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I have a pair of MSI GeForce GTX560 Ti 1 GB video cards that I've never particularly loved, but based on the cost of my investment, I've stuck with them since 2011. I'd love to replace them with either a viable single card solution or another SLI setup if it's not too pricey. Any recommendations? Should I wait a bit longer? I tend to favor nvidia tech.

Thanks in advance,
-Ari

AFAIK nvidia doesn't have anything coming down the pipe for almost a year. If they still work for your needs I'd stick with them a while longer, otherwise maybe look at a GTX 770 for around 350 bucks.

NovusBogus wrote:

AFAIK nvidia doesn't have anything coming down the pipe for almost a year. If they still work for your needs I'd stick with them a while longer, otherwise maybe look at a GTX 770 for around 350 bucks.

I mean... I can survive for another year I suppose. If I'm not too greedy with the settings, I still get 45-60 fps on most games, though I'm getting more and more dips in FPS lately. I started realizing the cards weren't up to the task of modern PhysX since Borderlands 2, and it's basically been downhill since then. Fans are getting noisy too, and I had to RMA one of the cards. But I think I want to move away from SLI if I can do so without any incredible loss in performance. If I have to wait another year to do that, I will.

I'd wait.

My recommendation would be to make a point to keep tabs on Newegg's daily deals and snap up a 770 when the opportunity presents itself. Time is on your side, use it effectively.

That's an idea. How does a single 770 compare to 2x 560 ti in SLI?

I don't have benchmarks handy since usually nobody does that for SLI, but SLI generally gives 20-40 percent more effective rendering power so I'd say the 770 will come out slightly ahead. More importantly, you'll have more effective memory (important for some games and especially mods) and much better power efficiency (30-40 bucks per year), it'll also handle more sophisticated T&L stuff better. I'm an EVGA man so this is the sort of thing I'd be looking for, but bide your time and you should be able to get a good deal on this or a similar product.

It's time to upgrade when you are no longer happy with the framerate/image quality that you're getting.

If you can turn down the shader quality and detail levels without compromising your enjoyment of the game and maintain smooth framerates, then you're fine for the moment.

Without trying to patronise, most games offer some variant on Low/Med/High/Ultra and "ultra" is almost always a waste - often it's the same effect done with a different shader to "high" that gives 10% better visual quality but is 3x more demanding to run. Unless you're analysing still screenshots with a magnifying glass, you're unlikely to care.

It's usually possible to get 90% of the graphical goodness of "ultra" settings using a mix of med/high custom settings and the game will run at double the framerate, and if you're not already using tweak guides to identify which game settings are the performance stinkers, that's a good place to start. It's been a good habit for me because even on powerful hardware, I can't always run at top settings on a 2560 display.

There are some great GPUs available now. There will be better GPUs available in the second half of this year after TSMC's 20nm fabrication process node gets going to replace the 28nm node that GPUs have been using for the past two years. AMD's 28nm Tahiti first appeared in the Radeon HD7970 on January 9, 2012. This GPU is still used (with slightly higher core and memory clock speeds) in the current Radeon R9-280X. NVidia's 28nm GK104 debuted in the GeForce GTX680 in limited quantities to reviewers on March 22, 2012. This GPU is still used (with the same clock speeds) in the current GeForce GTX770.

If you need an upgrade now, then buy now. If you can wait until 20mm GPUs arrive, then wait. Here's an editorial by Josh Walrath at PC Perspective that sums things up.
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Editorial/ ... and-Beyond

Considering I just came from 2 hot clocked EVGA 560TI SC cards in SLI to a EVGA GTX 770 Classified 4GB card with the best of my 560ti's riding shotgun as a physx card.

I have to say the 770 single card solution is much better then my SLI setup when it come to smoothness. Also my 560ti SLI setup clocked at 1015mhz on the core and 2400 on the memory would score around 10,000-10,400 3dmark 11 perf points. My GTX 770 scores 11,300-11,500 that is with a non OC clock of at least 1202-1255 on the core since it has the NV boost. The EVGA 770 classified is a beast of a card with stock clocks as high as some 770s overclocked to their max.

I know it does not seem like much but you have to remember it is a single card solution so it performs around 25% better all the time even on a SLI maximized game, In some cases it can perform a lot better then the 560s being over 50%-100 % faster if the game is not optimized for SLI.

