Getting a new graphics card tomorrow

[Jasa]

Tomorrow I'm getting a GTX 560 Ti, any opinions?

[dosbox]

No opinion, just questions you should be asking yourself:

- Can you afford it without going into debt?
- Have you confirmed that your power supply has enough 12V capacity to handle it - along with the necessary PCI-E power connectors?
- Have you checked that it is faster than your current card in games that you play (as opposed to synthetic benchmarks)?
- Can you put up with the noise levels of the particular card you're getting?

[Jasa]

-Can afford it
-500W power supply for a 500W graphics card, a little close but if I have any problems I'll dump money into a power supply
-My current graphics card is a GT 545, I've checked the specifications and it appears to be faster in nearly every aspect
-Noise isn't a problem for me, my computer is in an enclosed box in my desk and nearly no sound leaks out.

[MalcomGTX]

A 570 is not much more expensive right now as nvidia is trying to clear stock as well as a good bit faster.

[-RASCAL-]

Originally Posted by Jasa

--500W power supply for a 500W graphics card, a little close but if I have any problems I'll dump money into a power supply

I'm worried about this.

A 500W can be something really really bad and sub-par to the standards like this....
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817159062

...or these...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817170014
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817170019

...if it can follow the legit quality standards & requirements and be something like these...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817371035
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817151093


Give us the following information of your power supply (as much as you can):
- Brand
- Model
- Amount of current (A) it can output on the +12v rail(s)
(If you can get us a link that would be fantastic)


According to nVidia, the GTX 560 Ti requires 500W power supply with two PCI-E 6-pin connectors. The card alone has a max power draw of 170W - which is equivalent to ~14.2A from the +12v.
http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desk...specifications

BUT....depending on who actually manufactured the whole card (PCB, cooler, etc) it may be a bit more.

[SM darren]

500 Watt should be beyond fine unless he didn't intentionally buy a 10 dollar unbranded PSU off ebay.

really any "good" PSU brand name over 300 watt could run a 560, multiple HDD, fans, cpu etc, it's just not in the graphics card/psu manufactures best interest to tell people that they can do that because the lower the draw the longer the lifespan of the parts.

i ran a 460 GTX on an antec 260 watt "green" PSU for a long time. it was called green because it was physically green, and because it used very little electricity. i was running SLI 9800's on it as well, but when i was playing batman arkham city it would randomly shut off so i stopped doing that lol, and i invested in a corsair 600

[wildleg]

Originally Posted by SM darren

500 Watt should be beyond fine unless he didn't intentionally buy a 10 dollar unbranded PSU off ebay.

really any "good" PSU brand name over 300 watt could run a 560, multiple HDD, fans, cpu etc, it's just not in the graphics card/psu manufactures best interest to tell people that they can do that because the lower the draw the longer the lifespan of the parts.

i ran a 460 GTX on an antec 260 watt "green" PSU for a long time. it was called green because it was physically green, and because it used very little electricity. i was running SLI 9800's on it as well, but when i was playing batman arkham city it would randomly shut off so i stopped doing that lol, and i invested in a corsair 600

It will "run it fine" of course, but as you ran into your gaming problem when the GPU requests more juice it shuts off because it exceeded its amount.

we need a name of the PSU or amps on the 12v rail.

[cannondale06]

Originally Posted by Jasa

-Can afford it
-500W power supply for a 500W graphics card, a little close but if I have any problems I'll dump money into a power supply
-My current graphics card is a GT 545, I've checked the specifications and it appears to be faster in nearly every aspect
-Noise isn't a problem for me, my computer is in an enclosed box in my desk and nearly no sound leaks out.

you really need to list the exact power supply along with the rest of your specs in detail and what resolution you want to play at. and what does "enclosed box in my desk"mean because you need to have room for your pc to take in fresh air as well as exhaust hot air.

[Sterlin22]

Don't want to start a NVIDIA vs AMD discussion, but for the price I strongly suggest looking at the Radeon 7850.

It has newer technology so it stays cooler, on average smaller, uses less power, and can overclock to literally 30% above stock performance.

