Will a GeForce 560 WITHOUT Ti be enough?

[Sethrian Neximus]

I know this question must have been posted a trillion times and I apologise for forcing it upon yourselves again. However, I'm looking to upgrade my graphics card very soon to a GPU that will allow me to run Second Life in ultra mode with full shadows and achieve reasonably high FPS.

 

Due to financial barriers, I'm looking around the price point of a Nvidia GeForce 560 DirectCUII. However, its more intelligent twin, the 560 Ti is said to be slightly faster but also slightly more expensive and sadly too expensive for me.

 

So, my question is, will I be alright with the standard 560 and not the Ti in Second Life?

[Nyll Bergbahn]

You're asking quite a lot of a mid range card and hopefully someone with a 560 will tell you, but how your computer performs depends on more than your graphics card so providing your system specs from Me > Preferences > Help > About Second Life should help. Copy and paste these into your post using Options > Edit. What card do you have at the moment? Can your PSU handle the power requirement? I know the 560 Ti needs two connectors from the PSU so I assume the 560 is the same. Check that you have two available. If not, you need an adapter.

The 560 is a cut down version of the 560 Ti with 336 stream processors compared to 384 for the 560 Ti. However, it still has a 256-bit memory bus so so will handle textures very well. Depending on manufacturer, some 560s ship with a faster clock speed than the basic 810 MHz, some as high as 950 MHz I believe but you may be near 560 Ti territory price wise at that point. Anyway, shop around.

[Peggy Paperdoll]

Nyll pretty much said it all about the card.......especially that part about asking a lot from a mid-range card.  Any nVidia card with a second number of 6 is slightly above mid-range.  It will probably handle shadows and ultra......but not without a significant performance hit.  To be honest, very high end graphics cards (either nVidia or AMD) are going to suffer with SL set to "ultra".......how much it suffers depends on how high end the card is.  A GTX680 will almost definitely handle SL fine at ultra and shadows........but you will see a performance hit (I'm thinking something like a 15 to 20 FPS hit.........but if you are getting 45 to 60 FPS without ultra and shadows then you probably would not notice enough hit to worry about it and that would be perfectly acceptable to you).

If the cards in the 500 series (which is the next to the most recent series) are a little too expensive, then take a look at the 400 series.  As video cards get superceded by new series the older series drop in price (sometimes significantly).  A card that is two series older than the current series are still very current.........and I bet you can find a GTX480 card (which is very high performance) for the same or near the same price you are looking at with the 560 you listed.  The higher the second number in the model the higher performance the card........a 480 card is higher performing than a 650 card (and higher performing than any 560 card).

Pay attention to the power supply requirement that Nyll mentioned.  if your PS is too small you run the chance of burning the PS up.........and when PS's burn up they often take other hardware devices with them (like your brand new video card).   The power supply needs the proper power connectors and all those connections need to be made for the video card to perform like you expect it to perform (they usually will run without all the power connected but they run more like some onboard video adapter than a high end discrete card).

[Sethrian Neximus]

Thank you for your reply. Sorry for missing out my system specs, I wrote that last night and wasn't really thinking. They are as follows:

AMD Bulldozer FX4100 @ 3.6GHz

16GB DDR3 RAM

My old card was a Nvidia GeForce 8600GT (Yeah, I know right )

My PSU is a Corsair Gamer series at 600w, so will handle the card fine. Plus, it has two PCI power connectors which can be either 6 or 8 pin.

 

The second comment on this thread seems to have disappeared but they were saying a 480 has higher performance than a 560? Does this mean I'd get higher FPS in Second Life with a 480? I've never understood Nvidia's backwards numbering system.

 

Also, I went a friend's house recently and played Second Life with his GeForce 460. It actually handled SL really well. Practically no noticeable FPS drop.

[Nyll Bergbahn]

Peggy's post is still there, just click View Entire Topic above my post if you've clicked Permalink.

 

That spec looks good for whichever card you choose. The 480 is a more powerful card than the 560. The first number is the series, the second number denotes where the card is in the series, higher the better. While the 480 is more powerful, it will also run noisier and hotter than the 560 and draw more power. Nvidia sorted all that with the 580. Not sure how many places still sell them though, Newegg only seem to have one model at $219.

[Nyll Bergbahn]

No idea how to reply to the web messages you sent so sent a Private Message here.