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[mikAE86]

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[TB]

A 770 will kick the living crap out of a 660Ti. End of discussion.

Out of curiosity, why are you only looking at Asus?

 

[Techy]

It's pretty obvious that the 770 will blow the 660 Ti out of the water in terms of performance, & keep in mind that the 770 is on sale right now. However, that doesn't mean the 660 is a terrible choice. Getting 2 660 Ti's in SLI will actually get it pretty close to the 680's performance, so going multi-GPU is another way. I would still go with the 770 because you also have an option to put that in SLI, and imagine the performance you'll get out of it.

 

[dan0543]

I have a 770, it pretty much maxes everything at 1080p and 60fps. If you're at 1080p, a 770 would handle it fine and adding another card for sli shouldn't create memory bottlenecks

 

[dice1998]

A 770 is essentially a GTX 680, so you're pretty much asking if a 660Ti is better than a 680. 680 is a larger number versus 660 so by the powers of deduction, it can't be the better card since it's 20 less than a 680.

 

[mikAE86]

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[20832]

Since ArmA 3 is pretty unoptimized almost every card will run pretty crappy on it, but the 770 will run just fine at playable frames when you're not overdoing it with the details and view distance.

 

[mikAE86]

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[TB]

With the minimum graphics card for Arma 3 being an 8800GT or Intel HD4000 and the recommended being a GTX 560, your 640 is right between those. Worst case, give it a try and if it doesn't perform as well as you'd like, upgrade.

 

[Bigbazz]

I'd get a Gainward, those Windforce coolers are amazing, really quiet and they run cool. I have a mate who sells a lot of graphics cards on ebay, he buys them used/returns and then he tests them at my house because he doesn't have a test computer, the Windforce cards are always the quietest running cards.

Nothing wrong with Asus, but know what you're buying because some cards are like jet engines inside your computer case, others can be whisper quiet.


700 series just took price cuts with the release of the 780ti, good time to grab one.​

 

[Pako]

With the minimum graphics card for Arma 3 being an 8800GT or Intel HD4000 and the recommended being a GTX 560, your 640 is right between those. Worst case, give it a try and if it doesn't perform as well as you'd like, upgrade.

With my 780's in SLI, ARMA maybe hits 45-50 fps. I beg for optimizations!!!! My buddy gets close to the same with his 570. Also note that while in game, I show CPU and GPU's grossly under utilized.

 

[Grayfox]

jet engines inside your computer case

Cooler master did something like that years ago.

 

[20832]

I'd get a Gainward, those Windforce coolers are amazing, really quiet and they run cool. I have a mate who sells a lot of graphics cards on ebay, he buys them used/returns and then he tests them at my house because he doesn't have a test computer, the Windforce cards are always the quietest running cards.

Nothing wrong with Asus, but know what you're buying because some cards are like jet engines inside your computer case, others can be whisper quiet.


700 series just took price cuts with the release of the 780ti, good time to grab one.​

You probably mean Gigabyte, not Gainward
The Windforce cooler tend to get quite loud under load, that's why I'd always recommend either EVGA or Asus. Both stay reasonably quiet while performing better than the Windforce cooler.

Also prices for the 700 Series will drop even further as the Maxwell architecture is right around the corner (February/March)!

 

[Bigbazz]

You probably mean Gigabyte, not Gainward
The Windforce cooler tend to get quite loud under load, that's why I'd always recommend either EVGA or Asus. Both stay reasonably quiet while performing better than the Windforce cooler.

Also prices for the 700 Series will drop even further as the Maxwell architecture is right around the corner (February/March)!

Oops you're right yeah. I always get those mixed up. I find those Windforce coolers are the best under load. Tested various different sizes of fan aswell as the 2 and 3 fan variants.

GTX650
GTX660
GTX660Ti
GTX670
GTX760
GTX770
GTX780

Those cards and multiple examples and every one of them was whisper quiet, (650 unsurprisingly the quietest, 780 had the largest fans, 3x and slightly larger than the fans on the GTX670's, still very good noise wise though). I had a Sapphire HD7970 Vapor-X (GHZ Edition) here a few weeks back and that thing was bloooody loud, It was easily 2x maybe even 3x as loud as the Windforce cards under load and unreasonably loud when idle. Originally it was going to be sold to another mate, but he tested it and said it was so loud it gave him headaches. The guy who then bought it on ebay mentioned he was already planning on replacing the cooler with a watercooling unit, perhaps he knew beforehand.

