Best Value

[Disguised]

I am helping a friend with a build this week, and we are working with a budget, and trying to get the most bang for the buck.

Resolution will be 1920 x 1080 - He will be playing BF3 and Star Wars: The Old Republic in coming months

Which would you recommend Price vs. Performance wise between:

1. A single GTX 570 - $299
2. 2x GTX 560 in SLI - $359
3. 2x GTX 460 in SLI - $279

He prefers Nvidia, but would be open to ATI suggestions as well.

Thanks for any advice.

 

[borisof007]

In Anno 1404 on 1920x1200 resolution with 4xAA, 8xAF on DX10, we got the following:

A single 570: 74 FPS
460 SLI: 85 FPS
560 SLI: 115 FPS

It's clear what the winner is for a measly 60 bucks. Granted, you're going to have to have a power rig to keep up with those GPU's. Make sure you have plenty of RAM and a really good CPU and Mobo too.

Source:

http://www.guru3d.com/article/vga-charts-spring-2011/4

You can compare other games there too.

NOTE: A 560 comes quite close to it's bigger brother, the 570. With the right card and overclock, you could achieve a near similar performance for a much cheaper price.

 

[rockyjohn]

I too generally prefer nVidia cards, although in part because I believe more non-game applications will be written to take advantage of CUDA. Nevertheless, there are price points where AMD/ATI has the advantage for gaming. You might look at, and show your friend, the THG monthly article recommending the best video card at different price points:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-performance-radeon-geforce,2997.html

And this web page about nVidia vs. AMD cards:

http://www.upgradevideocards.com/designers.html

Not surprisingly, in the cases listed by boris, the performance increases as the cost increases. However, note that the increased performance relative to "fps" may not even be noticeable, but might be beneficial at a higher resolution or when games demand more power. It is a personal decision if each step increase in performance is worth the added cost.