I am very happy with the upgrade. Also running at PCIE2.0 x8 it is just as fast as running at PCIE2.0 x16.
As of right now I am not sure if the 560 card running dedicated physx is faster then the 770 alone. In the latest batman game it is slightly faster then the 770 alone, but it is around 5-10% faster when it comes to minimum frame rate, almost not worth it until I get a few more Physx games to test. I have metro 2033 and LL but have not compared physx with the gtx alone vs the 560 dedicated, Just with the 560 dedicated and it is much better then the 560ti SLI setup by a large margin.

The 770 is great, but if you want better single card performance you will have to go with either of the 780's or a r9 290/290x if you can find one for a reasonable price. 770s I hear run like hell in SLI also. That is my route if this 770 becomes slow in the next 2 years.
The ACX cooled EVGA 770s are awesome it is a great cooler,quiet and very functional.

Thank you very much, everyone. You've given me a lot to consider.

JustAnEngineer wrote:

There are some great GPUs available now. There will be better GPUs available in the second half of this year after TSMC's 20nm fabrication process node gets going to replace the 28nm node that GPUs have been using for the past two years. AMD's 28nm Tahiti first appeared in the Radeon HD7970 on January 9, 2012. This GPU is still used (with slightly higher core and memory clock speeds) in the current Radeon R9-280X. NVidia's 28nm GK104 debuted in the GeForce GTX680 in limited quantities to reviewers on March 22, 2012. This GPU is still used (with the same clock speeds) in the current GeForce GTX770.

If you need an upgrade now, then buy now. If you can wait until 20mm GPUs arrive, then wait. Here's an editorial by Josh Walrath at PC Perspective that sums things up.
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Editorial/ ... and-Beyond

I wanna make a quick correction, the GTX 770 has higher memory, core and boost clocks. The memory speed got the biggest boost, being raised by approximately 1 GHZ effective, from 6 GTs as TR's review puts it to 7, giving the 770 a 17% bandwidth boost. Nothing to sneeze at in the least. http://techreport.com/review/24996/nvid ... reviewed/2

the questions should be.................. what is the rest of your hardware............ and what is your monitor resolution? you can also list all other hardware to make a proper assessment.

kythlyn wrote:

That's an idea. How does a single 770 compare to 2x 560 ti in SLI?

A year or so ago I went from dual overclocked (900mhz) 460 1gb (which should be within a couple fps of 560 ti) to a gtx660, then to a gtx660ti, and finished the game before I got my dual gtx670's. I did some quick testing with the game I was playing at the time, DuesEX:HR (I also have heaven benchmarks, but they don't give a real world fps view). My testing was incredibly simple (and flawed), a game save, stare off at a single point, look at fraps.
1xGTX460 = 62fps
2xGTX460 = 112fps
1xGTX660 = 104fps
1x GTX660ti = 118fps
* all these are post-overclock on a 4.7ghz ivybridge

I would say with confidence that a 660ti or 760 will match your 2x560ti, and a 770 will beat it. Plus you are dropping SLI, so any hitches or studders from that will be gone, and doubling your vram.

I obviously change cards rapidly, I build often then sell to friends and build again, so I would be a hypocrite to say to keep the 560TIs, but I personally would boil my decision down to one factor; if you are going to sell your 560TIs, then go for it. If you tend to keep old hardware, wait until 20nm hits.

With BL2, I turn off SLI, and dedicate one card just for physx, runs much better, also you can lower the persistence of physx and ragdolls to 5 minutes (down from 10, 20 before patches), and max physx partices are set to 0 (infinite) by default, setting it to 10,000 is what I do. These are in the willow engine and willow game files, if you message me I will get anyone these actual server variables once I get home.

too many of you guys think performance is just a FPS thing. forget all that. any modern card at $175 on up will be way better than sli-ed 560's. frame rates are only part of what needs to be considered. .............. still waiting on OP to give more detailed information about his build as requested.

Sorry for the late reply! For some reason I stopped getting e-mail notifications of replies.

Current build is as follows:

Windowes 7 64-bit Ultimate
Intel Core i7-2600K
8GB RAM
2x 560ti SLI

Similar build to "The Sweeter Spot" from around September of 2011.

