New graphics card

[ajb]

With all this recent talk on the forum about hardware upgrades I have been looking at my own rig. Sadly I cannot afford to change the motherboard and CPU but I can just about afford to swap my trusty GTX 560SE for something like a GTX 1050ti. I run both FS9 and FSX and have no intention of moving to P3D in the near future. Is the 1050ti a good move or are there better in the same price range, £130-£150?

Andy

[Airspeed]

Hi Andy,
I've been looking on and off at cards which may soup up my aging rig.
There are apparent wide differences in the 1050 family, some being 2GB others 4GB, and this affects the price a lot.
It's supposedly the most cost-conscious of currently available cards.
My constant problem is that I don't know whether a new video card would be like putting a racing carburetor on a clapped out VW
The gurus here keep telling us, but I need to scratch it on the wall beside me.
I read that some cards need their own power supply!
The following may help:
http://www.trustedreviews.com/reviews/n ... e-gtx-1050

[DaveB]

Hello mate,

I was recently in a similar situation.. I'm still IN that situation really. Couldn't afford to go the whole hog so started looking at GPU's as a cheaper option and I looked at the 1050 as a possible candidate. My mobo is a PCIe2 chipset so any of the newer cards (7 series up) is going to be throttled back as they're PCIe3 so unless your mobo is '3' chipset.. you're going to have to suffer the same. In the event, I had a 760OC donated (which is also PCIe3) which saved me a few quid. The beauty of this over the 560Ti it replaced is that it has 4gig of ram and being an older card, it slotted straight in without the need for a bios update.. phew!! Performance wise.. I see little physical improvement over the 560 which is a little disappointing. My sim settings are identical but for the move up from 1024 to a 2048 texture buffer. Would you see an improvement over your 560SE with the 1050? I'd like to think you'd see some but I'd not get my hopes up too much. Much of the newer cards improvements are power consumption related and who really cares about that!! I reckon you'll need a bios update in order to use the 1050 too. Not sure how you feel about that but it scares the bejesus out of me

From what I've read, some of the 1060's have issues (something not associated with the 1050) then there are the 1080's which almost cost the same as a new rig on their own

Not an easy decision to make I'm afraid.
ATB
DaveB

[Airspeed]

While Dave ( ) was writing, I was looking at 980s as per ady's reply under the multiple display thread.
Though they were around 3 years ago, they're selling SECOND HAND for more than I've seen 1050s; also, the sellers are still calling them "the most advanced blah blah"
Are you any good at rolling into a ball and biting your toes, to see if a decision becomes clear?

[DaveB]

They're still 'top flight' cards mate and as you've seen.. command high secondhand prices. The trouble with anything secondhand is that you don't know what you're getting do you. One careful owner may in reality be one complete lunatic who's overclocked the poop out of it and played games online 22hrs a day for the last 3 years

The question is, what are you going to get for your £130-150 My Asus GTX560Ti cost more than that some 7 years or so ago If the current GPU is on it's last legs.. then he's little option but to start looking for a replacement. I think the 1050 series is the bottom rung of the ladder as far as new Nvidia cards go so they're affordable. I'm sure I've read that the 1060 series are on par with the top-end ATi but of course, the price reflects this. Unless cash is no object.. for a decent performance increase on a budget, the only other option is secondhand but as Mike has pointed out.. secondhand can easily be more expensive than low-end brand new. Glad I don't care what I look at anymore
ATB
DaveB

[ajb]

Hi Mike and Dave,

Thanks for your input which helps quite a lot actually.

The card I am looking at has 4Gb onboard; I think 2Gb would not make a change worth it. I know that FSX is CPU rather than GPU bound but I cannot afford to sort that yet, if ever. I also know that, having had the experience many times, that upgrading components to the latest and greatest in your affordability range usually gives only small increases in performance. My PCI-e is 2.0 so there may be a slight performance drop there if FSX can flood the port and I have some doubt about that.

My reasons for upgrading are that I want to use less power - the 560SE gobbles it and after an hour on the sim the room is like an oven and my wife keeps asking why we are using so much power these days - eek I also want to move from an old TFT 4:3 monitor to something bigger and widescreen that will give a better resolution than 1280x1024.

Secondhand cards are out of the question, been there, lost money and didn't even get the t-shirt Shiny new is the way to go for me. I will continue to ponder this one for a while yet. Money is always the big issue (my main hobby is 0 gauge model railways where the price for anything is getting ridiculous) so I will have to spend wisely.

Andy

[Tomliner]

Regarding the GTX 1060 issues,I believe Ben is doing some investigating into the situation. I'm hoping he may post any findings on here in due course. EricT

[DaveB]

Andy..

Looking at the specs of both the 1050 and 560SE.. you'd win on power consumption with the new card. The 560 uses 2x 6-pin and gobbles 150w at full chat and the 1050 consumes 75w so I'm guessing only one pwr connector. The 1050Ti shows a slightly better performance than the stock 1050 but what this means in real terms is difficult to quantify.

ATB
DaveB

[ajb]

Dave,

My 560 needed a big power supply with at least 2 (IIRC) large connectors. The 1050ti gets its power solely from the mainboard The ti certainly scores around 25% higher than the straight 1050 on the PassMark tests but I reckon this means close to diddly squat for FSX. It must, surely, run FSX a little better. The acid test will be the PMDG J41 at Scotflight Inverness where the best fps I can get at present is 11, completely unusable. If I do go for the 1050ti I'll update this thread with my findings - that is, unless the missus finds out what it cost

Andy

[DaveB]

You do that mate and good luck
ATB
DaveB