Most cards are pretty decent but In my experience the Windforce cards are the quietest and are usually stable below 50 degrees under full load. Obviously that will depend on the case used and the room temperature, but as a basic example.

 

[mikAE86]

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[20832]

Oops you're right yeah. I always get those mixed up. I find those Windforce coolers are the best under load. Tested various different sizes of fan aswell as the 2 and 3 fan variants.

Most cards are pretty decent but In my experience the Windforce cards are the quietest and are usually stable below 50 degrees under full load. Obviously that will depend on the case used and the room temperature, but as a basic example.

You basically took the words out of my mouth. I'm not going to say that the Windforce is bad, because it simply isn't. But compared to other vendors like EVGA, ASUS or Inno3D, the Windforce is the "worst", but the differences are so miniscule, that it doesn't really matter. The Windforce tends to get "loud" under load to maintain said temperatures, and the EVGA ACX Cooler simply offers the best package and even being much mor effective under load, but we're talking about differences in the area of 0.x and so it doesn't really matter. You can basically say:

Price: Gigabyte
Highest Performance: EVGA Classified & MSI Lightning, Inno3D
Most Silent: Asus DCUII, Reference Cooler, Palit

In the end, the performance differences are going to be minor and he's going to be very happy with either of the 770s

 

[Sharky.]

I run two Gigabyte GTX 670s in my system and would not hesitate to recommend their cards to other people. 👍 Fantastic cards, fantastic coolers.

20832, I'm not sure what you're on about with the Windforce cooler, it's much quieter under load than a reference cooler by virtue of being, well, a better cooler... Windforce and other similar multi-fan designs have oodles more cooling capability than a reference blower design and this allows them to run at lower fan speeds under load, which in turn means less noise. Simple physics.

 

[20832]

20832, I'm not sure what you're on about with the Windforce cooler, it's much quieter under load than a reference cooler by virtue of being, well, a better cooler... Windforce and other similar multi-fan designs have oodles more cooling capability than a reference blower design and this allows them to run at lower fan speeds under load, which in turn means less noise. Simple physics.

You're saying this as if I said it was bad cooler/card, which I clearly stated that this isn't the case. It's a great cooler, but there are simply a little bit better options. I'm not going to say that he shouldn't buy a Gigabyte card, because it's his choice and he's not making a bad one with buying a Gigabyte card.

I have two friends who both use a 770, one uses a reference - clock 770, and the other using the Gigabyte version. Noisewise, there has been little to no difference, and I do consider myself VERY senstive to noise. Temperaturewise the Gigabyte is about 3°C cooler while cooling an overclocked card. Also, the actual fan speed has not much to do with the actual noise created. The noise is created by the turbulences and the actual amount of air moved, vibration also factors in. I can have a fan spin at 800RPM moving the same amount of air than a fan running at 1200rpm. Both fans created about the same noise level, the actual fan speed doesn't really factor in as the noise is rather created by, again, the moved air. Also a closed (blower) fan style GPU Cooler can also reduce noise simply because of it's casing rather than the usually open design of the heatsinks from Gigabyte, Asus, etc.

 

[Sharky.]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-760-review-gk104,3542-6.html

In case you can't be bothered clicking the link, that page is an acoustic and thermal comparison of GTX 760s using reference, MSI, Gigabyte, Palit and Gainward coolers. Take particular note of the second and third charts.

Max recorded temperatures during a 10 minute loop of Metro Last Light, 22C ambient:
Reference - 77C (I suspect the card would be hitting its default thermal limit at this point)
Gainward Phantom - 73C
Palit Jetstream - 69C
MSI TwinFrozr IV - 61C
Gigabyte Windforce - 59C

As for noise, during gaming and "torture" tests the Gigabyte and MSI coolers were EIGHT decibels quieter than a reference design. At idle they were 2dB quieter. They're all factory overclocked cards too - excluding the reference card - which inherently means more heat and thus requires more cooling capacity (more airflow, higher fan speed, more noise).

Non-reference coolers are nothing like reference designs in acoustics or thermal properties.

 

[Bigbazz]

Well that test proves what I found from my experiences, the Windforce cards run coolest, quietest when idle and near idental noise to the MSI in gaming/torture. With both the MSI + Gigabyte WF cards being much quieter and lower temps than others in the test.

 

[Sharky.]

It's pretty common knowledge that the Asus DCII, MSI TF and Gigabyte WF coolers are some of the best custom factory coolers you can get, and the test that Tom's did confirms as much (excepting Asus' design, which wasn't in that test).