New Graphics Card - GTX 660 non Ti or 7850/7870

Timon83 · #1 11-22-2012, 08:47 AM

Hi Guys,

owning the game since the beginning, playing occasionally with a machine "fired" by an ATI 4850, I'm thinking about really getting into COD.
So I'm thinking about getting an GTX 660 or a 7850 / 7870 with 2 GB vRam.

I read, that the GTX 660 can not access ram at full speed if the ram is filled with more than 1,5 GB. I wonder how the impact on performance is. Does anybody have any experience with the GTX 660?

I prefer a quite and cool system. Therefore overclocking is not really an option. The new graphics card should be silent or barely hearable.
Also I don't want to spend more than 230 Eur. I know that my CPU is a bottleneck for any better graphics cards and I'm not planning on upgrading my CPU. I don't have to have everything on max.

Priorities:
- silent
- cool
- COD performance / compatibility
- price

These are my specs:

Q8200 native QuadCore @stock
4 GB Ram
24" TFT @1920x1200
80 GB Intel SSD
TM Cougar

Stublerone · #2 11-22-2012, 09:33 AM

In my opinion, I would say, that your CPU will be an issue and the impact of the card could be insufficient. But I am not aware of the cards that much.

For explaination: You have VRAM on the card and you have normal RAM on your pc mainboard.

In clod, the texture load and other VRAM filling things are quite high. At 1080p resolution it could be somewhere around 2 gb, which you will need. BUT: As soon as the card runs out of its own VRAM, in this case 2gb, it has to load from normal RAM, which as a much slower bus to the graphics card. This causes stutters. Also the cpu load on 2 cores are getting high and you normally need nothing else, but horsepower in GHz to solve that, as the game not sufficiently devide the workload for the cores.

At 1080p, 2gb vram on the card should be recommended, because it needs that amount. The second thing is the speed of the interface between graphics card and vram. I do not know the speeds of these cards, but in the 680 there is a much slower interface, than in the hd7970, which has 384(?) bit interface (i am too lazy currently to look up). So, the nvidia also has a disadvantage there!

Why is it a disadvantage? - clod uses a streaming engine, where content is constantly streamed from your hdd to your RAM and then to your VRAM to serve you with the much changing landscape, while flying through such a massive map with this massive viewing range.

So, every part in this chain can have influences in your performance.

Recommended for new invests:
1.) A new graphics card with min. 2gb, better 3gb or more for the future in gaming (cry engine could scale good and detailed up to an amount of more than 4gb ram usage).

2.) At least native quad core cpu with a high raw power (ghz).

3.) RAM will be ddr3 and should preferrably be also a bit faster. I think 1600 is common and also good enough.

4.) Your storage drive: At least the windows partition and the games should run on a SSD drive. This can create also a performance increase and it is fast in loading ( do not wanna miss this in my pc and I will only buy normal hdd for storage-> depending on pruce, I will also use ssd for data storage)

That are the influences and somewhere here you can find a thread, where you can see, how cpu and gpu behaves and at which border the cpu will bottleneck, because workload on the cores are getting messed up.

jojimbo · #3 11-22-2012, 09:39 AM

Clod runs well on my GTX 550 ti, as a nvidia user i would reckon the GTX 660 ti would be perfect, its a more powerful card than mine. i bought a 600w PSU to power the 550 though as 400w wont cut it, even though it says it will.

Feathered_IV · #4 11-22-2012, 09:53 AM

I bought an EVGA 660 (ti) about three weeks ago. It runs clod maxed out at a steady 55-60fps. Over London it drops to about 35, but still very doable.

Matt255 · #5 11-23-2012, 08:50 AM

I got a 660 Ti a few weeks ago.

I would say it's fast enough for CloD even at very high (but not maxed out) settings, but i wouldn't have bought anything less.

You can probably get a 570 or 580 GTX. That might be an option aswell (especially if you would consider buying a used card, you can get them really cheap). But i wouldn't buy those with less than 2 GB. And of course you might need a new PSU if you would go that route. You would get more performance for less money though.

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I think you will have problems because of slow CPU.You need at least 3.5 GHz CPU and 4 GHz is recomended one.

CloD doesn't make good use of the CPU. I have a Q9550 at stock settings and it's usually at ~60 % load in CloD, so overall, i don't think the CPU really matters much, aslong as it's not at very high load.

The graphics card makes a massive difference though. I went from a 460 GTX to a 660 Ti and it went from barely playable at very low settings to very playable at almost maxed out settings.

So instead of investing into a CPU or a CPU/graphics compromise, i would always go for the graphics card first.

(just talking about CloD here, not games in general)

Stublerone · #6 11-23-2012, 10:20 AM

I give up! Too many nvidia guys here.

But again: 7870 vs 660?:

Winner is 7870 by about 10-15%, with new catalyst 12.11, 20-25% could be in the range of possible increases. The 660 has a very low vram interface. It not influences casual games , but streaming engines can be affected by this low performing interface.

Bill of material indicates, that the ati cards are currently of much higher quality in the standard layouts, and also in most custom layouts.

The 7850 has no chance against the 660, but equals a 660ti, which was the intention. The 7850 is just a good performer for its price, not more.

Texture flickering or shadow flickering: partly the fault of the game, bit ati often had this problem with the last cards. It is mainly solved to a good amount, bit the speed trees in clod are a problem, which the driver currently not solves sufficiently.

But nevertheless: They know better. So you should go with the mainstream and buy a half video card from nvidia!

Sorry, but that is my opinion. Although I am also Nvidia boy, nvidia got owned this year! People, who do not see this, are not looking enough or do not want to quote, that their investment wasn't that good.

Longywales · #7 11-22-2012, 09:54 AM

Well i use a GTX 580 with 4GB 2133MZ RAM and a 2600k @ 4.8 and i can run this game perfect(ish) at MAX settings at a res of 1920x1080.

If you can pick up a second hand 580/570 off eBay, this will be much better performance than a new 660ti for around the same price.

Also, depending on your motherboard and if it can support a quad core CPU, try looking for a used CPU on eBay.

Timon83 · #8 11-22-2012, 10:01 AM

Thx for your Reply Stublerone.

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