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New graphics card - £170-£240 range

Catch!

Catch!

Catch!

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16 Nov 2012
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I'm currently trying to decide on a graphics card for my first home build (so excuse any newbish questions).

I've been looking at the GTX 660 TI at the upper end, but also more budget options in the GTX 660 / 560TI.

What Nvidia cards in the price range would you recommend?

Also, I'm interested in using SLI further down the line and am currently looking at this motherboard:

ASRock Z77 Pro4 Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard

Is there a better alternative I should use, or is that one ok?
 
Better alternative's are AMD cards, you could get the 7950 sell the games and you would be looking about the £200 price point, with the new drivers your looking at 670+ performance.

And the next card down, the 7850 is around £150 and performance to match the 660, so again price wise, amd all the way.
 
SkodaMart said:
No it isn't.

The GTX 660Ti performs flawlessly at 1080p and by the time games have come out that show its short comings Rusty will have upgraded :p
Click to expand...

Well it is poor compared to the 7950. That's just a statement of fact.

Not that I actually said otherwise but it doesn't perform flawlessly at 1080p either - apply any kind of AA and performance nosedives. The flaws of a 192 bit bus.

As a mid range card to play games without any/much AA is fine. Anything else less so.
 
Best nVidia choice GTX 670, but it's over budget.

The GTX 660 won't run all modern games at maximum settings (or near to) therefore The GTX 660 Ti is the obvious choice.

Unless you are willing to go to the dark (Red) side?
 
Rusty0611 said:
Well it is poor compared to the 7950. That's just a statement of fact.

Not that I actually said otherwise but it doesn't perform flawlessly at 1080p either - apply any kind of AA and performance nosedives. The flaws of a 192 bit bus.

As a mid range card to play games without any/much AA is fine. Anything else less so.
Click to expand...

Double post above ^^

What won't the GTX 660 Ti do Rusty? Please tell me and I will test mine.

Oh by the way:
Catch! said:
What Nvidia cards in the price range would you recommend?
Click to expand...
 
SkodaMart said:
Double post above ^^

What won't the GTX 660 Ti do Rusty? Please tell me and I will test mine.

Oh by the way:
Click to expand...

BF3 64 MP;
Metro 2033;
MoHWF;
Hitman Absolution;
Far Cry 3;
Witcher 2;
Sleeping Dogs;

(all max settings)

Well as he hasn't said anything to say that AMD cards are out of the equation it is good to inform him of the overall picture and that he can get a far better card than an overpriced jazzed up low end card like the 660Ti. If it was priced accordingly there's be no problem but to be honest even the HD7870 is faster than the 660Ti now with the 12.11 drivers (I'm sure Humbug is delighted).

Unless he's locked to nVidia for preference, 3D monitor or PhysX then AMD are a far better all round option at the moment for people buying in now. Better games package as well.
 
YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte GeForce GTX 660TI OC Windforce 2X 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with FREE Borderlands 2 & Assassin's Creed III PC Games £245.99
1 x HIS HD 7950 IceQ BOOST 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (H795QC3G2M) with FREE FARCRY3, Hitman Absolution, Sleeping Dogs & 20% off MOH Warfighter PC Games £229.99
Total : £487.38 (includes shipping : £9.50).



As you can see, the 660TI is priced more than the 7950 and performs less admirably. Nvidia have put too much of a price tag on this gen to make them viable. Personaly, I would go for the 7950 unless you want the pretties that come with PhysX games.
 
Out of the games listed above, I only have the Witcher 2 :(

Edit: Wow what has happened to the price of GTX 660 TI's? :eek:
 
Last edited by a moderator:
SkodaMart said:
Out of the games listed above, I only have the Witcher 2 :(
Click to expand...

It's all good I wasn't actually wanting you to check. It's a similar thing that happens to the 680's at high resolution.

They're within 5% +/- of a 7970 at 1080p but as soon as you go above 1080p a gap forms with a pair of good 7970's being anything up to 35% faster at triple screen resolution.

Same thing is happening with a 660Ti but this time with AA. No AA = fine. It'll beat a 7870 and be a bit slower than a 7950 but apply AA and the 192 bit bus bottleneck kicks in and performance will drop off quite sharply compared to the 7950ss 384 bit bus and even the 7870s 256 bit bus.

It was only AMDs previously poor drivers which really allowed the 660Ti to even get close to the 7950. Now it's not even really that close at all.

At the other end of the scale my 7950 now is within 8% of my beastly 680 which reached 1310 MHz on the core in BF3 and that's with a pretty low overclock on the 7950. The real terms difference is less than 5%. :)

SkodaMart said:
@Rusty you are telling me that a HD 7950 will run the Witcher 2 with Ubersampling on?
Click to expand...

Not tried. I doubt it but it'll do a far better job of it than the 660Ti :).
 
@Rusty, TBH if I had the spare cash I would try another HD 7950.

The MSi ones seem scandalous the amount of dodgy cards they have had.

I'm not stupid, I could see how 'awesome' the HD 7950 was that's why I bought one. Shame mine was a partial lemon.

The GTX 660 Ti on the otherhand has performed flawlessly.
 
SkodaMart said:
@Rusty, TBH if I had the spare cash I would try another HD 7950.

The MSi ones seem scandalous the amount of dodgy cards they have had.
Click to expand...

Yup. If you consider the chances of getting a faulty one are quite small and I got 2/2 and so did spoffle... it does make you wonder what the true volume of failed ones are.

Shame the HIS one I have isn't on the 7970 PCB like the MSI card but I'm more than happy overall.
 
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