Hardware GTX 560 Ti, or HD7870?

[Celice]

I've been mulling about upgrading my graphics card. I've been with an HD 5770 at 1920x1080 OCed to 960Mhz which has held surprisingly stable for most recent games at around 45-50fps. The prices on the two cards are pretty close, with the 7870 taking a nice performance gain on it... but I admit, Borderlands 2 is making me a sucker for its PhysX stuff, and is starting to make me question whether to flop back to an NVIDIA card or keep with the ATI cards. The game has also docked my FPS average in some places, though the game seems more optimized away from AMD/ATI builds in general (and was a bit laggy/problematic for many people across builds in general). Most games so far haven't had much push for using NVIDIA over ATI until Borderlands 2, that I've noticed, and the game seems particularly barren on my 5770.

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16814130604
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16814161404

What suggestions float around? This is around the price range I'd like to hang at, max. The specs on the 7870 seem pretty nice for moving forward in gaming too. Now it's just a question of it I can fit it in

generic number chart offering some sort of comparison

 

[Sicklyboy]

If you're looking at 560s, I'd make a personal recommendation of http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130610

That has yet to stutter on any game I've thrown at it on full Ultra except for two - Crysis, which gets a fairly playable ~15-20 fps, and GTA IV (same framerate, but past a certain point setting it any higher gives you absolutely no graphical improvement. The thing it doesn't like to go high on is draw/view distance, but it goes perfectly high enough to the point where even if you do force it higher, you won't see anything extra being drawn.

Metro 2033 looks amazing on it, having the PhysX is great on games that support it. I already have Borderlands 2 but haven't given it a shot yet. Soon, though.

It always runs really quiet for me, too. My fans seldom kick up past the lowest idle speed.

 

[Lanlan]

Being an AMD fanboy, I'd say go with the 7870. It's a bit more powerful. And AMD. But yeah Physx is pretty awesome, but if you have a good enough CPU you can emulate Physx. Dunno how much it'll affect your framerate, but it's an option if you go the AMD route.

 

[trumpet-205]

HD7870 easily. Though I probably pick HD7850 and OC it.

 

[raystriker]

Though i'm an amd fanboy, i'd go for the GTX 560Ti
Why?
Its better.
Gives better tessellation results, though the hd 7870 is a little more powerful,
you may just as well go ahead and go for any of the cards, they both are
fine.

 

[Celice]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127682&Tpk=14-127-682&nm_mc=EMC-GD100312&cm_mmc=EMC-GD100312-_-index-_-Item-_-14-127-682

This 570 Just showed up in my inbox. Briefly looking around Guru3D, it seems a touch nicer, but I'm not so sure if it's a better deal. Thanks for the input so far though, guys I'm kinda leaning towards the AMD card, as I expect it to hold out a nice shade more in the coming years than the other two cards, but I'm not sure if the shade is large enough to consider from processing alone.

 

[EyeZ]

I have the 560Ti, it's a very good card.

It allows me to play the Crysis games on max specs, so you wouldn't go far wrong if you made the purchase.

 

[Minox]

I have the 560Ti, it's a very good card.

It allows me to play the Crysis games on max specs, so you wouldn't go far wrong if you made the purchase.

Crysis just used to be a badly optimised game, it's not actually much of a benchmark test since performance increases in hardware worked around the initial choke point issues.

 

[TheDreamLord]

560Ti is amazing. I max out every game I get, I have about 70 currently on this machine, and they go between 60 and 250 FPS and Minecraft can hit 400 randomly and stay at that for a few minutes. Most of the time Minecraft idles at 300 however.
I'd say go for the 560Ti, it's a great card and should last about 5 years, not bad for a cheap card compared to others.

 

[FireGrey]

I just bought a 7870 but havent tried it on any games other than minecraft yet.
If you're satisfied with AMD's drivers you should definitely get the 7870.

 

[geishroy]

I've got the 6870 it does the job pretty well. I've been a nvidia guy for a long time but I figured I'd see what AMD had to offer and I can't really complain for the price I bought it when I bought it. physx on the nvidia card might be nice if you're into that sort of thing, for bl2 if you end up going with the AMD card and run physx it will end up going on your CPU and you might have some slowdown because of it. I'd like to know the rest of your PC specs before recommending anything to you though =/

 

[Originality]

I've liked my MSI 560 Ti Twin Frozr II since I got it last year. Now I want the 660.

 

[Celice]

I've got the 6870 it does the job pretty well. I've been a nvidia guy for a long time but I figured I'd see what AMD had to offer and I can't really complain for the price I bought it when I bought it. physx on the nvidia card might be nice if you're into that sort of thing, for bl2 if you end up going with the AMD card and run physx it will end up going on your CPU and you might have some slowdown because of it. I'd like to know the rest of your PC specs before recommending anything to you though =/

I went ahead and jumped on the 570, and the 7870 had jumped up $60 since the original post. It was around $180 after rebates and sales. I tried offhanding the physx to my processor, but it couldn't handle the effects smoothly--it's an fx-4100 I got in a good budget build last christmas clocked to 4.2Ghz, supposedly quad-core, but I've heard it's more pseudo-quad and really dual under most conditions. I've been waiting for the nice rainy day to jump into the i5 range.

 

[qlum]

the 7870 clearly is a lot better than the 560ti even the most die hard Nvidea fanboy should go amd if this is the situation, if it where the 660ti different story but since its the 560ti Don't do it.
Physx is not really worth much and if you have a good cpu it can run most of it on cpu, I would even go as far as to say its often better to run it on cpu because it usually doesn't bottleneck and it does require quite a bit of the gpu otherwise.