graphics card help needed!

[scotteeeG]

Hi all,
I am in the process of upgrading my computer, and need help.
I am going to upgrade to a quad core i5 in a gigabyte mainboard with 8 gigs of Ram, the system is going to be used mainly for gameing.
My budget for graphics cards is ~R3000 (south africa)
My options are: 2x Radeon HD 6750 in crossfire, 2x Radeon HD 7750 in crossfire or 1x single GTX560 ti 2G.
All 3 of those options come in at R3000 so are within Budgetary contraints.
My biggest question is: The radeon cards are both 1Gig, 128 bit, DDR5 cards. The 7750 being the newer of the 2, while the nVidia is a 2gig, 256 bit, DDR5 card.
What would anyone suggest for getting higher framerates on newer games like CoD Black ops? Etc

[scotteeeG]

Nother question is the case. A little off topic, but I want to buuy either a coolermaster silencio 550 or a HAF 912. I would rather have the silencio but it looks as though I might not be able to fit 2 Graphics cards in Crossfire in there without removing both HDD trays..

[ShyguyXPC]

go with the single GTX 560 Ti 2GB. Or if the cards are out near you, the new Geforce GTX 660, which should be priced about the same and perform even better than the 560 Ti, with 2GB memory.

plus it uses a bit less power as well.


I'm running Dual 1GB 560 Ti's in SLI, and their Overclocked a bit as well.


I can run just about any games of mine at max settings, albeit I don't run BF3, or COD games, but Skyrim and some others run at max settings at WELL over 60fps at 1080p.

Metro 2033 still can't be maxed out, but that game also favors AMD cards now. And an "older" DirectX 9 game, ArmA 2, runs pretty crappy at high settings, but its because my CPU, a 2.93GHz Core i7 Quad core is holding things back, the game benefits from a really fast single/Dual core CPU, or really high clocked Quad core using only 2 cores.


but out of the choices you listed the 2GB GTX 560 Ti would be the best option (kind of wish my cards were 2GB models, it would help with Micro Stutter problems I have as well, as it is, my cards are fully maxed out on memory usage in Skyrim at 1080p, Ultra Settings and the HiRes DLC pack, 2GB per card would definitely help my setup, in fact I've been thinking of selling of a bunch of hardware to buy a single GTX 660 or 660 Ti and go with one of those, which run 2GB per card, and are almost as good as my 2x 560 Ti's).


But if you have around you the Radeon 7850 2GB or Geforce GTX 660 2GB, and in your price range, either of those 2 cards would be the better options over the 2GB GTX 560 Ti.

[ShyguyXPC]

The case... Silencio 550 - Cooler Master - Leading Provider of Computer Case, Cooler, Power Supply, Laptop Cooling, Gaming Peripherals

They have a really long card in the pics for the case, to show case that it can hold the longer cards on the market.


though the Radeon 6700/7700 Cards are not that long, and even the GTX 560 Ti's should fit with out removing the drive cages.

You can see in the pics of my system how long a GTX 560 Ti is.







It might be a tight fit with installing the power connectors for the card, but a GTX 560 Ti should fit with out needing to remove the drive cage.


The new GTX 660 cards are about the same size as well, so should be similar size constraints as the 560 Ti's they replace.

[scotteeeG]

Shy, as always, your input is appreciated. I now have one new problem. The GTX660 has arrived, and is waaaay over budget. The GTX560 2gig is out of stock. Today is D-day and I have 2 new choiced. GTX560ti 1gig or 2x msi N450GTS 2gig cards in sli. I don't know much about the innere workings of these cards, but I do know that the 1gig GTX560 is a 256bit card with 1gig ddr5 whilst the N450GTS is a 128bit card with 2gigs ddr3. If push comes to shove I might be able to wait a month or so for stock of the GTX560ti 2gig but waiting, I think, is over rated.. Lol.