Monitor resolution is 1680x1050 because my 1080P monitor just crapped out on me... speaking of which, I'm now also in the market for a good 27" monitor, and I'm interested in g-sync.

kythlyn wrote:

Windowes 7 64-bit Ultimate
Intel Core i7-2600K
8GB RAM
2x 560ti SLI

Monitor resolution is 1680x1050 because my 1080P monitor just crapped out on me... speaking of which, I'm now also in the market for a good 27" monitor, and I'm interested in g-sync.

Check out the Asus ROG PG278Q. It isn't out yet, but it's going to be a 27" G-Sync monitor running 2560 x 1440 @ 120-144hz. I'm salivating over it, but it's going to be very pricy and require quite a bit of GPU horsepower to push all those pixels.

The Egg wrote:

Check out the Asus ROG PG278Q. It isn't out yet, but it's going to be a 27" G-Sync monitor running 2560 x 1440 @ 120-144hz. I'm salivating over it, but it's going to be very pricy and require quite a bit of GPU horsepower to push all those pixels.

That's an idea. I'll probably end up getting the new card and the new monitor around the same time.

I'm also interested in a 3D monitor... are there any g-sync monitors that are also 3D monitors?

Funnily enough, i'm in the exact same mental space as the OP, same system specs as well (go figure),
however i have 1 difference (well, 2 really)
I play surround 5040x1050
I play mainly MMO's (DDO and shortly ESO) and RPG's (Skyrim currently)
I have Skyrim modded heavily (HD Texture pack, flora/fauna, lighting etc..) and it looks amazing.
BUT it stutters when panning and i get random graphical anomalies etc...
After much investigation, it seems i need more VRAM, the 1 g per card is not cutting it apparently.

So I've started looking into upgrading to a single card, with the hopes that i can at least get the same quality or better at 5040x1050,
but without the occasional stuttering and anomalies, and perhaps even crank that last bit of visual splendor that is Skyrim Modded
Yes, i know the modding is not helping much, but its so beautiful

Going by what is mentioned above, i definitely should be looking at a 780 or better, OR;
wait till 20nm hits and just lower my setting s a tad till then.

Thanks folks

Sigh... both of my 560ti's have malfunctioning fans, and one of them is running at 90 degrees Celsius and hotter. :/ I might be forced to replace them sooner than later. Has the market changed at all? What's the current recommendation for a single card replacement to the 2x 560ti SLI?

Do you just want to replace the 560's with something about the same performance or get something that can drive that 27" monitor you were looking at?

CeeGee wrote:

Do you just want to replace the 560's with something about the same performance or get something that can drive that 27" monitor you were looking at?

I suppose if I do end up investing, it will be on something that will last me for a few years, so yeah, it should be up to the task of working well with that monitor.

Driving a 1440p monitor at high frame rates with most of the options turned up is hard work, I should think you'd want something at least R9 290/GTX 780 level.

Luckily TR tests at 1440p http://techreport.com/review/25602/amd-radeon-r9-290-graphics-card-reviewed/3

I preordered the ROG as well.
I got an AMD 5870, so waiting for the rumoured Nvidia 880GTX release date in September.
I would suggest hanging on till then if possible.

Is the 800 series stuff still far off?

Rumors are saying September...

http://www.legitreviews.com/rumor-nvidi ... ber_148083

continuum wrote:

Rumors are saying September...

http://www.legitreviews.com/rumor-nvidi ... ber_148083

...I'll wait. Best case scenario, I'll have a fancy new 880 by this time next month. Worst case scenario (assuming they do indeed launch the 800 series in September) the prices on the 700 series should drop. Then again, the comments in that thread are a bit disheartening.

How about the Acer Predator XB280HK... its 4k and has g-sync. I don't know if its single tile. There is also no word on refresh rates. Does DisplayPort 1.2 even support more than 60 hz for 4k? I guess you'd need dual 880s for that kind of thing.

kythlyn wrote:

I'll wait. Best case scenario, I'll have a fancy new GeForce GTX880... next month.

That's probably your best choice. Note that NVidia has been guilty of sending early-production cards to reviewers well before they were available in significant quantities at e-tailers. If you want one, get your order in just as soon as they show up--before the limited launch quantity sells out.

If one of your pair of 560Ti cards is dying, you could limp along on a single card for a month.