Check if your PSU does 24A on 12V. If so, get the 660. Everything above that is wasted money IMO. PCIe versions are irrelevant, about 2 FPS difference or so on high end cards if I recall correctly.

The PSU sticker shows 15-16A for the 12V-12V2 output lines. I need a better PSU... 😠

Radeon cards give more value for money. Also now they include two bundled games for free (Bioshock: Infinite and/or Tomb Raider/Crysis 3)

The card's model I have been looking is GTX 660Ti. They seem adequate for my needs. Also, it seems those newer cards require 2 slots space. I think I don't have that space (at least below the pcie slot). Why must be all so complicated?

EDIT. I was wrong. I have 1 slot space free just below the pcie connector. Heh, my ATK case is ancient too.

I checked and your 3870 has a TDP of 106. A 7850 is supposed to draw 130, a 660 140. You could probably still get away with that...

@vetz: Radeon cards suck 😀. Drivers where you can't even configure individual games without external tools, and that in 2013.

I agree. I am stuck with Catalyst 12.1 and they even broke Neverwinter Nights. Also, you cannot set custom resolutions yet (and you can under nVidia control panel).

I think I am getting the GTX 660 Ti. I do not neither plan to overclock nor playing with insane quality levels.

How can I notice is the PSU isn't enough?

@Vetz: I am getting a nVidia card. AMD is out of the equation for me now.

Yup, Nvidia's FXAA alone is worth it IMO. My old 9800 GTX+ still plays some newer games in full settings with it, has almost no framerate hit 😀 Unfortunately the promising FPS limiter doesn't seem to work for me...

You will notice if your PC shuts down, BSODs etc, if your PSU still has some basic safety features nothing will burn down though

By the way, thank you very much for the suggestions and for claryfing things up. It's been a long time since I changed my graphic card.

They suck? The drivers may have been bad 10 years ago, but it's different today. I've been having Radeon cards since 4850 and I'm happy with them. Never had any driver issues. You get much more performance for you money compared to "overpriced" Nvidia.

Anyway, don't want to turn it into a AMD vs Nvidia thread. Just me wanting to see some proof rather than words that they suck.

Yeah, I'll have to advise you to strongly reconsider. You could get a 7870 for quite a bit less and still have great performance, I think the 660 Ti is slightly better.
You're not posting the rest of your specs though and it would be shame if you were to buy a GPU and have the rest of the system bottleneck it.
Also, at what resolution do you usually game? What games do you usually play etc...

AFAIK PCIE 2.0's bandwith has yet to be saturated, so PCIE 3.0 is kinda meaningless. There are no incompatibilities between the two so you can use a PCIE 3.0 card in a 2.0 slot and vice versa 😀.

Just the fact that they don't release new drivers for some of their older cards (even DX10 generations) is unacceptable. NV released drivers for cards as old as GF6 (!) just until recently. And they improve their old cards with new features, like the FXAA I mentioned before. On ATI/AMD you can't configure games individually as I said. Then the disaster with Rage where that game wasn't playable on their cards for months. And I know first hand that GZDoom based Doom source ports choke on their "great" OpenGL support starting with Catalyst 10.x. I could go on...

Not a fanboy, but Nvidia is the better brand and that's why they give less bang for the buck. They've had their share of bad press too (bad chips) but the drivers are just way more refined...

I currently use an AMD FX-8350 CPU + an HD 7970 GPU along with an Antec Quad-Rail 1000 Watt PSU.

You can get by with a smaller PSU of course but here is what I have found.

The chassis matters, especially when using higher end components that tend to ouput more heat.

I currently have everything installed into a Cooler Master CM Stacker 830 chassis, huge full tower case with lots of room.

I have owned many nVidia cards over the years and still do.

I just prefer the AMD GPU's at the moment.

I also pay a little extra to get the non-reference designed boards.

Right now I think both Asus and Gigabyte put out the best cards, both for AMD and nVidia GPU's. There coolers are great 😀

Just changed my GTX580 for a HD7970.
GTX6XX are just a joke (as is the driver BS we read everywhere. I did GTX275, HD5870, GTX580, HD7970, drivers are the same. Small problems both sides, nothing important both sides)

In france :
GTX680 : 450€, 81%
HD7970GHz : 400€, 100% (yup, AMD respects dollar/euro parity. nVidia ... well, greedy dude is greedy)
Titan : 1000€, 112 (118% watercooled or with additional FANS).

(please don't respond to this with all the figures from sites who didn't test the titan once warmed up and at realistic frequency, or on bench table ...)

Now, if you actually want the GTX780 to be a 750€ equivalent of what should have been the 750Ti (as GTX680 is really a 450€ 660Ti+ in the first place) :

Don't worry about PCIE2.0/3.0, won't change a thing. Actually PCIE3 has to be registry activated on some platforms, and changes only performances for 2/3 cards SLI setups.
Also the 680 is quite gentle on PSUs actually, unlike the 580. It will eat up to 189W in games (better than 230W monsters like 580 or 7970), and even 500W shall be enough if it's good quality. If you have two lines of 16A each, it's not enough I think. Get an Antec HCG or something like that.
I'd stay clear from the 680. The 670 is 100€ less for 5% performance down. Depending on resolution, I'd stick to 670 over 660Ti (192 bits BUS, bad for future/High res/MSAA). If you're 1680*1050 or 1920*1080 no AA, then 660Ti is fine I guess.
Finally, modern cards tend to have coil whine. This should not be accepted as a fact if it's very strong, return the card.
As for brands, my advices are Gigabyte Windforce models, or ASUS DCU2 (my 580 was this model) if you want one inch better for two inches more expensive.

d1stortion wrote:

Drivers where you can't even configure individual games without external tools, and that in 2013.

