51 replies to this topic

[Pteroduck]

I had (2) nVidia gtx 460v2, but i sold one, now my computer cant handle bf3 on 1920x1080p on ultra, so im deciding on buying two new GPU/video cards, any suggestions?
and can someone explain to me core clock,shader clock, and effective memory clock?
Also, if you can, tell me about why and what do the 1gb GPU's and 3gb GPU's differences

[Waco]

Why not just turn the settings down a bit?

[Pteroduck]

I thought it was time to upgrade them anyways, i would, but it takes away from the experience somewhat , until i get used to it anyways

[El_Capitan]

Might as well step up to a GTX 580 1.5GB or 3GB for around $300 if you can find one. Otherwise, get a GTX 670 Ti or equivalent when they come out, or a 7870 when prices drop in a week or two.

[Pteroduck]

Well, im sticking to nVidia because thats what i started out with, i like them better.
oh man, gtx 580's on new egg are like 500 bucks man, not that rich.
Never tried raedon, and never will, dont know why.
do you know if the gtx 660's are good? if theyre worth buying, when are they coming out?

[Rofltroll]

Where are you from and what's your budget? If you're not from Amurica then also link some sites from where you wish to buy you video cards.

What you need to know about shader clock core clock and memory clock is that they need to be as high as possible . However, frequency on radeon cards might be higher than on nVidia cards but that doesn't mean that the radeon cards are faster. It also depends on hardware architecture. A 607 mhz nVidia card may be faster than another card with 800 MHz but with different architecture. What's important in the nVidia cards are the CUDA cores and their amount. These CUDA cores are highly efficient since they are able to compute all kinds of shaders. Before CUDA cores you had specialized cores for each type of shader (so if a program needed physics shading done, specialized shader cores would start working while other shader cores -geometry shader cores for example - would just sit there doing nothing since the program didn't need any of those computations to be done at that time. CUDA cores are like the jack of all trades since they are able to compute any type of shaders you give them. One CUDA core will compute one type of shader while another CUDA core would compute another type of shader at the same time. This is why nVidia gets more efficiency out of each clock.

[Pteroduck]

My budget is around the 450-500 mark, (SLI), yea im from america
ok so on nvidia shader and memory need to be high, so what is considered high?

Whats a good cuda amount?

recommendations?

[El_Capitan]

If you buy used, you can get GTX 580's for as low as $300 sometimes. http://www.overclock.net/f/14779/video

You can find some used GTX 570's for as low as $200 there, as well. Just find cards from ASUS, MSI, or Gigabyte, and they'll still have some serial-based warranty left.

Don't worry about higher than 1GB VRAM unless you're playing games at settings that utilize more than that, or at resolutions higher than 1920 x 1200.

[Pteroduck]

So what you're saying is i should get v-ram above 1gb?
Oh so just search that?
Are they any good though? I mean like reliable wise.
And whats a high temp for video cards? my GPU (gtx460v2) is going to around 61-65c

[RedFury77]

So what you're saying is i should get v-ram above 1gb?
And whats a high temp for video cards? my GPU (gtx460v2) is going to around 61-65c

Even at 1680X1050, my last GTX 570 had V-ram issues in crysis 2 and BF3....
Personally i would choose a HD 6970 2GB or a 3GB GTX 580 over a 570 for BF3 for crysis 2..
V-ram is becoming a more important aspect as of recently..

Yeah BF3 uses a ton of ram on Ultra, especially if msaa is on. A lot of people report 1.4gb used at 1080. Aside from a few of these higher end games, the other reason for extra vram is for a multi-monitor setup.

I had (2) nVidia gtx 460v2, but i sold one, now my computer cant handle bf3 on 1920x1080p on ultra, so im deciding on buying two new GPU/video cards, any suggestions?
and can someone explain to me core clock,shader clock, and effective memory clock?
Also, if you can, tell me about why and what do the 1gb GPU's and 3gb GPU's differences

I once read that a good measure of a card's performance is the shader clock times the number of shader cores.
So for instance:
gtx460v2/560= 1620 x 336 = 544320
gtx580 = 1544 x 512 = 790528

So a single gtx 580 should perform about 45% better than a single gtx560. Whereas 2x 560 sli cards would theoretically be 37% better than a 580 if you got 100% scaling.

My point is buying a 580 may be a downgrade from what you had before. The only benefit would be more vram available, but you can manage without it, that and the lack of sli problems.
Might as well save up for the gtx680