New Graphics Card - GTX 660 non Ti or 7850/7870

[addman]

I was recently in the very same position as you, to upgrade to a 7850 or a GTX 660. Then I changed my mind completely and ordered a TrackIR 5 and a Saitek X-52 instead since I figured those two would make a better improvement for my simming needs than any graphics card BUT since I did a lot of research about the two cards I'll give you my thoughts on the matter.

The answer is easy, GTX 660 if you can afford it. If you can't then the 7850 is a good budget alternative. The 7870 doesn't have as good €/fps ratio as the 660 I'd say so I would rule it out completely. The GTX 660 beats the 7850 in almost everything and gives the 7870 a real good run for it's money. If I had 200€ to put on a new graphics card it would easily be the GTX 660.

[vranac]

I think you will have problems because of slow CPU.You need at least 3.5 GHz CPU and 4 GHz is recomended one.
You may consider buying used q9550 and OC it if your motherboard is capable of doing that.You'll need some aftermarket cooling also.

[Fenice_1965]

Definitely NVDIA better than ATI with IL2. I have GTX 660 with fx8320 amd. It runs CLOD almost maxed out (buildings to medium). Faster than 570 for what I've read. I have some FPS drop within groups of bombers but it is tolerable.
The TI3 gb is probably best choice for CLOD, because it fills 2gb vram in some situations, but costs about 100 euro more and it's quite close in price to 670 4gb, which can be considered almost a no compromise card for CLOD.

[Matt255]

I got a 660 Ti a few weeks ago.

I would say it's fast enough for CloD even at very high (but not maxed out) settings, but i wouldn't have bought anything less.

You can probably get a 570 or 580 GTX. That might be an option aswell (especially if you would consider buying a used card, you can get them really cheap). But i wouldn't buy those with less than 2 GB. And of course you might need a new PSU if you would go that route. You would get more performance for less money though.

I think you will have problems because of slow CPU.You need at least 3.5 GHz CPU and 4 GHz is recomended one.

CloD doesn't make good use of the CPU. I have a Q9550 at stock settings and it's usually at ~60 % load in CloD, so overall, i don't think the CPU really matters much, aslong as it's not at very high load.

The graphics card makes a massive difference though. I went from a 460 GTX to a 660 Ti and it went from barely playable at very low settings to very playable at almost maxed out settings.

So instead of investing into a CPU or a CPU/graphics compromise, i would always go for the graphics card first.

(just talking about CloD here, not games in general)

[Stublerone]

I give up! Too many nvidia guys here.

But again: 7870 vs 660?:

Winner is 7870 by about 10-15%, with new catalyst 12.11, 20-25% could be in the range of possible increases. The 660 has a very low vram interface. It not influences casual games , but streaming engines can be affected by this low performing interface.

Bill of material indicates, that the ati cards are currently of much higher quality in the standard layouts, and also in most custom layouts.

The 7850 has no chance against the 660, but equals a 660ti, which was the intention. The 7850 is just a good performer for its price, not more.

Texture flickering or shadow flickering: partly the fault of the game, bit ati often had this problem with the last cards. It is mainly solved to a good amount, bit the speed trees in clod are a problem, which the driver currently not solves sufficiently.

But nevertheless: They know better. So you should go with the mainstream and buy a half video card from nvidia! Sorry, but that is my opinion. Although I am also Nvidia boy, nvidia got owned this year! People, who do not see this, are not looking enough or do not want to quote, that their investment wasn't that good.

[vranac]

Originally Posted by Matt255

I got a 660 Ti a few weeks ago.

I would say it's fast enough for CloD even at very high (but not maxed out) settings, but i wouldn't have bought anything less.

You can probably get a 570 or 580 GTX. That might be an option aswell (especially if you would consider buying a used card, you can get them really cheap). But i wouldn't buy those with less than 2 GB. And of course you might need a new PSU if you would go that route. You would get more performance for less money though.


CloD doesn't make good use of the CPU. I have a Q9550 at stock settings and it's usually at ~60 % load in CloD, so overall, i don't think the CPU really matters much, aslong as it's not at very high load.

The graphics card makes a massive difference though. I went from a 460 GTX to a 660 Ti and it went from barely playable at very low settings to very playable at almost maxed out settings.

So instead of investing into a CPU or a CPU/graphics compromise, i would always go for the graphics card first.

I'm running this sim with gtx560 Ti but with fast 4.5 GHz CPU everything maxed out except trees and houses.This GPU is just a bit stronger than your old gtx460, you can see that clearly here:

http://www.overclock.net/t/948160/gt...lock-for-clock



With fast CPU and your new 660 Ti you should be capable of running everything maxed out, 660 Ti is much stronger card then 560 Ti.

