I'm going to be upgrading from a GTS 450 to a GTX 560 soon (yes, go ahead and take a minute to giggle at my expense), my question is, I have seen about a dozen versions of this card. The only difference I can see is that the product number in the description is a bit different, usually by 1 or two numbers. My question is which ones are good and which ones are bad? I know a fair amount about computers, but this I do not. I'm looking to spend no more than $250 on a 560 upgrade, but I just don't know which ones are the good ones. Like I said, there are a lot to choose from.

I am looking to stick with Nvidia also. More specifically the EVGA chipset. I don't know if we're allowed to post links here, but I have found some on Newegg and I would appreciate it if someone could help me out. If we can't post links, you can go ahead and send me a PM.

Thanks.

You could get this EVGA Superclocked 560ti GTX 1g model for $235 - its a factory overclocked version of the normal 560ti GTX.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130610


or you could go with the 2g model of the same card but not overclocked, to have more Vram for high end texture mods and everything else, but it is $280.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130683


IMO the slight overclock of the first one will not give you as much as the extra gig of vram, plus you can OC it your self if you want.

MSI > EVGA at least in my personal opinion I would say regardless of EVGA or MSI get a 560 TI here are a few I would buy.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127608
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127615

don't let the game sway you the ticket is void out of date

ASUS is a good brand as well and Gigabyte is quality I am just not a fan......stay away from other brands at all costs. If you plan to use it for a long time warranties might be something to consider they differ from manufacturer to manufacturer.

I was actually going to link that first msi card you showed also till i seen he wanted EVGA. I am going to build a system soon with the 2g EVGA model i linked, but i was very interested in the OC 2g MSI model.

Oh, Silly me, I didn't even pay attention to the MSI brand, is that a better brand than the EVGA?

I've got the Zotac 1GB basic one, and I can push it easily to 900 MHz core clock, 2200 MHz memory clock, with MSI afterburner with not a single artifact at all. It is very quiet too, until it gets to 70% fan speed. It can probably clock higher still, but it is insanely fast at the current speed. Bought it in August last year for $195, and had a $35 rebate and got a free version of Batman Arkham City with it. Rebate check took forever (16 weeks), but it got here this month. Amazingly prices haven't dropped much since then (and gone up for some manufacturers), and no more free games or big rebates. I agree that the 560 Ti will be faster than the my version due to the extra CUDA cores, but the extra $80 cost is not worth the added 10% performance for me.

The GTX 560 series has three distinct variants:

GTX 560 - this one is basically a reworked GTX 460 1GB with a higher stock clock, greater overclocking potential and slightly better energy consumption.
GTX 560 Ti - this is the same chip as the GTX 560 but with all 8 streaming multiprocessors enabled (the GTX 560 has 7 of 8 enabled).
GTX 560 Ti 448 - this is the same chip as the GTX 570 wtih 14 of 16 streaming multiprocessors enable

They go up in performance according to that progression. What are your other specifications (CPU model, power supply capacity in watts, monitor resolution)?

Moar vram, its what Skyrim craves. (well, what things like texture mods and what not + skyrim crave) Believe me, you're going to curse a card's 1GB limit as you start throwing those on and hit the vram roof. You know all those people talking about how awesome their cards are but getting stutters or jitters or flat out cramps? Yah that's vram being exceeded, don't be one of them, moar vram.

/I slightly exagerate, video games don't get cramps

Don't get me wrong EVGA is a great company as well I just use MSI Afterburner try and buy MSI GPU's.....my 8800 was an EVGA and it worked great for 3 years and is still working great in a friends rig.

More like CPU clock speed is what it craves (most). In its stock form Skyrim will rarely top 1024MB at 1080p.

Hence why I added the qualifier of 3rd party mods + Skyrim...and why would you buy the PC version of Skyrim and not throw those by the dozen into the mix Besides after a certain point the clockrate of the CPU stops being a factor and Skyrim does genuinely end up GPU bound, and believe me I pushed it to there quite readily

Are you playing at higher than 1080p? I can easily keep vram usage in check with using medium version (1024x1024) of the texture packs, which look almost identical to the ultra versions. Never have had to curse the 1GB vram limit yet.

With 1080p, multiple high rez texture pack's,(specially 4096 textures) various Gpu driver tweaks like AO/ High Quality texture filtering and different kinds of AA, INI tweaks etc etc, these things add up and yes the 1g vram will be gone faster than you think. I am talking fully modded/tweaked Skyrim, no one talks "vanilla". If was talking 'vanilla' then heck my 3.0 dual core with a 460GTX 768Mb and 4g ram can run Skyrim at Ultra and even some driver tweaks NO problem, start adding various texture mods though and that vram cap slaps you in the face. Yes Skyrim craves CPU power but the topic is GPU.

Unless you don't plan on heavy modding, which to me would be like buying an MMO just to play solo, it just don't add up.





edit- In my opinion an extra gig of Vram for $20 more is well worth it even if you do rarely use it.

All in All make sure you snag a TI

and

Make sure your PSU is sufficient for the card which if you are running a 4 series I would guess that it should be....card is big like most new GPU's so double check your dimensions as well but I doubt you will have an issue with either. Seems like if you have a 4 series your rig isn't too old.

The 560 (non-ti) is more than enough to play Skyrim on Ultra. Other games can take advantage of more powerful cards, but Skyrim isn't that heavy on graphics card.

Very true but why not just spend a bit more for a much better version of the card? It isn't a cheap card it is mid range best to go good brand best (imo Non pre OC) TI you can find with 5 eggs. If money is short the normal version is more than adequate. I prefer the MSI for the Nvidia cards due to the dual fans. ASUS has these configurations as well.

As Borielx mentioned its the combination of all those detail settings and yah large quantities of texture packs that can combine into large amounts of vram needed. Also the resolution yes indeed is a factor but as an experiment I just shifted to a 800x600 window and took a walk through whiterun, it broke 1GB vram needed within 30 seconds, that was again an 800x600 window. I'm also the sort that will tend to favour the 2Kx2K textures over the 4Kx4K and such but if OP is buying a new card they can at least give themself twice the vram capacity right off the bat and then Skyrim *and* those other games that chew on vram have a lot more room to play in.

You asked about resolution, yah I play at 5760x1080, vram is precious at that size.