[ShyguyXPC]

Its hard to say, the Dual GTS 450's in SLI should be comparable to a Single GTX 560 Ti, but its hard to say really. The cards were never really THAT powerful to begin with, but were suitable budget range gaming cards.

2GB Models for those are rare too.

the 450's run GDDR3 which is slower than GDDR5, and has half the Bus Width. Even if run in SLI, its still only 128-bit, and doesn't really equate to 256-bit.

A single Radeon 7750 us actually more powerful than the GTS 450's were.


and I'd recommend 2 of those over 2 450's before anything.

but a Single 560 Ti 1GB should be pretty good on its own.



If waiting is really out of the question, then I'd probably go with a single 1GB GTX 560 Ti, it will still be able to play the games fine, maybe not on max settings, but no way to know for sure until the game comes out.

Main reason I say that is that 7750's are still 128-bit Bus cards as well.

If your playing a game that doesn't cope well with SLI or Crossfire, then your limiting yourself to a single cards worth of performance as well.

I haven't played Black Ops. but from what I have seen, the single 1GB 560 Ti should be able to run it just fine.


as for Black Ops 2, no way to know until the game comes out.


At least with the single 560 Ti, you can always add a 2nd later for SLI like I did.


the 560 Ti with 256-bit bus and GDDR5 will also be able to cope with Anti Aliasing and Shadows and other high bandwidth memory applications better than a pair of 450's will as well.

That was possible deal breaker with me, stepping down from a GTX 470 with greater memory bandwidth, and capable of doing 3 Way SLI... or go with the overall slightly faster GTX 560 Ti, with lower memory bandwidth, but higher clock speeds, and quieter, cooler running and more power efficient.

I eventually got the 560 Ti, and am pretty happy with it, almost no real difference in performance lost going from 320-bit to 256-bit memory bus in that case.

[scotteeeG]

Shy, thank you again, I was in the shop and decided to hold off on the graphics cards. They are going to try get more stock for me of the GTX560ti 2g card, and if that fails in the next, say, 2 months, I'm sure the price of the GTX660 will drop a little bit. Very happy with the CPU I bought tho, i5 3570. Everything is instant, no matter what is running and the best part is that WEI scored it 7.6! I nearly fell off my chair! I would recommend that CPU to anyone. Granted gaming will have to wait, but with 2 large folder transfers and 4 programs installing on a new windows install the cpu meter showed me using 8%of the CPU! So even without the graphics card I'm happy as a pig in sh** until such time as intel drop the next gen on shelves.

[ShyguyXPC]

yeah, stock on the 560 Ti 2GB's are probably dropping, the 2GB models weren't that common, and the GPU's are no longer made, now that Nvidia is on to 600 series.

I would think the 660's should drop a bit more in price, since the the 7850's are already at or below the $200 mark. If the 7870's drop a bit in price, the 660's surely will though.





meh, I don't put any stock in the WEI, its a joke of a benchmark, all it does is measure how fast the system runs Windows, and doesn't tell a person anything of any importance on how well other software will run.

My Core i7 940, thats 3+ years old, gets a 7.5 for the WEI CPU score, and that runs at a slower clock speed than the i5 3570, 2.93GHz to be exact.

plus its a First Generation Core i7 as well.


Memory score gets 7.7, Graphics is a 7.7, Gaming Graphics is 7.7.

The only thing is the Hard drive is a 5.9, and thats about the highest any standard Rotational Hard drive gets, usually in order to get anything higher you need a Solid State drive. And my HDD the OS is on is a 10,000 RPM Velociraptor, can't get much faster than that, aside from some 15K RPM SAS Drives.

But the V Raptors are good for small file sizes/chunks, and not so much for large file sizes to transfer, which was why I used it for the OS drive, my Western Digital Black Series 750GB is used for my games and software, which is almost as fast as the V Raptor, but runs at 7200RPM instead.


