GTX 560 SLI upgrade to GTX 660 SLI?

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R

rayf01

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Nov 15, 2012
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10,510
Current specs.

i5-2500k
2 x Gigabyte GTX-560 1 GB
Gigabyte GA-Z68MA-D2H-B3
4 x 4GB (16 GB) Memory DDR3 - CL9

I currently only play BF3 at 1980 x 1080. I find that even with the SLI setup I cant run it on ULTRA and every once and while the frames slow down a bit. I know that's a limitation of VRAM.

I was considering selling my GTX 560's and upgrading to 2 x GeForce GTX 660 OC 2GB PCI-E. I do not overclock ever.

Do you think the upgrade would be worth it to last another 1-2 years? I'd like it to be able to run the next release of Battlefield, but who knows what those requirements will be with it being so far out.

I was also considering selling my i5 and sticking an i7-3770k in here as well.
 
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His claims about power consumption not being important and that the 480 was the more future-proofed option. Also, my 7850 is running fine within what I'd said at the time even today, many months later, so that fiasco is really not so much as he and you may claim.

Furthermore, if the GTX 660 was around at the time instead of the 7850, then my argument would have been the same, just with the 660 instead of the 7850- it had nothing to do with an AMD versus Nvidia war.
 
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Haha wow. This thread got big fast. What position did/does your brother have at nVidia? Something I'd point out here (and just in general) is that it's fine to say 'this card will crush any game' but you generally want to buy something with longevity that will also be awesome for games in a year or two. So no harm in buying a bit of excess muscle! Course at the moment there's no single GPU significantly faster than a GTX670 so it's a good option (though speed benefit over SLI 560 Ti maybe debatable).
 
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I have a pair of 560s myself. (i5/z68 based rig). What you are basically have a gtx 580.

You can just compare of a gtx 580. What you want is a set up that is at least two levels above a 580. IMO...otherwise you just may not see much improvement overall.

SLI....you and I both run the same set up...in BF3 I dont have any issues and the drivers are just fine. If that is your main game I would not shy away from SLI. The lack of vram is the main issue but the FXAA workaround is fine for me for now.

I'd go to a single 670 or think about a 7870 (CF later) or 7950 as it just seems like a better value...what you really need it to overcome the vram shortage...the 7850 or 7950 will do that for less.
 
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I don't suppose anyone could post benchmarks of a GTX580 against SLI GTX560 Ti? I'm pretty sure the GTX580 would fall quite a bit behind so I'd be very interested to be proved wrong. Bear in mind that adding a second one of these cards is going to deliver easily another 75% performance on average, lower on some games and right up in the 90s on others. 75% is pretty conservative, but for the sake of argument. So you're effectively saying a GTX580 has a 75% performance lead on a GTX560 Ti? I don't think even a GTX670 has a 75% lead, which would mean there's no immediate benefit to switching from SLI GTX560 Ti to single GTX670.

Benefit there would be more long term - comparable performance from a single card with the potential for MUCH more performance when they're SLId with a second GTX670. For more immediate gains, SLI GTX660 would beat a single GTX670 by miles. Dual GTX660s have already been benchmarked against a GTX680 and beat it by a large margin. I don't have a link to hand, but it was discussed on another thread on this forum within the past couple of days, give it a Googling. And post that GTX580 vs SLI GTX560 Ti benchmarking if anyone can!

EDIT: It's not just about mean average framerates of course, and that's why I recommended (and plenty of others did too) a single GTX670. Also for the longterm benefits I mentioned. But just don't be disappointed if switching from your SLI setup to a GTX670 doesn't deliver great gains immediately - it will be more consistent performance and leaves the door open for SLI GTX670 in the future.
 
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GTX 560 SLI ~= GTX 580

GTX 560 Ti SLI ~> GTX 580

GTX 560 Ti ~= GTX 670

I'm not sure if there are any up to date benchmarks at all for such cards (I doubt it and haven't seen any), but thats a general rule for performance (the 670's frame buffer capacity advantage would still matter against two 560 Ti cards though).
 
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I don't have any benchies to post but I do know for a fact that SLi'd 560Ti's outperform a single 580 as I had to build a PC for a client that was exactly the same as mine with the exception of the cards and mine was faster in every game or benchmark that I ran at the time.
 
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He has 560's not 560 ti's
 
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Well I wouldn't ask if they were different gen cards, but they're same generation. Surely it's been tested? I'd think SLI GTX460 would be a lot closer to a single GTX580, but if you can post benchmarks that prove otherwise then I'd definitely reconsider that.
 
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It is still a very nice card, shame availability for them is pretty poor now, the 2GB models especially. My brother has one and it's serving him really well. PMed you by the way Mousemonkey 🙂
 
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Oh good :lol: I was having trouble finding any remotely recent benchmarks. Yes, 560 SLI has a slight advantage, but it's close enough to the 580 to compare based off of it, especially on averages because games that don't work well with SLI would even out the averages a little from the slight performance advantage in games that do support it well.
 
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As a more general point, if I found a benchmark of those setups from say a year ago, would people consider the results to no longer be valid? Obviously driver updates will improve performance, but would it be insufficiently accurate to assume that those updates will on average add as much performance to one setup as they would to the other? So that the relative % difference between the cards is maintained over time?
 
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Haha you're talking to people who put a lot more thought into this stuff than we probably should 🙂 It's always good to thoroughly explore your options though to be sure you're making a good purchase. If it was me... well personally I actually wouldn't upgrade at all yet, I'd wait for the GTX700 series launch which will probably be around April (hopefully sooner!). That already sounds like a pretty sweet setup.
 
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Oh that one! Sorry but I got caught up in things and forgot to reply, let me know if you hear anything from that individual and if so we'll take it from there.
 
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Driver updates can impact different cards (even within the same generation of the same architecture) to different extents, so I wouldn't consider old benchmarks to be realistic comparisons of current performance with older cards.
 
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Again, I have the same basic rig as the OP. 560s/2500k/z68. Given the game, BF3, the biggest issue for the OP in that game is AA. The cards he has dont have the vram to take care of the work in bf3.

I'd skip 660 b/c I feel that the vram issue is likely to become and issue again. The 670 is not going to blow his lid overall but the use of AA will be nice. If filling in the AA gap and maintain the fps the 560s (like a 580) give then I'd look at the 7950 or 7870 as cards that will yield the same for less.
 
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Will do 🙂 I've seen quite a few posts from him since and there's been nothing like that post you saw. Been a bit of a dck to a few people, but nothing major. He was probably just having a bad day.

Loops, both those Radeons are more expensive than the GTX660?
 
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I'm with others going with a single card. Blaze typically goes with AMD products but if you like Nvidia products I'm in agreeance with the 670. If you went AMD in terms of graphics and were thinking of spending inwards 300-400 dollars the 7950 and the 7970 in that range and there both excellent choices.

I recently moved from two 560ti's in SLi to a single 670 and I feel my experience has been more stable and has been better then when I had those 2 cards in SLi. Sure there are cases where having 2 cards in SLi have benefits but I think you would be far happier with 1 670 versus two 660 non ti's.

In response to the EVGA hate yes they do not make the best cards out there. Meaning cards with amazing aftermarket coolers and mass overclocking ability. However, they are a excellent company to deal with. When you have an issue you aren't routed to some person who speaks poor english you get amazing customer support and there RMA turn around is much less then other companies because they are more of a direct reference retailer for nvidia. So it's really up to you what company you go with but the 600 series cards don't run nearly as hot as the 500 series cards which were hot bricks if you ask me.
 
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I'll check UK pricing, but maybe it's different in this from USA/Canadian pricing where the 7870 and the 660 can be found around the same price.
 
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Wow a whole 8c cooler in my experience, not really earth shattering is it? :pfff:
 
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