The only thing that the 560 Ti has over the 7850 is PhysX, which in my opinion isn't much of a positive, unless of course your CPU is lackluster and can't handle running the PhysX files when playing PhysX games.

[cannondale06]

Originally Posted by Sterlin22

Don't want to start a NVIDIA vs AMD discussion, but for the price I strongly suggest looking at the Radeon 7850.

It has newer technology so it stays cooler, on average smaller, uses less power, and can overclock to literally 30% above stock performance.

The only thing that the 560 Ti has over the 7850 is PhysX, which in my opinion isn't much of a positive, unless of course your CPU is lackluster and can't handle running the PhysX files when playing PhysX games.

that makes no sense as hardware physx is not designed to be run on the cpu and in most games will be unplayable no matter how fast your cpu is. if you dont have a relatively fast Nvidia card then you simply should not enable hardware physx.

[dosbox]

Originally Posted by Jasa

-500W power supply for a 500W graphics card, a little close but if I have any problems I'll dump money into a power supply

If you have any problems, you may fry parts of your system. The 560 Ti draws about 160W, so most "500W" PSU's will be fine as long as they have over 400W (33A) 12V capacity - and can actually deliver that.

[HL2-4-Life]

Originally Posted by cannondale06

that makes no sense as hardware physx is not designed to be run on the cpu and in most games will be unplayable no matter how fast your cpu is. if you dont have a relatively fast Nvidia card then you simply should not enable hardware physx.

Perhaps he has Hardware PhysX mixed up with Software PhysX. A handful of games use hardware/GPU PhysX while a fair number may use software/CPU PhysX. Batman AA/AC, Metro 2033, Darkest of Days and Mirror's Edge are example of some that use GPU PhysX, but the game runs just fine w/o enabling hardware PhysX. Heck, I've tried Batman AC with GPU PhysX enabled and Disabled, and frame's better w/o enabling it (and I use a GTX460 768MB deicated to PhysX).

The HD7850 can be had at a lower price and runs about as well as a GTX570, but more VRAM would help as games use more and more VRAM to max out. SOmething like this:
http://www.amazon.com/MSI-R7850-Twin...ywords=hd+7850

[MalcomGTX]

Originally Posted by HL2-4-Life

Perhaps he has Hardware PhysX mixed up with Software PhysX. A handful of games use hardware/GPU PhysX while a fair number may use software/CPU PhysX. Batman AA/AC, Metro 2033, Darkest of Days and Mirror's Edge are example of some that use GPU PhysX, but the game runs just fine w/o enabling hardware PhysX. Heck, I've tried Batman AC with GPU PhysX enabled and Disabled, and frame's better w/o enabling it (and I use a GTX460 768MB deicated to PhysX)

I believe there was a hack to allow Batman AA to run in software mode.

My understanding is that the Physx code is the same on hardware and on software, CUDA is what translates Physx into a GPU readable C derivative for acceleration and is exclusive to nVidia.

I'm not an expert though, thats just what I've read.


Edit: Here is some reading -
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=326891
Note this does not actually enable physx on the card, just allows the effects to run on the CPU.

"Assessment

Contrary to some headlines, the Nvidia PhysX SDK actually offers multi-core support for CPUs. When used correctly, it even comes dangerously close to the performance of a single-card, GPU-based solution. Despite this, however, there's still a catch. PhysX automatically handles thread distribution, moving the load away from the CPU and onto the GPU when a compatible graphics card is active. Game developers need to shift some of the load back to the CPU."

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...on,2764-3.html

Oh nVidia, you cads.

[cannondale06]

Originally Posted by MalcomGTX

I believe there was a hack to allow Batman AA to run in software mode.

My understanding is that the Physx code is the same on hardware and on software, CUDA is what translates Physx into a GPU readable C derivative for acceleration and is exclusive to nVidia.

I'm not an expert though, thats just what I've read.

hardware effects in Batman AA will be too slow for the cpu and there is no way of making those effects run better in software mode. if you are running it on the cpu smoothly then you are not running those additional effects.