Yeah, even with my older Core i7 920 I have, I rarely ever used more than 50% of my CPU, unless I was doing something like Folding@Home, 3D renderings, or Video editing/rendering.


Quad cores of any kind, just have so much resources left over, you really have to try hard to utilize 100% CPU usage.

Most software just isn't optimized to use them effectively, or entirely.


How much are the GTX 660's going for over there.

Reason I ask is because over here a GTX 560 Ti 2GB usually runs about $230 which is what the GTX 660's cost. A 660 Ti is usually around $300.

About $240 on Newegg over here in the US: Newegg.com - Computer Hardware, Video Cards & Video Devices, Desktop Graphics Cards, GeForce GTX 500 series, GeForce GTX 560 Ti (Fermi), 2GB

And $230 for the 660: Newegg.com - Computer Hardware, Video Cards & Video Devices, Desktop Graphics Cards, GeForce GTX 600 series, GeForce GTX 660

[scotteeeG]

So you say, even though my Mainboard. Has sata3, I wouldn't see much gain with a sata 3 HDD as the main os unit?

[ShyguyXPC]

Nope, most SATA III hard drives won't be any faster than SATA II's.


SATA III's bandwidth is so great that only Multi Drive arrays such as a RAID 0 or RAID 5 setup would benefit, but even then, it wouldn't be much faster than a similar SATA II RAID setup.

SATA III's main advantage is opening up the gates for Faster Drive formats like Solid State Drives.


Much like USB 3.0. 2.0 is plenty fast for Keyboards, mice, and other peripherals, hell, even Wired and Wireless Networking connecting to a Modem to the outside world.

USB 3.0's bandwidth is nearly as much as SATA III, and thus great for All types of Hard drives, including SSD's.

USB 2.0 peaked out at 480Mbps, roughly 60MB/s, which is atrociously slow even for 1st Gen SATA.

USB 3.0 if I rememeber was something like 10 times faster.

Peaks out at 5Gbps. About 625MB/s.



SATA III peaks out at about 6Gbps.


So as you can see, a single standard Rotational drive, currently will never even reach those speeds.

Hell, most standard SSD's barely even scratch that. and if they do, its only peak speeds, and not continuous.

Though some SSD's can reach those speeds.


But a lot of SSD's now days nearly max, or exceed SATA II's bandwidths, of 3Gbps.

or about 375MB/s peak speeds.

Most SATA II and III Drives don't ever really get more than 150MB/s if that, maybe a tad more, but again, thats peak or Burst speeds, and not continuous.

RAID Arrays can hit the 150 to 300MB/s continuous easily, especially RAID 0, the more drives you add, the faster it gets, because it splits the data being simultaneously written to the drives in the array.

Say you had a single drive with 100MB/s Continous speed. Add a 2nd and Run in RAID 0, now your doing 200MB/s.

You add a 3rd, and 4th drive, 300MB/s, 400MB/s, etc.

up to what ever the mobo will support.

Then you have to factor in, if your Board has one or more SATA Controller chips. If it has say for example 2 Chips, then you can double up, peak out the bandwidth for the one chip, then toss in some drives and peak out the bandwidth of the other.


it gets a bit complicated at times, even I can't follow it that well.


but to sum it up, SATA III is mainly designed for SSD's and the like.


If you want even faster yet, you can opt for a PCI Express Slot SSD, which can use PCIe 2.0 x8 slots, for some BLAZING ASS speeds.

4 GIGABYTES per Second on x8 slots (2.0 Spec) 8GB (3.0 spec).

to translate 2.0 spec into Gigabits... 32Gbps More than 5 Times faster than SATA III can possibly do, and thats more or less sustained continuous speeds as well.

down side, PCIe slot SSD's have a lot of trouble with Driver issues and being recognized by the OS's out there.


just as an example, this one can do 2GB/s read, and 1GB/s writes... But I have seen ones way faster than these. Most of these are PCIe x4 slot cards.






but no, your Drive speed won't increase, at least for the WEI Crap scores, if you put a SATA III Spec rotational drive in the rig, over a SATA II Drive.

