I might add that refurbished is a lot different than used. Refurbished i would buy, I would not buy used electronics. Well, maybe if the used price was 10cents on the dollar :)

Again, make sure your power supply can handle whatever card you end up getting.

 

:huh:

You may want to look at the 660Ti with its 2G memory and the potential to have 4 monitors.. A Budget card with a wide view (A Matrox Tripe2Go /plus) + a 4th monitor.

 

Thats work more than $50

 

Manny

From the benchmarking at Anandtech, the 660 was delivering 88% of the 670's performance, at 75% of the price. That's a good value.

 

In FSX, of course, any difference would be minute.

I would reccomend a refurbished or used GTX 580. - You can find them on Ebay for 250 bucks. Also, you could pick up a GTX480 on Newegg for 220bucks.

 

Also I would like to add that I have never had a bad experience with refurbished products. My motherboard AND my graphics card are refurbished and they both work flawlessly.

I might add that refurbished is a lot different than used. Refurbished i would buy, I would not buy used electronics. Well, maybe if the used price was 10cents on the dollar :)

 

I've had bad luck with refurbished unfortunately. Mostly with phones, due to the fact that warranty replacements are more often than not refurbished. In my case, the original, new from the store phone will worked for 14 months without issue before breaking, the the manufacturer refurbished replacements had to be replaced 5 times in the next 8 months before my upgrade date. I've also had a similar issue with a CDJ I bought refurbished, though it was ultimately resolved without any cost to me, I had to have it re-refurbished twice before it would work correctly. That all being said the 480 might be a high performer, but its even older than the 560/70 and I don't think I'll be willing to reach that far back in time based solely on the fact that performance isn't everything and a lot of new tech is shoehorned into the newer models that the 480 just won't have.

 

Again, make sure your power supply can handle whatever card you end up getting.

 

:huh:

 

I have a 1KW PSU because I was originally going to buy a second 4870x2 to run in crossfire. Unfortunately, cost and the fact that the card couldn't really run FSX (my primary game) and the one I already had ate pretty much everything else for breakfast (its only just now starting to require reduced settings in modern games, and at least some of that is the memory fault), I never got around to it. According to Nvidia, I have almost double the minimum requirement of any of the cards that I'm considering.

 

You may want to look at the 660Ti with its 2G memory and the potential to have 4 monitors.. A Budget card with a wide view (A Matrox Tripe2Go /plus) + a 4th monitor.

 

Thats work more than $50

 

Manny

 

I have been wanting a third screen for a long time, but that isn't necessarily a deal maker, since I may never get around to buying it. That being said, this goes back to the newer vs. older tech thing I mentioned a little up in this post. I'm not well versed in what the 480 can do, but if I remember correctly, eyefinity on the ATI side (much cooler with up to 6 screens, but also that much less likely to occur on my budget) only came out with the 6xxx series cards, which are basically the same generation as the 5xx series cards.

 

From the benchmarking at Anandtech, the 660 was delivering 88% of the 670's performance, at 75% of the price. That's a good value.

 

In FSX, of course, any difference would be minute.

 

The thing that always bothers me about the benchmarks is that they rarely give a good indication of how they perform on average for games. My 4870x2 is a perfect example: At the time of purchase (it was a brand new card at the time), it was ranked lower than several other cards for benchmark scores, while at the same time ranking way higher than some of those cards in games (except FSX... <_<). It makes it difficult to choose the right one since you may end up with something that works great except for what you want it to. I'm also always torn between the fact that newer tech doesn't always mean better performance, while at the same time, better performance doesn't always mean its more future proof. Sure I could get a brand new GTX 480 for less than a GTX 560Ti, but its got older tech which may end up becoming a bottleneck for my rig when I start upgrading things like the motherboard / processor and RAM in the next year (still running a Q9550 clocked, but with a bad stepping), so I'm not sure if the extra performance is going to be worth the potential trouble later on. That being said, the things about the 660Ti that make it most appealing to me, namely the PCI-E 3.0, the 4 monitor support, the high number of cores, and the adaptive features built in to the chipset, just aren't available on the earlier models, so I'm drawn back to the question again of whether or not it makes more sense to take a little less performance for the potential improvement associated with new tech.

I know this may sound ridiculous but.... if you're REALLY on a budget, have a look at the 550Ti. Don't shoot me yet...

 

I'm planning on upgrading my complete system in December, but my old 8800 Ultra died last month. I didn't want to spend all the cash on the 580GTX like I want for my new system yet, so I picked up the 550Ti. Now the 8800 Ultra was already a big surprise with FSX. I could run fairly simple aircraft with the sliders almost maxed out. The 550Ti is miles better especially with anti-aliasing. In fact, heavy clouds just don't make a difference at all anymore. I'm now very CPU-bound of course but for a quick, budget replacement, you could honestly do a lot worse than a 550Ti.

Well, after some finagling and back bending, I've inched my budget up high enough to buy the 660Ti. The reasons being that according to this chart the 660Ti is only a slightly below the 480 and 570 and clearly beats the 560Ti. In addition this head to head comparison shows that it edges out the 570 in most areas. Over and above that, it has all the new tech and better stats which should make it just that much more future proof. Now the question I'm left with is which one to go with? Based on my budget and my desire to get the most for my dollar, I've narrowed it down to these three:

• http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127696
  
• http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130810
  
• http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814162120
  

 

The only real difference seems to be the manufacturer and the GPU / Memory clock speeds. The only nvidia card I've ever owned was nearly 10 years ago, and I can't even remember what it was other than GeForce, so I basically have no experience with the modern nvidia cards or their manufacturers. Can anyone give me input on which is better or worse? The clocks are all within about 5% of each other and I'm a competent overclocker anyway, so I'm not worried as much about that as I am in choosing the right brand for quality and durability.

 

Thanks again.

The reasons being that according to this chart the 660Ti is only a slightly below the 480 and 570 and clearly beats the 560Ti.

 

Woah.... Those charts are NOT right. Please do some more research before jumping to conclusions on an inaccurate benchmark.

 

As for your choice for the 660ti, great choice! I would recommend the EVGA. They have excellent tech support and great looking cards.

Woah.... Those charts are NOT right. Please do some more research before jumping to conclusions on an inaccurate benchmark.

 

Can you please point me to some contradictory charts? Ever since this conversation has been going on, I've been looking at charts, and while they are never to be taken only at face value, if you see a trend, its generally fair to say the trend is correct...

 

Here is another chart putting the 660TI in the mix with the 480 and 570...

http://www.digitalversus.com/graphics-card/graphics-cards-performance-index-tables-a584.html

 

 

Here is another chart putting the 660TI in the mix with the 480 and 570...

http://www.digitalve...ables-a584.html

 

That is a much better chart. The first one was completely off.

 

The 660ti is a great card and I am glad that you made that choice! :smile: