Hmmm, well those actually familiar with video card tiers will know where the 5870 still stands in today's specs and I can safely say that there are maybe two games that I cannot run with every single thing on high or maxed @ 1920x1200. The 6800 series is nothing but a power saving version of the 5800 series and the naming scheme changed as well. The 6950 is a bit faster than the 5870, while the 6870 is slower than the 5870. So be aware of that for those who do not know.
The GTX 560 Ti Cu Top is, according to benchmarks, ~5% better than what I have in regular gaming.
Granted, "maxed" may mean different things to different people. Do I need 500x AA? Not @ 1920x1200. Is there a real world, noticeable difference to me of AF x372162 or even in general? Not so much in games where it is twitch or I'm playing a game and paying attention to the combat in front of me, of which AF will only help bring back the details lost in the thin depth of field.
It depends on the eye and preferences, but considering the OP is talking about a 22 inch monitor, I doubt there is much need to worry about AA higher than x2 or x4, let alone a huge bump in AF.
What ever m8, run your games with highest settings at 1900*1200 in your fantasy land.
I am out from this discussion, could luck for the OP. I still think you should check that card I mentioned, there have been some very good offers for them at least here in Europe.
Hang your head as you go, you apparantly know jack all about gaming perfomance, much less the capabilities of his system or mine.
@ Tekk -- I'm sure there are some powerhouse games out there that might need something knocked down a bit, nothing I have ever played though. High and Highest settings are subjective in their own right . It just agitated me that someone who comes across as limited in his performance knowledge would look down on someones new build, budget build or not.
Hmmm, well those actually familiar with video card tiers will know where the 5870 still stands in today's specs and I can safely say that there are maybe two games that I cannot run with every single thing on high or maxed @ 1920x1200. The 6800 series is nothing but a power saving version of the 5800 series and the naming scheme changed as well. The 6950 is a bit faster than the 5870, while the 6870 is slower than the 5870. So be aware of that for those who do not know.
The GTX 560 Ti Cu Top is, according to benchmarks, ~5% better than what I have in regular gaming.
Granted, "maxed" may mean different things to different people. Do I need 500x AA? Not @ 1920x1200. Is there a real world, noticeable difference to me of AF x372162 or even in general? Not so much in games where it is twitch or I'm playing a game and paying attention to the combat in front of me, of which AF will only help bring back the details lost in the thin depth of field.
It depends on the eye and preferences, but considering the OP is talking about a 22 inch monitor, I doubt there is much need to worry about AA higher than x2 or x4, let alone a huge bump in AF.
You might be right that it means different things.
Also 5870 is still fairly good card, just like GTX 295 is (except no DX11), the reason I am changing is because of a lot less power consumption and DX11 support. However, 6850 is not even as good card as 5870, as seen on those tests (in my last post).
Just as a reminder, my GTX295 actually outperforms 5870 in tests, and I know for a fact that there is no way I could put 1900x1200 on full settings. I can get nice settings sure, but I also know that my processor/mb/memory is getting old.
"The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in."
Yeah we're not feeding this guy pipe dreams or anything. Plus, who knows what he's coming from really and what his expectations are? That's the whole name of this game.
You might be right that it means different things.
Also 5870 is still fairly good card, just like GTX 295 is (except no DX11), the reason I am changing is because of a lot less power consumption and DX11 support. However, 6850 is not even as good card as 5870, as seen on those tests (in my last post).
Just as a reminder, my GTX295 actually outperforms 5870 in tests, and I know for a fact that there is no way I could put 1900x1200 on full settings. I can get nice settings sure, but I also know that my processor/mb/memory is getting old.
I've been doing the 1920x1200 (1080p essentially) for well over a year and have seen games come and go. SLI issues aside, the 295 is still a very nice card. There are other variables to performance of course, such as my i7 which helps greatly especially in well done multithreaded games. The architecture is just that much more efficient than even the E7xxx/8xxx series. Those were some of the best chips you could buy for the money during that time. Great choice there.
What ever m8, run your games with highest settings at 1900*1200 in your fantasy land.
I am out from this discussion, could luck for the OP. I still think you should check that card I mentioned, there have been some very good offers for them at least here in Europe.
Hang your head as you go, you apparantly know jack all about gaming perfomance, much less the capabilities of his system or mine.
@ Tekk -- I'm sure there are some powerhouse games out there that might need something knocked down a bit, nothing I have ever played though. High and Highest settings are subjective in their own right . It just agitated me that someone who comes across as limited in his performance knowledge would look down on someones new build, budget build or not.
30-40% performance increase is marginal like you said, but time to get sleep before I actually start thinking that it is possible to win an argument in the internet gn folks.
"The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in."
30-40% performance increase is marginal like you said.
Where in the hell are you getting 30-40% performance increase from?
If the 560 Ti was 120% of a performance increase it still begs the questions ... why would you need it? Nothing utilizes the sort of power higher end cards generate. Thats ignoring that the Ti is marketed as a mid-range card , start adding on extras like your listed card has makes that questionable though.
30-40% performance increase is marginal like you said.
Where in the hell are you getting 30-40% performance increase from?
If the 560 Ti was 120% of a performance increase it still begs the questions ... why would you need it? Nothing utilizes the sort of power higher end cards generate. Thats ignoring that the Ti is marketed as a mid-range card , start adding on extras like your listed card has makes that questionable though.
You can get the 30-40% from many of the tests in this article:
30-40% performance increase is marginal like you said.
Where in the hell are you getting 30-40% performance increase from?
If the 560 Ti was 120% of a performance increase it still begs the questions ... why would you need it? Nothing utilizes the sort of power higher end cards generate. Thats ignoring that the Ti is marketed as a mid-range card , start adding on extras like your listed card has makes that questionable though.
You can get the 30-40% from many of the tests in this article:
Just figured out that scripts were turned off on their site, reviewing the charts now.
The most i've seen is a 28% diffrence at a 137 - 84 fps , which is close enough to give the 30% increase. Thats only in Arkham ... the rest of the charts are around 5% percent increase.
Thats still a $100.00 jump at least for something he does not need. No one will EVER notice a diffrence between 137 frames and 84 .... ever , its a flat out waste of money.
His build is a budget build ... just encase we all forgot that. If I was to build a new system today would I buy his card ? No .. simply because I want as close to top end as I can get ( for bragging rights among my buddies ) without exceeding the current markets price points. I drop around 2k every year or two to build a new machine though ... I'm not the budget gamer.
Just so we don't forget what our personal arguement was about
"That is a lower tier gaming PC at the moment. You will not be able to run the latest games with a high resolution and all the candies on (or even half). However, if you are satisfied with that, I suppose its ok for less than a year or so. "
Which was and is patently absurd, I prove that every time I load a game. I think even Tekk stated he runs at 1920x1200 with high settings on some games, with only two being out of reach. So the statement that he won't be able to run at a high resolution with the candies on .. is absurd.
My Zacate E-350 based netbook runs all games installed on it smoothly at high settings. That's because Guild Wars is the only game installed on it. Saying that given hardware runs all the games you play well is as much a statement about the games you play as it is about the hardware.
Let's keep the video card tiers straight.
GeForce GTX 570 ~ Radeon HD 6970
GeForce GTX 560 Ti ~ Radeon HD 6950
GeForce GTX 560 ~ Radeon HD 6870
GeForce GTX 460* ~ Radeon HD 6850
*not OEM, not SE, not mobile, not 768 MB, and not anything else that Nvidia has decided to also name GTX 460 today in an attempt at tricking you into to buying the wrong card.
The AMD card is perhaps a little better than the Nvidia card at each tier, but the performance gap between tiers is much larger than the performance gap between the two cards in a given tier. The AMD card will also use less power and have a better feature set. Thanks to recent price drops by Nvidia, the AMD card in a given tier also tends to be a little more expensive, so you can go with any of the cards above and have a decent value for the money. Well, unless the particular SKU you pick is overpriced, that is.