With fast CPU you wan't get much in avarage fps, but you will get rid of pauses and stutters.CPU speed helps when textures are moved between RAM and VRAM.
I can give you many examples from my friends and there is one.
He was playing on fast 4 GHz c2duo and gtx260 and it was bad.He upgraded with gtx670 gain some fps but not much improvement.Then he bought q9300 (not q9550 as advised) and gain some performance but he still have pauses and stutters.

just talking about CloD here, not games in general

Most of other games are not CPU dependent.This one is, like it was old il2 in that time.

Point is that Timon can buy 680 and will have problems.System have to be balanced or the weakest component will be the bottleneck.

[SDDrew]

I just went through the exact situation about a month ago. I was told to buy the 7850 so I went to the store to get it. I ended up buying the 7870 though. I got home and realized I needed two 6-pin connectors from the PSU, but I only had one. So i took it back and bought the 660 because it only needs one 6-pin connector and only a 450W PSU. I love the 660 now. Runs very quiet, and very cool. As for CLOD its night and day from my 9800GT, game runs around 50-60fps when theres a not to much going on, and only gets down to 35fps over cities and with large bomber formations. Get the 660.

[U505]

Originally Posted by Stublerone

In my opinion, I would say, that your CPU will be an issue and the impact of the card could be insufficient. But I am not aware of the cards that much.

For explaination: You have VRAM on the card and you have normal RAM on your pc mainboard.

In clod, the texture load and other VRAM filling things are quite high. At 1080p resolution it could be somewhere around 2 gb, which you will need. BUT: As soon as the card runs out of its own VRAM, in this case 2gb, it has to load from normal RAM, which as a much slower bus to the graphics card. This causes stutters. Also the cpu load on 2 cores are getting high and you normally need nothing else, but horsepower in GHz to solve that, as the game not sufficiently devide the workload for the cores.

At 1080p, 2gb vram on the card should be recommended, because it needs that amount. The second thing is the speed of the interface between graphics card and vram. I do not know the speeds of these cards, but in the 680 there is a much slower interface, than in the hd7970, which has 384(?) bit interface (i am too lazy currently to look up). So, the nvidia also has a disadvantage there!

Why is it a disadvantage? - clod uses a streaming engine, where content is constantly streamed from your hdd to your RAM and then to your VRAM to serve you with the much changing landscape, while flying through such a massive map with this massive viewing range.

So, every part in this chain can have influences in your performance.

Recommended for new invests:
1.) A new graphics card with min. 2gb, better 3gb or more for the future in gaming (cry engine could scale good and detailed up to an amount of more than 4gb ram usage).

2.) At least native quad core cpu with a high raw power (ghz).

3.) RAM will be ddr3 and should preferrably be also a bit faster. I think 1600 is common and also good enough.

4.) Your storage drive: At least the windows partition and the games should run on a SSD drive. This can create also a performance increase and it is fast in loading ( do not wanna miss this in my pc and I will only buy normal hdd for storage-> depending on pruce, I will also use ssd for data storage)

That are the influences and somewhere here you can find a thread, where you can see, how cpu and gpu behaves and at which border the cpu will bottleneck, because workload on the cores are getting messed up.

very interesting post

[Matt255]

Originally Posted by vranac

With fast CPU and your new 660 Ti you should be capable of running everything maxed out, 660 Ti is much stronger card then 560 Ti.

I guess running maxed out means different things for everyone. If I fly alone over the English countryside, I get a constant 60 FPS (which is the limit I'm using), but with more planes and over London, I wouldn't say that I can run it maxed out with smooth FPS (it's not stuttering or freezing or anything though).

Originally Posted by vranac

With fast CPU you wan't get much in avarage fps, but you will get rid of pauses and stutters.CPU speed helps when textures are moved between RAM and VRAM.

If you run everything maxed out (especially textures) then yes. The OP doesn't want to be able to do that though.

Originally Posted by vranac

Most of other games are not CPU dependent.This one is, like it was old il2 in that time.

Depends a lot on the settings. If you want to run it maxed out in all situations, you need both. I didn't write about the situation on other games.

Originally Posted by vranac

Point is that Timon can buy 680 and will have problems.System have to be balanced or the weakest component will be the bottleneck.

Of course, but that's what he already posted in his topic. He can't afford to upgrade both his video card and CPU at the same time and he is ready to make a compromise and reduce settings if he has to.

[Timon83]

Thx all of you for your comments.

I think I'll go for the GTX 660 2GB as it seems the most reasonable choice for my system. It is quite, cool and energy efficient. It doesn't make sense to buy any better for me or even an older generation card like the GTX 570 as I only have a 450 Watt PSU (beQuiet).

I have two favourites: Asus GTX 660 DirectCU II or MSI GTX 660 TwinFrozr

Which one would you take? The price is basically the same.