GTX 560 TI or 6950 2GB?

[Xerin7]

That was a good question about Skyrim. Has anyone heard whether it was being developed with a particular optimization choice between nVidia and AMD?

I haven't heard about optimization but it uses the Havok engine, so no Nvidia boost for Physx.

 

[onethreehill]

GTX 560 Ti is available with 2GB RAM

 

[skipsneeky2]

GTX 560 Ti is available with 2GB RAM

Doubt the extra 1gb vram is gonna make a difference even at higher then 1920x1080 reso.

I played with a 1gb model this week with games like bulletstorm and the hard reset demo and i could enable all the settings on that card on high.

But AA i couldn't set pass 4x or the fps would drop below my desired 60fps so i think for most games thats about all your gonna get unless its a old game.

Now cards like the 6970 2gb make more sense and i might purchase one over a gtx580 cause my 560 ti crapped out with ripped textures and blue pixels and had to return it.

 

[ransomlist]

BF3 might well use more than 1gb, as hated as the term future proofing is we have a new gen of consoles in the wings and when they arrive so will PC games that take advantage of this new gen of consoles given how the industry is now.

Just to muddy the waters, there are 2gb 6870's as well

If you want 2gb i'd go 6950, its swings and roundabouts between that and a 560ti in many games, but the 6950 scales better if you want to pickup another card in the future.

 

[toyota]

GTX 560 Ti is available with 2GB RAM

the gtx570 is about the same price or cheaper after rebate and will be faster in every case at 1920x1080.

 

[Joseph F]

I'm in the middle of an Oblivion playthrough modded all to hell, and can actually run out of VRAM with 2GB(!) if I don't pick and choose which mods are enabled. Of course this is also a very extreme case, in general I'd say the 560 Ti fits your needs just fine.

OT:
May I ask what mods you're using?

 

[toyota]

Thanks, hopefully the Galaxy card will be back in stock in the next few days at the same price.

its back in stock as of this morning...

 

[Mistwalker]

Doubt the extra 1gb vram is gonna make a difference even at higher then 1920x1080 reso.

While this is generally true, the one glaring exception is heavily texture-modded games such as Oblivion, GTAIV, and in all likelihood (as the OP mentioned being interested in) Skyrim.

OT:
May I ask what mods you're using?

I'm running just over 300 mods (using Wrye Bash to break the 255 active-mod limit) so it's pretty crazy, maybe I could PM you the whole list if you're interested. It's mostly stable. Most of the time.

But if you're wondering which ones suck up 2GB of VRAM, you really only need RAEVWD (Really Almost Everything Viewable When Distant) with the max viewable distance setting cranked up. Add in Qarl's Redimized hi-res textures, Qarl's LOD textures, HGEC bodies with Ozmo's hi-rez character skins (5GB of textures right there), realistic lighting, Oblivion Graphics Extender with any cocktail of shaders such as SSAO, and--the big one that I eventually disabled because it murdered performance in the Imperial City--was Better Cities.

 

[Medikit]

its back in stock as of this morning...

And I bought one! Thanks for your post

 

[skipsneeky2]

I'll be following this thread.

Had a asus gtx560 ti 1gb fail me and got my money back and now sitting on a old 9800gtx.

Now to make the right choice gtx570 6970 2gb or gtx580.

I think a gtx580 with only 1.5gb vram won't hold up to a 2gb 6970 next year and with BF3 with lots of af and aa used which i love maxing as much as possible.

Might lead me to 2gb 6970 or gtx580 cause most oced gtx560 cards can hit near 570 performance.