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Graphics GTX570 or ATI/AMD6970?

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by Siwini, 18 Dec 2010.

  1. Siwini

    Siwini What is 4+no.5?

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    I am looking for the upgrade, but reading bit-tech review of 6970 is heartbreaking. So I am strongly thinking about getting 570GTX. Why 570? Well because I am kind of on budget and $400.00 is my limit at this time. I am not a heavy gamer, but I do watch a lot of blu-ray so it is essential that new card 3D/HD blu-ray capable 1080P/HDMI 1.4a all that good stuff. I do enjoy action games once in a while such as Black Ops, Call of Duty, Bad Company 2, Counter Strike etc. I have 6870, but I am so tired of fighting with AMD shitty drivers and AMD tech supports aren’t helping much either. I don’t know if many of you know, but 6870 got “pylon bug” (Displaying crazy horizontal lines across screen not to mention even slightest overclock is terrible and will crash your card) playing games just awful. I am getting rid of this thing and leaning more towards NVIDIA now I should mention that it is my second replacement of AMD6870 card. I thought 10.12AMD driver would solve the issue, but it didn’t. That really pissing me off! $280 for this card is overpaying in my book. Any advice is welcome.
     
  2. Marine-RX179

    Marine-RX179 What's a Dremel?

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    If you game at 1920 res or lower, then just go for the GTX570, as the GTX570 tends to do better in majority of the games than the 6970; if at 2560 res though, then 6970 will deliver better frame rate than GTX570 in majority of the games.

    Overclock should be better on the GTX570 than the 6970 as well.
     
  3. memeroot

    memeroot aged and experianced

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    anyone know if the 570 will come out in a 2 gig version?

    for 3x1900 framebuffers
     
  4. =DJ=

    =DJ= Torturing x86 since '86

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    Sounds like you've already pretty much decided to head to the green camp ;)

    I've had a 570 for a week - for me it was physx support that swung it. I got Batman AA when it was on offer through Steam in Nov and the extra toys with physx enabled really add to the atmosphere!

    However, I don't think there is a wrong choice here - 6950 for value, 6970 for a bit of future potential if you have a crossfire board, 570 for physx / single GPU or SLI boards...
     
  5. Siwini

    Siwini What is 4+no.5?

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    No problems with570? No lines? Driver is cool?
     
  6. =DJ=

    =DJ= Torturing x86 since '86

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    No, no and yes!

    I'm running mine at 2560x1600 and haven't seen any artifacts or lines or anything. I was considering a 580 due to the res, but just couldn't justify the extra £100 for a few extra fps (and the 570 will be cheaper to SLI further down the road). Also the 570 only needs 2 x 6 pin PCIe power connector which was also a factor - my Seasonic doesn't have an 8 pin, and another £130 on a PSU would have made the 580 even poorer value ;)

    The driver on the CD was the latest, which shouldn't have surprised me since they've only just been released but I think it is the first time I've installed a graphics card driver from the supplied CD in over a decade! :hehe: (Obviously I'm normally behind the curve!)

    I have the ASUS card and while I haven't explored the overclocking properly a quick suicide clock of 850MHz core / 4200MHz memory ran OCCT fine for an hour, so I expect there's quite a bit more to come if needed. (I don't usually bother as OC normally only adds a couple of FPS at 25x16 which seems hardly worth it).
    From reading other posts around the 'net most folks are able to get their cards 800 - 850 regardless of brand...

    The cooling solution on the card is excellent. The fastest fan setting is quite loud (similar to a single slot 8800GT at full chat that a friend had) but it has never ramped up to that speed in the default automatic mode. When I tried the overclock with OCCT I used a manually configured fan profile (slow/medium/fast/fastest) and it mainly kept in 'medium' with occasional bursts of 'fast'. Temps never exceeded 62c in the hour's stress test. In day to day use as my work system it is inaudible.
    This is much better than the 8800GTX I had before which regularly exceeded 100c at stock speeds until I fitted an aftermarket cooler!

    It does blast a tonne of heat out of the back though, so a bit of room around the back of the case would be a wise move...
     
  7. Spouse

    Spouse Spouse

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    :)

    Ebuyer x2 Saphire 6950's £450. Out preformes gtx 580.
     
  8. =DJ=

    =DJ= Torturing x86 since '86

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    ...although Siwini's P55 chipset will drop each card from 16x to 8x though, not sure how much of an effect that would have?
     
  9. Spouse

    Spouse Spouse

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    :)

    Damb should of read th:read:at.
     
  10. Ph4ZeD

    Ph4ZeD What's a Dremel?

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    Won't have any impact. HardOCP did a whole load of research on the subject and found that it made no difference.
     
  11. r3loaded

    r3loaded Minimodder

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    HardOCP did a test of PCI-E bandwidths, even running at 4x doesn't really affect the cards at all (this is with PCI-E 2.0).

    EDIT: Dammit, ninja'd!
     
  12. =DJ=

    =DJ= Torturing x86 since '86

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    Excellent! Actually while this thread has been progressing I've just stuck an 8800GT into my system (P45) as a second card for physx, and so far it's working out really well! (Batman AA running much better with the physx offloaded)

    Time for 3DMark11 again to see if there's much of a drop at 8x ...
     
  13. murraynt

    murraynt Modder

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    Do you not think A 570 GTX would be a waste if you are only playing CSS/Black ops/BF2 ?
     
  14. TrojanFighter

    TrojanFighter What's a Dremel?

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    Also curious

    I am also swithering between the gtx 570 and the 6870. . .I've read about a bit and i just cant pull them apart. I'm currently tempted to go with the nvidia card as I'm currently running a 3870x2, and have had a few problems with drivers etc in the past. I'm building a new rig though and am going with amd's flagship 6-core processor. . .is there any benefit in pairing an ati card with an amd processor, or do you think I'll be safer going with the nvidia?
    Cheers.
     
  15. Siwini

    Siwini What is 4+no.5?

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    Thanks all of you for your lovely comments. It looks like I am getting myself 570. I just hope it works in blu-rays as well as AMD claims to be.
     
  16. Siwini

    Siwini What is 4+no.5?

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    Would it be a waste? I want to invest in something good and that's worth it. I mean I bought amd 6870 and look what happened. Personally I don't think it's a waste murraynt
     
  17. murraynt

    murraynt Modder

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    I ment it would be a waste of power.
    Start a thread about getting that 6870 working.
     
  18. docodine

    docodine killed a guy once

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  19. Siwini

    Siwini What is 4+no.5?

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    You got the results yet? Lets hear it:)
     
  20. =DJ=

    =DJ= Torturing x86 since '86

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    With a single GTX570 in the system (i.e. running at x16) I got 4623 at standard clocks.
    With the 8800GT in there as well (i.e. the 570 gets kicked down to x8) my score dropped to 4308.

    Now, neither run was done very scientifically (e.g. first thing run after a clean boot, plus avg of three runs etc) so the 7% difference might just be a margin of error - but away from completely synthetic benchmarks it's clear that Batman AA runs much better with the additional card handling physx.

    x8 makes little if any difference :rock:
     

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