480sli or 5970 (not a vs)

[houdinii]

man iv been ready to order my system for 2 weeks now but im still stuck on 480 in sli or one 5970.

i know games that support sli/crossfire its an easy choice (the 2 480s) but if you also play games that don't support sli your *** outa luck, or are you?

one thing i was reading is that games that don't support sli/crossfire cant even use all of a 480 or 5970 is this true?? obviously wow doesn't support it or at least doesn't take advantage of it and doesn't need that type of card.

but what about ffxiv the main reason im upgrading. the benchmark doesn't show it using sli but if the game does and i already got a 5970 then im gonna be kinda pissed.

the other thing that's stopping me from choosing is all of these stories of nvidia still not having all of the bugs worked out. can i get a conformation on that from an up to date source?? are the 480s in perfice working order sli or alone along with the drivers and other software.

 

[yodi1980]

That is just a beta bench mark and it didn't even have xfire or SLI support just wait till the Final benchmark is out in another month or two and im sure they will.

 

[Rustyy117]

GTX480 SLi will be a fair bit faster than a HD5970 considering SLi scales well and almost all modern games take advantage of CF or SLi, I just got a second HD5850 and all my games I play scale well in CF (Dirt 2, FC2, BFBC2, Crysis, Stalker CoP ETC...).

Games that don't support SLI will still use the GTX480 to its fullest because its a single GPU, not sure about the HD5970 as it is crossfire 5870's (downclocked) just on one PCB.

I'm pretty sure FFXIV will support multi GPU setups when its released, however even if it doesn't it will still run great on either a single GTX480 or HD5970/5870.

 

[houdinii]

i think the only games i play that wouldnt use the 2nd card are wow and lotro but im figuring only 1 480 will max those out with ease

the other games i play are cod mw2 ffxi (soon to be ffxiv) dont know if they use sli or not

and once i upgrade dirt 2 and maby crysis iv herd that game was pretty cool but i don't know if ppl buy it cause its cool or to show there system will play it. i know they use sli



with that info you think it would be better/safer to get 480s in sli or the 5970
only bad thing about sli 480s is the 1200 watt powersupply you get if you plan on overclocking lol

 

[Rustyy117]

Yeah the cost of 2 x GTX480's + a 1200W PSU is far more than a HD5970 + 750W PSU, but as you haven't mentioned a budget I assume money isn't an issue.

The heat from 2 x GTX480's is going to be extreme, although the HD5970 isn't exactly a cool running card either. Just something to think about.

COD MW2 takes advantage of multi GPU setups and so does Dirt 2 and Crysis.

Personally I would go for a HD5970 onlt because my case is horrible for air cooling and would not handle 2 x GTX480's

If you have a good case for air cooling then GTX480's is deffienately the way to go.

 

[megamanx00]

Yeah, I'd go for the 5970 simply because of the heat and power issues. Up to you though.