Only way to get better, is a RAID 0 or RAID 5 setup, in Hardware RAID, which means assembling the RAID Array outside of Windows before installing the OS.

Which means, either enabling the Motherboards Onboard RAID Functions, and following directions to setting one up, or installing a PCIe RAID Card (even an x1 slot card will do 500MB/s), and then accessing the cards Bios/Setup firmware on boot up. Setup the Array, and then install windows on it, and select it.

Even then, I think the most I have ever seen the WEI score is maybe 6.4.

For anything higher you'll need an SSD Drive plain and simple.


But like I said, the WEI really doesn't mean anything, and I always have to Roll my eyes on Reviews on newegg when people rate the products and mention their WEI ratings, as if its the next best thing since sliced bread.

The only things that matter in scores, is running dedicated Benchmark programs, such as HD Tach, SiSandra Tests, PC Mark, and a host of other benchmarks.

And even then, it comes down to real world uses, whether its fast enough for you or not.

Myself, I'm going to try and find a good adapter for the 4GB mSATA SSD card I have, I bought one, but the adapter didn't fit right, so I have to find another, see if I can connect it to my PC, and enable Windows Ready Boost on it, its should be miles faster than any USB 2.0 device, even though I now have a USB 3.0 add in card, but I only plan on using that for my USB 3.0 Drive dock, and external storage uses.

I figured the 4GB SSD would be enough to be used as a caching drive for the main OS Drive, and maybe speed up the OS's Responsiveness, plus I can leave the SSD sitting in the case 100% of the time, and not take up any of my USB ports.



The plan would be to sort of get a similar effect to Intels Smart Response Technology or SRT, being able to use a SSD drive as a cache drive for standard drives to speed them up. Intel has this feature in all Z68, Z75 and Z77 Mobo's, and I think even the B75 and H77 boards.

Seagate, and some other companies have had for a couple years now, SSD/HDD Hybrids, with 4GB or more of Dedicated SSD memory on a regular HDD, allowing it to be used as Caching memory to speed up the use of frequent access data, for the drive. The more you use the drive the faster it gets.

which is the same concept behind Intels SRT.

Which is also sort of the same basic principle behind MS's Ready Boost feature.

[scotteeeG]

I hear all the time how crap the windows experience index is. Lol. The only reason I like it, is because it gives me a basic reference to compare machines that I build and sell. Not for a proper benchmark, just a reference.

I thank you again for your input, it seems then as though I would be better off buying an ssd.
I only have 6 sata ports available, 1 of which is my DVD writer, and 3 more are Hard drives. Only one port is SATA3 tho. PCI-e on the board I have 2 slots. 1 is x16 the other x4. The x16 slot will be used for my GFX card, so I think I'll just have to look in to an ssd.

Thanks again Shy, you really know u'r sh*t!!!

[ShyguyXPC]

Yeah, I have to do the same on my system.

My Case has a Hot Swap capable SATA Dock on it, along with an eSATA port, my motherboard only has 6 SATA (SATA II) Ports on it.

I when I got my case, the eSATA port was busted, it came apart when I removed the top panel to do some wiring to the case, for whatever reason, Coolermaster decided to Hot Glue the eSATA port and cable together, the glue stayed, but the cable was ripped out of the port.


Anyways, that freed up one of my SATA ports, then the 2nd thing that happened, was I found out that in order for my SATA Dock to work, I needed to have AHCI enabled in my Mobo's Bios.

Well I already had windows installed, and system up and running. little did I know, AHCI needs to be enabled prior to the OS install, otherwise the system will hang on windows loading, with it enabled.


I wasn't about to reinstall the whole OS and my software just for the Convenience of the dock, so I nixed that as well, and only my 3 HDD's and DVD Drive.