-----
Why the big fuss about the Asus DirectCU cards? The original DirectCU cooler was decent enough, but not really a premium cooler on par with what MSI, Gigabyte, and Sapphire put on their higher end cards. The three slot version of the DirectCU II is nicer, but that's a three slot cooler, and not what Asus put on the GTX 560 Ti. No way that it's worth paying an extra $40 for the Asus version of a GTX 560 Ti over an EVGA one at stock speeds, and even a price premium as compared to an MSI Twin Frozr II version.
Even if you do want an overclocked card, the overclocked Asus GTX 560 Ti has a price that puts it up against 2 GB versions of a Radeon HD 6950, and those unlock famously well. Overclocking the top bin of a GPU chip well above what Nvidia decided was the highest speed that a large fraction of them would be safe at is also intrinsically riskier than overclocking the bottom bin of a GPU to be slower than the top bin's stock speeds.
-----
As you likely know, Corsair doesn't actually make power supplies. Corsair buys power supplies from other companies (mainly Seasonic and Channel Well), rebrands them, and sells them. Now, a Seasonic power supply with a Corsair sticker on it might be nice, but not any nicer than the same power supply with an XFX sticker on it, or for that matter, a Seasonic sticker. A lower end Corsair power supply such as the CX series is all right, but hardly great.
Corsair's aging TX series was nice in its day, and still decent enough, but rather dated by now, so you can't really argue that the cost is justified by the premium quality. The TX V2 series is quite a bit better for $5 more, and you'll likely save back that difference over the years in reduced electricity costs from the higher energy efficiency. Or if you just want to get a power supply that is good enough as to be unlikely to cause trouble for you, then you don't need a 650 W power supply for a system that will probably never draw 300 W from it.
-----
The basic theme of Tekkaman's build in post #33 seems to be to try to fit a Core i5 2500, P67, and GeForce GTX 560 Ti, and then cut back everywhere else, with a low end motherboard, awful stock cooler, low end hard drive, etc. There's a decent enough case for that, I guess, if your main goal is high frame rates in games, but it's not what I'd do. Though I do think it's interesting that the build only includes 4 GB of system memory, after he argued at length in favor of 8 GB.
In terms of how much video card power you need to run games well, different people have different standards. A budget gaming card like a Radeon HD 5570 will run pretty much any game on the market smoothly. It's just that many games would only do that at moderate settings, or some games even at fairly low settings.
Some people like to aggressively max settings, as though the goal is to get as low of frame rates as possible on given hardware. I think those people are nuts. At the very least, you should turn off graphical settings that you don't think make the game look better.
You will never need to buy another mouse pad again. Hands down the best thing I have ever seen, regardless of what kind of mouse you use. Costs about $25, is nearly indestructible, and if it gets dirty, I just throw it in the dish washer.
I had a Razer mouse pad that cost like $40, and the surface started to wear out after only a few months (it became shiny and then optical mice started to skip over the worn part). I've had my Ratpadz XT for almost 2 years now, and I can't even find any evidence of wear at all: it looks brand new after it comes out of the dish washer.
It's been about a decade since I've used a mousepad on my home computer at all. I set my mouse directly on the keyboard tray that is part of my desk. That part of the tray has become noticeably smoother to the touch as a result of a few years of use, but my $15 mouse still works flawlessly on it.
Comments
Hmmm, well those actually familiar with video card tiers will know where the 5870 still stands in today's specs and I can safely say that there are maybe two games that I cannot run with every single thing on high or maxed @ 1920x1200. The 6800 series is nothing but a power saving version of the 5800 series and the naming scheme changed as well. The 6950 is a bit faster than the 5870, while the 6870 is slower than the 5870. So be aware of that for those who do not know.
The GTX 560 Ti Cu Top is, according to benchmarks, ~5% better than what I have in regular gaming.
