Have a question regarding a graphics card upgrade. I currently have an Nvidea gtx550, if I upgrade to a gtx 560TI or an amd 6970 would i be able to tell that much of a difference in graphics? I dont want to spend $200 - $300 and not see a great improvement for the money. I am running an amd fx6100 3.3ghz, gigabyte GA-970A-D3 mobo, 700watt ps. Thanks for any help.

You should notice a difference, it will definitely look better, even more with mods of course.

The AMD 6970 tends to favour quiet well in game benchmarks over the 560TI but it really does matter on which version you get of each.

By quality the difference will not be visible at all, the same image (only with bad ATI drivers you can get worse result). The only difference is performance, but almost all modifications related to graphics do not use much GPU power, they can't. With Creation Kit possible to develop another world, i expect a lot of performance problems with non optimized geometry, lights, shadows, etc, as non professionals will do that, so then you will notice big performance hit. First of all decide for yourself what desired frame rate is fit you, some gamers are unadequate and asking of 60 fps (like it's shooter Unreal Tournament or Counter Strike, ya? i'm fine with 23+) for "comfortable" gameplay. Screen resolution matters, if you playing at single screen 1920*1080 only. Don't expect too much difference in performance, if not using special mods like mine or not forcing antiasing to x16 (which is actually not visible without comparing in graphic editors, 4x is enough). GeForce 550 to 560 Ti for sure not the right update, not enough difference to pay, from faster/overclocked CPU you will get more. The only thing where you need a lot of power is complex fx from third party graphic modifications.

Personally, I'd go with the GTX 560 Ti (the upgraded one, that is). Benchmarks aren't everything, you know.

However, if you do go with the 6970, grab the 6950 instead. It can be turned into a 6970 with a new BIOS as the hardware between the two is identical. The only difference is the BIOS. It'd save some money that way.

This should give you an idea of how various cards perform. Keep in mind though that these benchmarks were done before update 1.4. It is still a good indication of performance though.

http://www.techspot.com/review/467-skyrim-performance/page6.html

if you can get something with lots of VRAM using GDDR5... like the 6950 2GB.... it's the current BEST BANG FOR THE BUCK solution on the market...

Im leaning toward a gtx 560 ti with 2gb....

yup your choice....

560 wins a few places.... the 6950 wins a few places ...

some places a 2gb 560 is considerably more.. strangely in some cases the 6950 2gb is more...

I just find it kinda funny reading these rediculious reports that "ati drivers svck" when they are neither worse or better than nvidia's..... that's of course totally disregarding nvidia's previous driver history....

Benchmarks might not be "everything", but when you have tests of real game performance as the benchmarks it gives you a good idea at how it performs in the way you expect to use it. I suggested the AMD 6970, mostly since is usually comes as a 2Gb model, so it's a lot of ram for Game like this where texture mods can really make this game show of the best. That is what really makes the biggest improvement with lots of mods to textures without any worry about running out of vram.

Of course you could also get the GTX 560 ti, that also comes in a 2GB variant, just it's not the standard version, so be sure to pick the 2Gb version if you do.
Not all of the GTX 560 ti comes with 2Gb (most are 1Gb), however it's a bit cheaper usually, with performance that is very close in nearly all areas. Some it's better, it often found to have better directx 11 optimisations in games that have catered to it and a few optimisations Nvidia has for it.

I can not add much on driver issues, nor understand why so many have issues with drivers, since I've had both ATI/AMD and Nvidia, never had an issues with either that were not very easily fixed. ATI/AMD and Nvidia have both had faulty drivers in the past and present, neither are perfect by any means.

When you will be 3d developer, then new experience will open about ATI drivers. NVidia also have a lot bugs, but they are rarely same bad. ATI users seems thinking that it's normal when game running at low framerate unless new drivers will be released? 11.11.11

I upgraded from a 560Ti to a 580 around Christmas time, and there was hardly any increase in performance for Skyrim. Got a good bit for other games, but I think Skyrim would benefit more from an upgraded processor or a heftly overclock on your current cpu.

