together. As it stands, the 5850 is just as powerfull as the GTX650 (not the TI version). THe 660 ti is just as powerfull as a 7870

Personally, I don't see why you want to upgrade the thing, as it stands, the 5850 is still a wonderfull piece of hardware, but it's your call, and looking at the charts above, and the chart I linked, it's a noticable upgrade.
Personally, I would wait till the Nvidea 7x and hte Ati HD 8x series hit, though.

[Sakkura]

As it stands, the 5850 is just as powerfull as the GTX650 (not the TI version). THe 660 ti is just as powerfull as a 7870

I think you misread the chart. The 5850 is on the same level as the 650 Ti, while the plain 650 is on the same level as the 5830.

We can definitely agree that the 5850 is still a pretty solid graphics card. But it's all a question of the settings and framerates you want.

[renhoelder]

Obligatory chart.
That chart basically ranks GPUs according to their performance and puts similar performancing GPUs together. As it stands, the 5850 is just as powerfull as the GTX650 (not the TI version). THe 660 ti is just as powerfull as a 7870

Personally, I don't see why you want to upgrade the thing, as it stands, the 5850 is still a wonderfull piece of hardware, but it's your call, and looking at the charts above, and the chart I linked, it's a noticable upgrade.
Personally, I would wait till the Nvidea 7x and hte Ati HD 8x series hit, though.

Ok, thanks to you and all the people who posted. The thing is, I've still decided to go with the 660Ti. Why? Probably the main reason is price, I can get it almost a third cheaper than the store price. If I'd have the choice between the store prices of 660Ti and 7950, I'd probably go for the latter. But, as I said, the price difference vs the performance gain doesn't seem worth it.

As for the other options, like the 670, it's priced almost at twice the price of the 660Ti, the price I'm getting it for, that is.

About the next gen of GPU's, Nvidias Maxell, as I said, has been pushed back to 2014 and I don't really know whether the Kepler "refresh" will bring something worth while. Maybe I'll end up regretting the buy, maybe not. As for AMD, they'll probably have the HD8x out before Nvidia, if it's good, I can always sell the 660Ti and get something new :)

[mashakos]

Review data says otherwise.





Source 1/Source 2. And a quote from the second review:

it's more or less a 5ps to 10fps difference i.e equivalent or near enough to not make a difference. That "blows right past" quote is hilarious - yeah 10fps is blowing the competition if you're an OCD framerate nut.

EDIT: The battlefield 3 numbers are accurate if the settings include maxing out antialiasing, which requires more RAM than the gtx580's got. For 8x AA, framerates are much closer. It depends, do you want to pay an extra $200 for 16x AA? 8x AA is actually the highest I go before not being able to make out any differences personally.

[renhoelder]

it's more or less a 5ps to 10fps difference i.e equivalent or near enough to not make a difference. That "blows right past" quote is hilarious - yeah 10fps is blowing the competition if you're an OCD framerate nut.

Well, to be honest, you were flinging the term "double the performance" around pretty loosely also, when talking about 660Ti vs 580 ...no?

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/517?vs=647

For all I know it could be that much faster, but I just can't find much evidence in benchmarks and reviews and I haven't got anything else to go by.

[mashakos]

Well, to be honest, you were flinging the term "double the performance" around pretty loosely also, when talking about 660Ti vs 580 ...no?

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/517?vs=647

For all I know it could be that much faster, but I just can't find much evidence in benchmarks and reviews and I haven't got anything else to go by.

I can use a bunch of examples but here is one off of youtube.
Unigine Heaven Benchmark - 660ti
min. fps 15fps

Unigine Heaven Benchmark - 580
min. fps 31.4fps