Hi all, time for a graphics upgrade from my GTX 275 ... Monitor is 1920 x 1200. So I'm thinking of choosing between GTX 570 and HD 6970. I guess these should give more than enough grunt at that resolution for now, and in any case the next step up from here from both manufacturers seems to be a lot more cash for not much gain. Between the two, Nvidia seems cheaper and quieter (Asus DirectCU, MSI Twin Frozr, etc). But other threads on this forum complain about a high proportion of bad cards (eg Instagib's thread). And the price advantage reverses in ATI's favour if I prioritise graphics memory. At my resolution I guess 1GB would always have been enough historically, but with Rage upon us, and maybe BF3, maybe it's worth paying up to future-proof texture detail etc (eg jimmyjj in WiryRocketeer's thread). The 6970 2GB is cheaper than the 570 2.5GB. The HIS 6970 Turbo reviews well but doesn't seem to exist anywhere (even for pre-order) except Overclockers, which makes me slightly nervous ... maybe I should just wait for it to ship more widely. That would also give time to fix the Rage drivers! So, three questions: 570 or 6970? Favoured make? And should I pay up for memory at this resolution? thank you!
GTX 570 2.5GB....The 570 performs very strongly and is an excellent overclocker, enabling to reach the stable level of just below a 580. In terms of make any good make...I prefer the MSI, Gigabyte or EVGA ones. You do need the extra vRAM, as plenty of games even now require it for the maximum settings to work well. The GTX is a little more expensive, compared with the 6970, BUT you do get an extra 500MB of vRAM. THIS EVGA one at £299 will do nicely and is only £10-15 more than a 2GB 6970. I suggest you snap it up! I actually am considering doing this myself....
Whilst we are talking vram i have a GTX 570 1.3gb does having free ram available make up for the short fall? I am running Win7 64bit with 8 gigs of ddr3. Sent from Bittech Android app
No The GPU is connected to the motherboard via a PCI express 2.0 socket...this speed is limited to only around 16GB/s, whereas the memory bandwidth of the GTX's own vRAM to the GPU is around 150GB/s. The GTX570 2.5GB is a better card because of its higher vRAM. However, higher isn't always necessarily better. Let me try to explain.... How much bandwidth a card has determines how fast it is....two factors determine this: Memory Interface and Clock Speed of the vRAM. The memory interface in the GTX is 320bits vs the 6970's 256bits. The clock speed is higher on the stock 6970 (1.3GHz) and hence it has a better bandwidth than the GTX570 (1GHz or so)...which explains why the 6970 is faster at some games. However, this is not all. However, the GTX570 outperforms the 6970 more often because it has a higher number of stream processors and stream clock speeds. However, you may have noticed the 6970 shines more at the higher end of the resolutions and at higher details and higher AA. The 5970 even outperforms the 580 at times. The reason for this is the higher vRAM. AT lower settings the vRAM has no significance and the speed of the card will depend upon the bandwidth and the stream processors. HOWEVER, the vRAM is very important for the extra textures and data transfers required at the higher resolutions, higher detail and higher AA. Hence, why the 570 is better at lower resolution and why the 6970 gets better at higher res and higher detail. That 2GB of vRAM is what makes the 6970 a better card at the higher details and higher resolutions. However, as the GTX570 2.5GB from EVGA is only £10-15 more expensive, it makes perfect sense to go for the GTX570 2.5GB version as the extra vRAM makes a huge difference. Games are getting more vRAM intensive. Whilst we should place more emphasis on a higher bandwidth, the vRAM becomes very important when we start gaming at the highest detail settings. I, myself have found I have maxed my GTX570 in the Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Athena playing at x32 MSAA with Vsync on....I have to tone it down to x16 instead... Hence, I recommend a 2.5GB GTX570 for the vRAM, and for its potential to overclock the memory/stream to make it a card close to the ability of a 580, which has a memory bandwidth of 192GB/s. Have a read at this article at Tom's Hardware...kind of explains what I said above with an example comparing 512MB, 1GB and 2GB cards and benchmarks. Its a bit old, so the actual numbers they are talking about are a little old, but its the same principle.
at 1920x1080 an evga 570 sc when overclocked will out perform a reference 580. tested it again today against my mates rig who is running gigabyte 580 in sli and every test we done my rig outperformed his. both of the systems are the same spec and clocks on the processor. in 3dmark 11 on performace he was getting 11250 where i was hitting 12300. he was a bit gutted that he had spent the extra money. but like i say yes you can overclock a 570 to 580 speeds but you can also clock the 580 higher.
Me too, if i have any issues i may sell my standard 570 and buy a higher vram edition! Sent from Bittech Android app
To be fair, i just got unlucky; it could happen to anyone with either vendor. When I buy a gpu, i like the idea of being as future proof as possible, but i also consider that i'll probably upgrade in a year or so. With that in mind, i usually just go for the tier just below the fastest single gpu card as they tend to offer good performance at a reasonable price. And i always try to get a card sporting a custom cooler fir noise/temp benifits.
Well im going to look at prices etc and maybe change it next year, my system is only three weeks old. Sent from Bittech Android app
No problem Good choise I'm also going to try and get my GTX570 swapped via Scan...I made a bit of bosh mistake...my head was full of ideas for upgrades later down the line....makes more sense for me to just buy a second 2.5GB 570 down the line for SLI and overclock the CPU/GPU in a years time or so. With 1.28GB vRam id have to buy a new card and my old 570 would have had to be recycled...
Just realised i don't have a box for my card eclipse didn't give it me when they built my system urge!!! Sent from Bittech Android app
