gtx560 or 6950?

KiiYzOo · 27 Jan 2011 at 18:56

CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
I am older than you and have a worse computer for gaming!

Think how much you will need to spend after selling your old card. Is it worth the extra cost of the upgrade??

A GTX460 768MB is still a decent card at 1680X1050.

At the end of the year there will be better £200 cards for sale IMHO.

I do think it's worth the upgrade, and I did have to sell a few things just to be able to buy the parts for my PC.

neologan said:
Leave him alone, he's 15, has peer pressure from his "mates" to have cool things and has to learn on his own.

Yeah something like that

hdpcgamer · 27 Jan 2011 at 18:57

KiiYzOo said:
Yeah that was one of the reasons towards the 6950.

Even though I'd love to go 3d, I just don't think its worth saving up for that long or selling loads of things to get it as i'm only 15 and earn £20 a week

Lol, at 15, I was gaming on a Playstation 1 let alone a decent gaming PC rig! :eek:

KiiYzOo · 27 Jan 2011 at 18:58

hdpcgamer said:
Lol, at 15, I was gaming on a Playstation 1 let alone a decent gaming PC rig!

I just love to game

hdpcgamer · 27 Jan 2011 at 19:01

KiiYzOo said:
I just love to game

Can't argue with you there - at the end of the day, you work hard for your money so I suppose why not spend it on something you love.

BUT, do you really NEED to upgrade now, at only 15 lol?

KiiYzOo · 27 Jan 2011 at 19:06

my pc is actually the only thing that i actually want to spend money on lol

tommybhoy · 27 Jan 2011 at 19:07

CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
At the end of the year there will be better £200 cards for sale IMHO.

It's only January. We would never upgrade on that philosophy, would we?

KiiYzOo · 27 Jan 2011 at 19:12

tommybhoy said:
It's only January. We would never upgrade on that philosophy, would we?

you make a good point there

by the end of the year, even if the cards are way better, if I see any huge framerate drops in up-coming games, I'll just buy another 6950.

Ezyryder · 27 Jan 2011 at 19:35

To be honest the point about the end of the year this time around make sense as there is a sizeable drop in size (from 40nm to 28nm) which means that roughly if you keep the chip the same size (physically) you will be able to fit many more transistors in there. So it is not going to be an efficiency change like we've had now but a much more important change. I will wait unless your is struggling.

Lunch_box · 27 Jan 2011 at 21:45

I was all set to get a 560 but after reading this I am swaying towards a 6950......what to do......

jigger · 27 Jan 2011 at 21:49

easyrider said:
6950 2gb AND FLASH IT

iTS A NO BRAINER

Hard to get past a HD6950 looking at the current cards.

Marine-RX179 · 27 Jan 2011 at 21:55

KiiYzOo said:
by the end of the year, even if the cards are way better, if I see any huge framerate drops in up-coming games, I'll just buy another 6950.

To get the most out of 6950 (unlocked to 6970) crossfire, you need to upgrade your CPU from your current i3 to a i5 750/i5 760 overclock to 4.0GHz, and it would cut it very close, if not over your PSU's rating in terms of power consumption:
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1488/18/

One thing really puts me off about the new cards such as 6970 (or unlocked 6950) and GTX570 is that they are quite high power consuming. To be honest, if I'm was on only 1680 res like you and already got a GTX460 768MB, I'd just overclock it and wait till end of the year and upgrade to a 28nm card than one of these power hungry beast.

jigger · 27 Jan 2011 at 22:04

You don't need 4Ghz i Intel chips for dual GPU rigs.

THE_EGG · 27 Jan 2011 at 22:54

Get the XFX 2GB HD 6950 and then flash it to a 6970

All their cards flash to a 6970 easily with no reported failures apparently.

Jobs a good 'un

Raves · 27 Jan 2011 at 22:59

seems it would depend on the games u play. BFBC2 for example loves teh 560

and is quite an improvement over a 460 at 1680x1050.

KiiYzOo · 28 Jan 2011 at 06:08

Raves said:
seems it would depend on the games u play. BFBC2 for example loves teh 560

and is quite an improvement over a 460 at 1680x1050.

Yeah but the 6950 flashed to a 6970 is even more of an improvement

KiiYzOo · 28 Jan 2011 at 06:09

Marine-RX179 said:
To get the most out of 6950 (unlocked to 6970) crossfire, you need to upgrade your CPU from your current i3 to a i5 750/i5 760 overclock to 4.0GHz, and it would cut it very close, if not over your PSU's rating in terms of power consumption:
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1488/18/

One thing really puts me off about the new cards such as 6970 (or unlocked 6950) and GTX570 is that they are quite high power consuming. To be honest, if I'm was on only 1680 res like you and already got a GTX460 768MB, I'd just overclock it and wait till end of the year and upgrade to a 28nm card than one of these power hungry beast.

I would upgrade my psu before then anyway.

Marine-RX179 · 28 Jan 2011 at 08:07

KiiYzOo said:
Yeah but the 6950 flashed to a 6970 is even more of an improvement

Not really, as 6950 flashed to 6970 is not going to be faster than a proper 6970. And if you look specifically at the BFBC2 results above, you could tell the GTX560 will run ahead of even the 6970, when overclocking comes into play.
Also, the GTX560 is much more cooler running and consume less power than the 6970, or 6950 flashed to 6970.

One thing you should note is if you overclock your GTX460 768MB to around 800MHz+, it will pretty much match the speed of the GTX470 shown in the benchmark result above, and at no extra cost!

tommybhoy · 28 Jan 2011 at 09:35

Marine-RX179 said:
Not really, as 6950 flashed to 6970 is not going to be faster than a proper 6970. And if you look specifically at the BFBC2 results above, you could tell the GTX560 will run ahead of even the 6970, when overclocking comes into play.
Also, the GTX560 is much more cooler running and consume less power than the 6970, or 6950 flashed to 6970.

One thing you should note is if you overclock your GTX460 768MB to around 800MHz+, it will pretty much match the speed of the GTX470 shown in the benchmark result above, and at no extra cost!

The flashed 6950 oc's too, which will still be faster in most games, and give him better average dos due to double the memory. Even if he gets a 1g core oc because most 560's are not going past that. In this case as op is 15, I imagine he has no issues on how much power the cards consume and just wants the best performance he can get.

Marine-RX179 · 28 Jan 2011 at 10:33

tommybhoy said:
The flashed 6950 oc's too, which will still be faster in most games, and give him better average dos due to double the memory. Even if he gets a 1g core oc because most 560's are not going past that. In this case as op is 15, I imagine he has no issues on how much power the cards consume and just wants the best performance he can get.

The overclocked 560 is faster than stock GTX570, which itself is faster than the 6970 2GB at 1920 res 4xAA. Yes 6970 (or 6950 flashed) overclocked from 880MHz to 950MHz would would probably be marginally faster than the GTX560 at 1000MHz, but at what cost? Average £30 more on the card, plus higher power consumption and heat and noise.

Anyway, in terms of bang for bucks, NOTHING comes close to the GTX480 at below £195 :eek:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-222-AS&groupid=701&catid=1914&subcat=1750

Ezyryder · 28 Jan 2011 at 10:40

Indeed at above, they are noisy but almost as good as a 580 when overclocked.