From past experience, the engine does indeed appreciate a nice bump in CPU speeds. Going back to FNV, I saw a 15+ FPS increase (Went from 45 to 60, but it was V-sync'd.) when I went from 3.07GHz to 4.2GHz. The engine is very CPU based.

Granted that ati hasn't exactly been a strong opengl contender like NVidia or in the realm of Linux support..... it's not entirely bad..

Unfortunately due to NVidia's questionable tactics with several games and their development resulting in ati being purposely cut out and actually blacklisted in some cases without any official notice.... It's kinda hard to ati to wedge themselves into the developers seat to get some things sorted due to NVidia's questionable ethics.... threatening some developers of some games or 3d apps that they will remove their own products and money and their NVidia support completely if they so much as give an oz of support for the competitor. This should be totally ilegal, but mostly goes without so much as a mention.

I don't know how many times I've had discussions with some 3D game Developers that had clearly stated that they've created an ENTIRE game without ever EVER testing it/running it on the ATI video card at all... YES this does happen, I've gotten it directly from the mouth of some of the people doing work on even triple AAA titles.... Essentially being told to work with NVidia products, ensure that it's working 100% flawlessly on them, with total disregard to the ati product line. Whatever happens will happen is the going motto with ati, and they leave it to ATI to fix THEIR product in the end. Pretty terrible developing i'd say. Nvidia gets to sit back easy while ati's driver development team continues to slave over trying to fix the mistakes that essentially NVidia purposely implemented.

This goes back through more than an entire Decade where NVidia has even published documents slandering/lieing/being completely deceitful, handing money under the table to ensure that their competitors be it ATI or 3DFX or Power VR never get their foot in the door. Some of it is quite ilegal.. yet still managed to slip through the fingers.

Considering this, i'd say ATI has done a pretty amazing job. Doesn't mean that they haven't made some significant mistakes.. like removing the crossfire option for their videos cards with 2x gpu's on it.... that was silly. Or that fact that they eliminated one of the kings of their developers namely Terry Makedon (Catalyst maker) the one that brought ATI's driver development full 180 SEVERAL years ago now.

Well I went form a XFX 5870 to the new XFX 7970 and I can tell a huge jump in performance across these games.
Metro 2033
Skyrim with texture mods. (man does the game look great with some mods)
Age of conan
Star trek online.
So far Warhammer 40K space marine has looked amazing, along with Stalker (complete 2009).

I would say wait a bit for the price drop on the 7XXX series and get one of those, other wise I would pick up a 6970. I like my games to run at 60+ FPS when I can, and with the 7970 and its 3 gigs of DDR5 I have no issues running max settings and getting great frame rates.

sapphire's 6950 2gb twin fan video card has a very good chance of having the bios switch that allows you to turn it into a 6970 at the cost of a 6950 price... although there is a chance of it not working at 6970 mode.... the 6950 still performs admirably...

i know where there is a 75-100 dollar difference between a 6950 and a 6970 2gb model. I can definitely say there is very little in performance difference for skyrim.

You're in luck! http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/02/07/hard-choices-graphics-cards/: they narrowed the choice down to just four cards.

There are very few 6950's that can still do this, and they're hard to find.

Only get the 2GB version of the 6950 if it doesn't cost much more than the 1GB version and the VRAM runs at comparable clockspeeds. The performance difference is very, very small unless you're running resolutions above 1920x1200, and if the VRAM on the 2GB version runs slower you might not see any gain at all.

Personally I would wait for the mid range AMD 7 series to come out (or wait for Nvidia's similar offering).

Very true. We're right on the cusp of new hardware and price-drops on current-gen hardware right now.

Suggest you be more cautious with throwing that suggestion around anymore. The older reference 2GB Radeon 6950's that had the dual-BIOS switch were easy and safe to unlock...I have one, but these are not easy to find anymore as Softnerd mentioned.

It was only a few months after all the rage and excitement that non-reference models were released that had a high chance of not being unlockable and several didn't have the dual-BIOS switch anymore. I personally wouldn't dare to unlock a Radeon 6950 that didn't have that switch...can very well brick the card. Very YMMV situation.

Ah, sorry. I wasn't aware they disabled that work around.