Granted, "maxed" may mean different things to different people. Do I need 500x AA? Not @ 1920x1200. Is there a real world, noticeable difference to me of AF x372162 or even in general? Not so much in games where it is twitch or I'm playing a game and paying attention to the combat in front of me, of which AF will only help bring back the details lost in the thin depth of field.
It depends on the eye and preferences, but considering the OP is talking about a 22 inch monitor, I doubt there is much need to worry about AA higher than x2 or x4, let alone a huge bump in AF.
Hang your head as you go, you apparantly know jack all about gaming perfomance, much less the capabilities of his system or mine.
@ Tekk -- I'm sure there are some powerhouse games out there that might need something knocked down a bit, nothing I have ever played though. High and Highest settings are subjective in their own right . It just agitated me that someone who comes across as limited in his performance knowledge would look down on someones new build, budget build or not.
You might be right that it means different things.
Also 5870 is still fairly good card, just like GTX 295 is (except no DX11), the reason I am changing is because of a lot less power consumption and DX11 support. However, 6850 is not even as good card as 5870, as seen on those tests (in my last post).
Just as a reminder, my GTX295 actually outperforms 5870 in tests, and I know for a fact that there is no way I could put 1900x1200 on full settings. I can get nice settings sure, but I also know that my processor/mb/memory is getting old.
"The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in."
Yeah we're not feeding this guy pipe dreams or anything. Plus, who knows what he's coming from really and what his expectations are? That's the whole name of this game.
Either way, good info here for folks to read!
I've been doing the 1920x1200 (1080p essentially) for well over a year and have seen games come and go. SLI issues aside, the 295 is still a very nice card. There are other variables to performance of course, such as my i7 which helps greatly especially in well done multithreaded games. The architecture is just that much more efficient than even the E7xxx/8xxx series. Those were some of the best chips you could buy for the money during that time. Great choice there.
30-40% performance increase is marginal like you said, but time to get sleep before I actually start thinking that it is possible to win an argument in the internet
gn folks.
"The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in."
Where in the hell are you getting 30-40% performance increase from?
If the 560 Ti was 120% of a performance increase it still begs the questions ... why would you need it? Nothing utilizes the sort of power higher end cards generate. Thats ignoring that the Ti is marketed as a mid-range card , start adding on extras like your listed card has makes that questionable though.
You can get the 30-40% from many of the tests in this article:
http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/nvidia_asus_gtx560ti/
"The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in."
Just figured out that scripts were turned off on their site, reviewing the charts now.
The most i've seen is a 28% diffrence at a 137 - 84 fps , which is close enough to give the 30% increase. Thats only in Arkham ... the rest of the charts are around 5% percent increase.
Thats still a $100.00 jump at least for something he does not need. No one will EVER notice a diffrence between 137 frames and 84 .... ever , its a flat out waste of money.
His build is a budget build ... just encase we all forgot that. If I was to build a new system today would I buy his card ? No .. simply because I want as close to top end as I can get ( for bragging rights among my buddies ) without exceeding the current markets price points. I drop around 2k every year or two to build a new machine though ... I'm not the budget gamer.
Just so we don't forget what our personal arguement was about
"That is a lower tier gaming PC at the moment. You will not be able to run the latest games with a high resolution and all the candies on (or even half). However, if you are satisfied with that, I suppose its ok for less than a year or so. "
Which was and is patently absurd, I prove that every time I load a game. I think even Tekk stated he runs at 1920x1200 with high settings on some games, with only two being out of reach. So the statement that he won't be able to run at a high resolution with the candies on .. is absurd.
My this thread moves fast.
My Zacate E-350 based netbook runs all games installed on it smoothly at high settings. That's because Guild Wars is the only game installed on it. Saying that given hardware runs all the games you play well is as much a statement about the games you play as it is about the hardware.
Let's keep the video card tiers straight.
GeForce GTX 570 ~ Radeon HD 6970
GeForce GTX 560 Ti ~ Radeon HD 6950
GeForce GTX 560 ~ Radeon HD 6870
GeForce GTX 460* ~ Radeon HD 6850
*not OEM, not SE, not mobile, not 768 MB, and not anything else that Nvidia has decided to also name GTX 460 today in an attempt at tricking you into to buying the wrong card.
