Widescreen Gaming Forum

Hi everyone,

I have 2 GTX 560 Ti 2GB plugged in SLI mode. On some games, it's impossible to play in surround mode with a decent FPS (I mean 20/25+ FPS), and sometimes the SLI is not exploited so only one card do the job. So I've to switch back on one screen instead of three.

I would like to upgrade for only one card if it's possible and leave the SLI (too expensive, too noisy, too warm). But I want to keep the surround mode with my three 22" DVI screen : 3 x 1680x1050 = 5040x1050 = 5,3M pixels. If possible I don't want to spend more than $260 (250 €).

First question : which cards can beat two 560 Ti and can deliver more FPS ?
Second question : which cards can do that for only $260 ?!
Third question : is it a problem for surround mode to plug three monitors with adapters DisplayPort <> DVI ? On the recent card, there is three DisplayPort to activate the surround mode but my monitors only support DVI.
Last question : is it the good timing to upgrade or do I have to wait the next generation of cards ? I only want Nvidia cards.

Thanks a lot !!

Less than 260$ hm..... thats only a GTX960 they're around 180 to 230.
Sadly there are not many benchmarks in the web for GTX 560 Ti SLI vs GTX 960.
I'd reccomend a 970 at least for Triplewide.

old cards to new on benchmarks is always annoying. you can usually find benches 1 gen up, but not much past. So i found some charts showing that 2x 560TI in SLI is pretty close to the performance of single a gtx 680 depending on how the games scale with SLI. and a 680 i can translate to current gen a 960. So that's close to what you have right now. So you need to go above that, you would want a 970 to get an upgrade.
Sadly the 970s still run over $300

However, you have a pretty sweet option here. Go second hand! The 780 are a full 1:1 with the 970 in most benchmarks.

Hit up ebay and you can find a 780 (non-ti) for about $250-275. that would give you a good 25-30% boost from where you are. They are 3GB cards, so while not as awesome as 4gb ones they still do just fine for surround. I have a 780ti 3gb and it's fantastic.

As for your question about DVI, it's getting pretty limited on modern cards, i have 2x DVI ports, 1x HDMI 1x Display port. But cards all vary by make/model. so even if you got a 780 you would need to check the ports on the back depending on who makes it. You can convert DP and HDMI to DVI without much hassle though, you can get adapters and/or cables cheap on amazon.

Thanks a lot for your replies.

I heard that Nvidia will release a new card this year, so I'll wait till then and maybe buy one of this new generation cards, or maybe one GTX980 Ti if the price will be lower than now.

Apparently, it's not a good idea to go to GTX970 or GTX980 because of the 256 bits bus, versus the 384 bits bus of the GTX980 Ti.

Sure we are not talking about a $260 card ! But it's really frustrated to play surround in low or very low graphic mode...