GTX 560 Ti Vs. GTX 570

[Drimus]

Hey all, I'm debating replacing the GTX460 I got recently with either of the two cards mentioned in the title. I used google to read up on which one performs better and the general consensus has been the GTX570 but regardless I would like to hear what everyone has to say. I should mention I recently upgraded my monitor which made my native resolution jump from 1440x900 to 1920x1080. More importantly, here are the questions I am looking answers for:

What does the core clock do?
What does the shader clock do?
What do stream processors do?
What is effective memory clock?
What is the difference between having a 1GB version of a certain card and a 2GB of the same card?
What is difference between the bits of a card, example being 256-bit vs 320-bit [I believe this is how fast data gets transferred but I'm not sure]

I did try to google for some answers to these questions while I got some info a lot of it was over the top and complicated, I'm looking for simple answers to make an informed decision. Thanks for your time.

[Tomsanity]

Hey all, I'm debating replacing the GTX460 I got recently with either of the two cards mentioned in the title. I used google to read up on which one performs better and the general consensus has been the GTX570 but regardless I would like to hear what everyone has to say. I should mention I recently upgraded my monitor which made my native resolution jump from 1440x900 to 1920x1080. More importantly, here are the questions I am looking answers for:

What does the core clock do?
What does the shader clock do?
What do stream processors do?
What is effective memory clock?
What is the difference between having a 1GB version of a certain card and a 2GB of the same card?
What is difference between the bits of a card, example being 256-bit vs 320-bit [I believe this is how fast data gets transferred but I'm not sure]

I did try to google for some answers to these questions while I got some info a lot of it was over the top and complicated, I'm looking for simple answers to make an informed decision. Thanks for your time.

I could answer some of those question but not all, but they won't be in depth, just the basics.

The core and shader clocks are what basically determines how well a card can run. The higher core and shader, the better performance.
With that down, you can easily overclock, upping the core and shader (usually intertwined so if you move one up, the other moves up as well, or on my gtx560 ti atleast) to make your 560 a 570. I have a msi gtx 560 ti twin frozr ii. I haven't yet found a reason to overclock the manufactor stocks settings (as in it comes at 880 core and 1760 shader, double the core), but when I do, I know the card overclocks well.

For the 1GB vs 2GB, the two GB is only basically utilized when you have like dual monitors or more because of the much higher resolution. Other than that you won't need more than 1 GB. (Kinda iffy on that one, but pretty sure I read it somewhere)

[Skelly]

What does the core clock do?
What does the shader clock do?
What do stream processors do?
What is effective memory clock?

They make pretty picture appear on your screen.

I don't mean to be rude, but I know a fair bit about computers and that is my working understanding of those aspects of video cards. Everything you need to know to make an informed purchase can (and should imo) be found from benchmarks. Comparing specs between cards doesn't help very much, and comparing specs between cards from different companies means nothing.

The one technical bit that is good to know, is that the VRAM (the 1GB or 2GB in question) comes into play when playing on higher resolutions or multiple monitors. I believe that 1GB is fine for 1080p while playing anything that is currently out.

[Jurwi]

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/330?vs=306

Benchmarks are better than thousand words about what those specs exactly do.

[Uggorthaholy]

They make pretty picture appear on your screen.

I don't mean to be rude, but I know a fair bit about computers and that is my working understanding of those aspects of video cards. Everything you need to know to make an informed purchase can (and should imo) be found from benchmarks. Comparing specs between cards doesn't help very much, and comparing specs between cards from different companies means nothing.

The one technical bit that is good to know, is that the VRAM (the 1GB or 2GB in question) comes into play when playing on higher resolutions or multiple monitors. I believe that 1GB is fine for 1080p while playing anything that is currently out.

More VRAM is better for higher resolutions, AND for multiple monitor gaming, especially at higher resolutions. IE - if you're running 2 1080p monitors for gaming, I recommend 2GB VRAM

[DeltrusDisc]

What games do you plan to play?

[Uggorthaholy]

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/330?vs=306

Benchmarks are better than thousand words about what those specs exactly do.

per this - the 570 regularly beats the 560 ti. The 560ti runs cooler, is quieter, and uses less power, and actually wins on 2-3 of the performance tests. All in all, the 570 outperforms it on the super intense games with higher settings.

[Chickensoup23]

per this - the 570 regularly beats the 560 ti. The 560ti runs cooler, is quieter, and uses less power, and actually wins on 2-3 of the performance tests. All in all, the 570 outperforms it on the super intense games with higher settings.

Indeed. When I play WoW, I get the same performance (or roughly) using a Radeon 5770 (80$ card) than with the 570 (300$+). Now with my 570 I can actually play The Witcher 2 and other graphics intensive games at the best settings, while the 5770 struggles to go past medium. Don't get me wrong here, but the 460 is still quite popular and good, and if you play games such as League of Legends, Starcraft & WoW, I definately wouldn't bother even upgrading until next gen, minimum. Now if you want some real power for some games such as Crysis, The Witcher or upcoming titles such as Battlefield 3 & such, now I would invest.

I'm not the kind of guy to spend on the highest end cards (I'd never look into, say, the 580 or dual-GPU cards), but I currently think the 570 holds its place and can run mostly (if not almost everything) at highest without a problem, and should be the current best bang for the buck as far as min/maxing goes for most games (except enthusiast tasks or games).

Good luck, the Gtx 570 is a great card (I have the 1GB HD 570 model from EVGA)

Chicken

[ccexpert]

You just need to look if the extra 100$ for the 570 is worth the extra frames. I got the 560 ti with a rebate, but I think it is slightly more now. I can tell you that it easily goes past 1ghz overclock so it is a lot of power for the money.

[Drimus]

Thanks everyone for your replies. I'm sorry I should've mentioned I only plan on using 1 monitor @ 1920x1080. Also should've mentioned that the game I'm buying the card for is battlefield 3. I did look at the benchmarks comparing the two on anandtech which brings me to the reason why I asked those questions. How can the 570 beat the 560Ti if the 570 has a lower core clock, shader clock and memory clock? Do the amount of cuda cores and the 256 vs 320-bit matter make that much of a difference? Last question I have for you guys is would an 850W PSU be enough to run double 570s?

[Adappy]

Do the amount of cuda cores and the 256 vs 320-bit matter make that much of a difference? Last question I have for you guys is would an 850W PSU be enough to run double 570s?

Yes. Basically, when it comes to graphics cards, (in most cases) whichever card has the most cores/shader processors (whatever AMD/ATI calls them) has the best performance (you can't compare Nvidia and AMD cards directly though, as they use different architectures... Nvidia has fewer more powerful cores, while AMD has more less powerfull ones) Clock speed can improve performance, but not as much has having more processing units (and a wider memory bus helps too)

And yes, a quality 850W PSU should be fine with 2x 570s

[Doylez]

An overclocked version of the 560Ti comes very close to a normal GTX570 in terms of performance. Also it's quite a bit cheaper. So it really depends on how much you want to pay for that extra bit of performance.

[Drimus]

well I don't know if mine is considered quality enough but it's a corsair tx850 v2