So I have 2 extra SATA ports for when I get an SSD. I also bought the optional top panel for my case, that has the SATA Dock, but replaces the eSATA port with a USB 3.0 port instead.

better trade off, as the USB port is powered, where as an eSATA port is not powered.

So I can use my USB 3.0 HDD Dock, with that as well, or just use the Rear USB 3.0 port.

but I'm looking at a 120GB SSD at the least, as it is, most of my 74GB WD V Raptor is consumed by the OS, I'd say about 40-50GB is the OS, the rest is my Documents folder and Downloads folder (About 4GB total), 16GB Free, out of 70GB After Formatted. so roughly 50GB is used by Windows and its associated files and programs. Maybe a couple Gigs less, since I do have display drivers and associated GPU Software, as well as my Web Browsers, Antivirus, and related software installed on OS drive.

Everything else installed on the PC is on the 2nd drive though.


and the 3rd drive is my back up drive where I save files and data to.


at the very least though I'd consider a 90GB Drive, but I'm really wanting a 120 or 128GB drive at the least, so I can clone my OS drive to it, and then still have some decent space left over.

SSD's are still pretty expensive, but thankfully prices have come down some what for 120GB range drives and lower.

now days you can get a decent 60GB, or so range drive, for $75 or less. Not the fastest drives, but still faster than a HDD.

you can get windows 7 installed on a 60GB Drive, but won't have room for much else on it, which is why I'd consider nothing less than a 90GB Drive.

If its a Windows XP machine, then a person could get away with a 30GB or less, sub $50 drive easily enough, since XP usually only takes up 6-12GB max.

[scotteeeG]

Forgot to answer your previous question there.
GTX560ti 2gig was going for R3200
GTX660ti 2gig is going for R4300
i dont have a price on regular 660

so in terms of dollars your $70 difference at R8 to $1 is not the R1100 price diff.

Sux to not be in the states..

[scotteeeG]

But then again, $300 dollars is R2400.. not R4300.
Who the hell is taking my money?!?

[scotteeeG]

Well Shy, I have taken as much of your advice as I could afford to take. It has now changed my entire upgrade process, but I am happy thus far. Here's an update for you:
Coolermaster K-550 chassis, Coolermaster Extreme power ii 625W, 120Gig OCZ Agility 3 SSD, 16Gigs Kingston KVR1333, the i5 3570 that I have pushed up to only 4.0GHz a 1500Gig Samsung HDD for file storage, I had a 320 Gig laptop HDD lying around that I put in to a USB 3 enclosure. i am considering a Coolermaster V6GT cooler simply for it's looks and the last major component will be a GTX 660ti 2gig based on your advice. the date for the card is set for 22nd of December seeing as my chrismas bonus will be paid to me on the 21st. thanks a million for your help!!

[ShyguyXPC]

no problem. Sounds like a pretty kick ass system from the specs.


Just helped a Classmate friend of mine from high school piece together a new system, he hasn't had a gaming PC in almost 7 or 8 years or more, and been a console gamer all that time, but his PC died last week, and he picked up a prebuilt HP system for $800. luckily he listened to some advice I gave a month or two ago, and got a good one.

He's buying a GTX 660 card I believe, spending a bit more than he wanted to, but to make it last a while.

amazingly the HP system he bought is equipped with a good i5 Quad core, 10GB RAM, 2TB Hard drive, Windows 8, has an Intel Z75 Motherboard, with some Overclocking options on it, some what decent 460W Power supply in it, and he's picking up a Creative Recon3D sound card, advised getting one of the Asus ones, but he's going for the Creative LOL, since I turned him off from the Lame Beats Audio BS that was in the system (the actual sound chip is just a basic onboard audio chip, and Beats Audio is just a Software level EQ Setting).

But he has 2 weeks to wait on the System, since its on order/preorder through Best Buy.

but once he has it, it should last him a good 3 or 4 years at least before needing to upgrade the GPU and hard drives.