Official "I just got a Geforce GTX 5xx thread"

[ViN86]

Yes. New cards still go for $450+.

[Greedo]

Originally Posted by bob saget

$350 is good price for a used 1.5gig GTX 580? It is the CUII edition.

yes.

[snowmanwithahat]

Originally Posted by deploylinux

I was seeing some overheating and possibly stability issues recently with my six year old main workstation running Gentoo Linux with windows 7 apps also available via vmware workstation.

I suspected that dust was building up in the system even though I clean it out whenever I can, but that the main cpu is just behind an old geoforce 8800 gts 512 card and the older pentium D 950 cpu tends to run hot even in the most optimum situation.

Anyhow, step 1 towards resolving matters was buying and installing a video card that would hopefully run a little cooler, provide higher performance, be more efficient with power, and have decent fans so that any local temp issues near the card would reduced.

This pretty much ruled out the 580 or 590, and I wasn't willing to settle for the reduced performance of the 4xx series...so that meant going with either a 560, 560ti, 560 ti 448 core, or 570. Upgrading to a quadro card was also a possibility but the lowest model quadro that I could see using was the 4000 and those were much more expensive.

After reviewing the specs, and noting that 560 ti 448 has dual fans and very good reviews for performance per watt - I went with the evga classified version of it.

It looks to have reduced the overall chassis temp by about 2 degrees and the variable fan plus powermizer auto tuning seems to rev up and down the card power usage such that the system is much less likely to overheat.

I'm not really seeing any huge benefits to video performance though...especially as adobe flash has issues under Linux. I'll try out some video editing later this week....

Note that I suspect both the system cpu is likely a limiting factor....the 8800 gts 512 might already have been maxing out the box, although my display is a 30" dell monitor running at 2500x1600 and the additional video ram has to be helpful.

My motherboards pcie slot is limited to gen 1 so x16 and the 560ti 448 core is gen 2....however x16 already provides a huge amount of bandwidth, I'm not convinced that the pci bandwidth is likely a limiting issue at least for 99% of the time.

Truthfully I think your system in general is too old in comparison to the new video card. The Pentium D is a really old and even at the time a fairly slow processor. It was immediately overshadowed by the Athlon 64 x2's and the Opterons and Core 2 Duos... Not to mention they're notorious for running hot like you said.

I really think the best "bang for your buck" would be picking up something like a GTS 450 and looking at a different cpu. I realize it'll be a little more expensive but that is probably your only option given that system.

[Destroy]

Bought a GTX560Ti for $300 at Best Buy. Was over priced but its the price you pay if you want it now and the ability to return without hassle.

Mainly bought it to test/play MS Flight Sim X. So far frame rates are lower in most cases by about 10fps BUT the frame rate is smooth as butter, not all herky jerky, stuttery and frame skippy like my 6970 is.

Overclocks like a mother too. I'm easily at 1000 core and 2200 mem with volts a 1.080 at temp max of 76c

[ViN86]

Originally Posted by Destroy

Bought a GTX560Ti for $300 at Best Buy. Was over priced but its the price you pay if you want it now and the ability to return without hassle.

Mainly bought it to test/play MS Flight Sim X. So far frame rates are lower in most cases by about 10fps BUT the frame rate is smooth as butter, not all herky jerky, stuttery and frame skippy like my 6970 is.

Overclocks like a mother too. I'm easily at 1000 core and 2200 mem with volts a 1.080 at temp max of 76c

What brand did you get? If it's eVGA you should be eligible for a step up when the 6xx series launches.

The 6xx series should be launching soon, you may want to return it and wait a couple of weeks, especially at that price.

[Destroy]

Originally Posted by ViN86

What brand did you get? If it's eVGA you should be eligible for a step up when the 6xx series launches.

The 6xx series should be launching soon, you may want to return it and wait a couple of weeks, especially at that price.

I hear ya but FSX isn't GPU hungry. I need to replace my aging E8500/mb first. Plus Not about to spend $600 on a GPU right now.

[ViN86]

Originally Posted by Destroy

I hear ya but FSX isn't GPU hungry. I need to replace my aging E8500/mb first. Plus Not about to spend $600 on a GPU right now.

My point was if you wait a couple weeks you may be able to get a 6xx series card at the same price with 25-30%+ more performance over the 560 Ti. Obviously that won't be the 680 or 670 Ti, but maybe the 660 (Ti?).

[bob saget]

Another question: would a 3gig GTX 580 give me significant improvement over the 1.5gig version at 1920x1200 for mainly BF3? And also, would the increased memory allow me to enable higher Physx settings in games that support this feature.

[ArrowMk84]

Originally Posted by bob saget

Another question: would a 3gig GTX 580 give me significant improvement over the 1.5gig version at 1920x1200 for mainly BF3? And also, would the increased memory allow me to enable higher Physx settings in games that support this feature.

You'd have to check your VRAM usage while gaming (I use EVGA Precision for that, but Riva or another tool should be able to do it ). Right now I'll tell you the answer is maybe for 1920x1200. On the Back to Karkand maps I see VRAM usage (at 2560x1600 with all in game settings at Ultra) run between 2.1 GB and 2.7 GB (Skyrim with a boatload of texture mods will do the same thing). My old 1.5GB cards would have a lot of swapping/thrashing going on has they switched out textures, causing frame rates to regularly dive below 20 FPS and eventually BF3 would crash (I had to pull back the AA settings to get it to fit in VRAM). With my current 3GB cards BF3 is smooth as silk and can run all day.

I'm not sure about the Physx. And outside of Skyrim and BF3, nothing else I play really takes advantage of the extra VRAM. You might want to post in the BF3 thread to get so comments on 1920x1200 VRAM usage, since it looks like you're coming from a Radeon by your sig.

[Quick420]

I grabbed one of these.It runs at 950/1100/1900 with 1.05volts.I paid $229 Canadian for it.Twin cooler is awesome and quiet.Looking to get another.

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applicatio...004&CatId=3669