The AMD card is perhaps a little better than the Nvidia card at each tier, but the performance gap between tiers is much larger than the performance gap between the two cards in a given tier. The AMD card will also use less power and have a better feature set. Thanks to recent price drops by Nvidia, the AMD card in a given tier also tends to be a little more expensive, so you can go with any of the cards above and have a decent value for the money. Well, unless the particular SKU you pick is overpriced, that is.
-----
Why the big fuss about the Asus DirectCU cards? The original DirectCU cooler was decent enough, but not really a premium cooler on par with what MSI, Gigabyte, and Sapphire put on their higher end cards. The three slot version of the DirectCU II is nicer, but that's a three slot cooler, and not what Asus put on the GTX 560 Ti. No way that it's worth paying an extra $40 for the Asus version of a GTX 560 Ti over an EVGA one at stock speeds, and even a price premium as compared to an MSI Twin Frozr II version.
Even if you do want an overclocked card, the overclocked Asus GTX 560 Ti has a price that puts it up against 2 GB versions of a Radeon HD 6950, and those unlock famously well. Overclocking the top bin of a GPU chip well above what Nvidia decided was the highest speed that a large fraction of them would be safe at is also intrinsically riskier than overclocking the bottom bin of a GPU to be slower than the top bin's stock speeds.
-----
As you likely know, Corsair doesn't actually make power supplies. Corsair buys power supplies from other companies (mainly Seasonic and Channel Well), rebrands them, and sells them. Now, a Seasonic power supply with a Corsair sticker on it might be nice, but not any nicer than the same power supply with an XFX sticker on it, or for that matter, a Seasonic sticker. A lower end Corsair power supply such as the CX series is all right, but hardly great.
Corsair's aging TX series was nice in its day, and still decent enough, but rather dated by now, so you can't really argue that the cost is justified by the premium quality. The TX V2 series is quite a bit better for $5 more, and you'll likely save back that difference over the years in reduced electricity costs from the higher energy efficiency. Or if you just want to get a power supply that is good enough as to be unlikely to cause trouble for you, then you don't need a 650 W power supply for a system that will probably never draw 300 W from it.
-----
The basic theme of Tekkaman's build in post #33 seems to be to try to fit a Core i5 2500, P67, and GeForce GTX 560 Ti, and then cut back everywhere else, with a low end motherboard, awful stock cooler, low end hard drive, etc. There's a decent enough case for that, I guess, if your main goal is high frame rates in games, but it's not what I'd do. Though I do think it's interesting that the build only includes 4 GB of system memory, after he argued at length in favor of 8 GB.
In terms of how much video card power you need to run games well, different people have different standards. A budget gaming card like a Radeon HD 5570 will run pretty much any game on the market smoothly. It's just that many games would only do that at moderate settings, or some games even at fairly low settings.
Some people like to aggressively max settings, as though the goal is to get as low of frame rates as possible on given hardware. I think those people are nuts. At the very least, you should turn off graphical settings that you don't think make the game look better.
For the best mousepad I have ever seen:
Ratpadz XT
http://ratpadz.com/
You will never need to buy another mouse pad again. Hands down the best thing I have ever seen, regardless of what kind of mouse you use. Costs about $25, is nearly indestructible, and if it gets dirty, I just throw it in the dish washer.
I had a Razer mouse pad that cost like $40, and the surface started to wear out after only a few months (it became shiny and then optical mice started to skip over the worn part). I've had my Ratpadz XT for almost 2 years now, and I can't even find any evidence of wear at all: it looks brand new after it comes out of the dish washer.
It's been about a decade since I've used a mousepad on my home computer at all. I set my mouse directly on the keyboard tray that is part of my desk. That part of the tray has become noticeably smoother to the touch as a result of a few years of use, but my $15 mouse still works flawlessly on it.