Get your facts straight at least ...

sunaiac wrote:

d1stortion wrote:

Drivers where you can't even configure individual games without external tools, and that in 2013.

Get your facts straight at least ...

It seems they included this with version 13 just last month. Great news, one of the most basic features is finally available in 2013. What a pity that the X1950 Pro I still have laying around won't see any of this as AMD doesn't deem it necessary to release updated drivers for such an old and obsolete card... 😀

d1stortion wrote:

@vetz: Radeon cards suck 😀. Drivers where you can't even configure individual games without external tools, and that in 2013.

You obviously missed the driver tab labeled 'Presets' 🙄. Radeon cards are far from crap! They've come a very long way and the drivers are fine... No worse than nVidia drivers these days (which are not immune to problems).

d1stortion wrote:

Yup, Nvidia's FXAA alone is worth it IMO

My Radeon 7950 seems to work fine with FXAA enabled in games 😉.

eL_PuSHeR wrote:

I agree. I am stuck with Catalyst 12.1 and they even broke Neverwinter Nights.

Neverwinter Nights has been broken on many occasions with nVidia drivers... I couldn't play the game at all with my old GF 7600GT some years ago (using different driver releases too!).

If you're sticking with nVidia then a GTX 660 Ti or even a plain GTX 660 are pretty decent... I have a factory oc'd KFA2 (aka Galaxy) 660Ti in my living room PC and it's a decent card, but my HIS Radeon 7950 (Boost version) in my PC upstairs pretty much trounces it.

PhysX is quite impressive, but there's only a handful of games that support it and i don't know how many upcoming titles will use it? My Radeon 7950 can also run PhysX in software very well with Hawken (not tried it with other games yet).

F2bnp wrote:

Yeah, I'll have to advise you to strongly reconsider. You could get a 7870 for quite a bit less and still have great performance […]
Show full quote

Yeah, I'll have to advise you to strongly reconsider. You could get a 7870 for quite a bit less and still have great performance, I think the 660 Ti is slightly better.
You're not posting the rest of your specs though and it would be shame if you were to buy a GPU and have the rest of the system bottleneck it.
Also, at what resolution do you usually game? What games do you usually play etc...

AFAIK PCIE 2.0's bandwith has yet to be saturated, so PCIE 3.0 is kinda meaningless. There are no incompatibilities between the two so you can use a PCIE 3.0 card in a 2.0 slot and vice versa 😀.

I have an older AMD Phenom Quad Core (Agena - black edition) and 4 GB DDR2 800 RAM.

I mostly play Left4Dead 2, Legend of Grimrock, Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2, DOSBox...

I usually play at 1280x... or 1440x... resolutions without anything fancy (low-medium levels for anisotropic, fsaa, etc).

So far, this pc is running most games quite well for me.

And yeah I want to try nVidia for a change (it's been a long time). I am really annoyed with AMD drivers. Yes, I know both companies have issues but I have two nVidia cards at work and the drivers seem sturdier than AMD. Hell, I cannot even create a custom resolution for desktop with my AMD card.

Also I didn't like at all AMD putting into "legacy status" a lot of hardware, including mine, that is still working quite well. I think you can even install W7 on a GF6 card.

I think I am going to purchase a Gigabyte card (my board is also Gigabyte). There are other brands I don't know (Zotac...)

eL_PuSHeR wrote:

And yeah I want to try nVidia for a change (it's been a long time). I am really annoyed with AMD drivers. Yes, I know both companies have issues but I have two nVidia cards at work and the drivers seem sturdier than AMD. Hell, I cannot even create a custom resolution for desktop with my AMD card.

Also I didn't like at all AMD putting into "legacy status" a lot of hardware, including mine, that is still working quite well. I think you can even install W7 on a GF6 card.

I think I am going to purchase a Gigabyte card (my board is also Gigabyte). There are other brands I don't know (Zotac...)

I bought the 'KFA2 660 Ti EX OC' to use in our PC downstairs and it was one of the cheapest 660 Ti cards available at the time... The build quality and cooling are excellent! I think the KFA2 card is branded as Galaxy in the US and Canada (and probably anywhere else outside Europe). It comes factory oc'd at 1006Mhz (default is 915MHz) but i've seen it 'auto-clock' to over 1100MHz without breaking a sweat 😀.

If you play games like Skyrim with all the mods then you'll be better off getting a card with more than 2GB VRAM... Even BF3 maxed out can almost eat up 2GB of VRAM! I went with the 7950 for my main PC due to it's overclocking potential, huge memory bandwidth (384-bit bus), more VRAM and far superior DirectCompute abilities which games are starting to use more (take Dirt Showdown for example which runs like garbage maxed out on nVidia cards when compared to AMD cards).

It's your choice... I have current cards by both AMD and nVidia so i get the best of both worlds 😁... Definitely get a card with more than 2GB VRAM if you're going to be gaming at 1440p too! I'm not sure how well the 660 Ti (or plain 660) will cope at higher resolutions with it's slightly hobbled 192-bit memory bus?? Mine is paired with a 1080p screen so no need to worry about it 😀.