GTX 580 or Radeon 5970 or other

[John Fish]

Hello,

My ststem is currently

Q6600 Quad core Clocked from 2.4 to 3.00
4 GIG corsair XMS memory
Stryker 2 extreme M/B
All watercooled including my GPU's
Main HDD Raptor 150 gig
Win7 64 BIT
Thermaltake toughpower 750W PSU
2 optical Drives and 3 other Hdd's

Budget not really a problem but I want value for money, I don't want to pay £100 more for a flagship card for 5% more power

I currently have 2 8800GTX's in SLI mode, and I think it's time to upgrade. PSU worries me slightly, is it powerfull enough for a top notch card.

I was thinking about the GTX580 as for many years I've been buying Nvidia without really thinking about Radeon espically with having the Nvidia 790 chipset on M/B

it's a minefield these days buying a GPU should I mix nvidia chipset with Radeon or stick with Nvidia, Nvidia seems to have the fastest single GPU BUT Radeon seems to outperform it in quite a few benchmarks.

I was thinking about 2 460's in SLI but then decided I'D rather buy 1 powerful card then maybe in a year or so time buy another for SLI when they are cheaper.

You guys know more real life experience what are your thoughts please

I hope I've included enough info

 

[wiinippongamer]

5970's are hard to find and are currently overpriced, gtx580 is priced accordingly in my opinion, it's quite a bit better than both 6970 and gtx480 (25-30%) and it's also priced 25-30% higher.

That PSU should be fine for either a single gtx580 or 5970, but you'll have to upgrade if you want to SLI later on.

Youc can use whatever cpu/mobo/gpu combination you want, it doesn't really matter if it's a nV or intel chipset with a AMD card. It's always better to buy a single powerful card rather than 2 weaker ones, less dirver problems, heat, power consumption and you'd give yourself an upgrade path.

Looking at your CPU there might be somewhat of a bottleneck for the gtx580 though it wouldn't be too bad. What is your monitor resolution? if it's higher than 1920x1200 don't worry about it, the higher the res the less cpu dependant games are .

 

[Kari]

You might wanna wait a month or two, the new dualgpu 6990 should launch in feb/march

 

[John Fish]

Thakns for your reply

monitor is 22" 1680 by 1050

Higher res less CPU dependant never heard that before how does that work out??

 

[17seconds]

If you have the money for the best video card available, I definitely recommend the GTX580. There is nothing like it at the moment. It is easily the fastest single GPU, and when you put it head to head with a 5970 dual GPU, the positives for the 580 outweigh the negatives for the 5970.

GTX 580
-excellent quiet cooling
-stable drivers
-much better DirectX 11 tesselation performance
-PhysX/3D Vision/CUDA
-better game compatibility
-top performance for a single GPU (even beats the 5970 in some)
-excellent SLI dual card charactreristics, including excellent scaling and very little impact on heat and noise

I have been very happy with my GTX580 (obviously), and would recommend one to you. You will have no regrets. There will be several games where you will be glad that you have the additional horsepower available compared to lesser options. You will really find the card to be quiet and easy to live with, even when pushing it to it's limits. For me, I wanted to have the best so that I never had to wonder if I made the right purchase, and I so that I never have to fiddle around with lowering any detail settings. In fact, I'm having fun trying to find more detail settings I can enable.

 

[HostileDonut]

If I were you I would buy two hd6950s (same price as GTX580) and then unlock them to hd6970s by flashing the BIOS. If the BIOS flash doesn't work, flip the switch on the side and you have your old BIOS. The BIOS switch only works once though.

 

[Kari]

The BIOS switch only works once though.

lol where did you hear that? The other BIOS is write protected so you cant flash that one, but sure you can reflash the other one as many times as you like... The key in the reflashing is to boot from the protected bios, flip the switch while running, flashit and boot from the newly flashed bios. and you can 'copy' the protected one back to the other one...

 

[linh6496]

5970's are not worth their price right now. It is much better to get a GTX 580 and another one later for CROSSFIRE or wait for the new flagship 6990

 

[HostileDonut]

Oh, okay, I didn't know that. Haha, well of course I do not know everything. I thought I heard that it only worked once. Thank you for correcting me.

 

[17seconds]

5970's are not worth their price right now. It is much better to get a GTX 580 and another one later for SLI or wait for the new flagship 6990

Or the GTX590. But seriously, with your other PC components, you should try to be reasonable. You are close, but not quite top of the line enough to match up well with the latest upcoming dual-GPU cards.

 

[linh6496]

lol sorry im just another ATI fanboy with an obsession for their vocabulary

 

[Mousemonkey]

If I were you I would buy two hd6950s (same price as GTX580) and then unlock them to hd6970s by flashing the BIOS. If the BIOS flash doesn't work, flip the switch on the side and you have your old BIOS. The BIOS switch only works once though.

Did you not read the bit about the OP having a mobo with an Nvidia 790 SLi chipset or did fanboyism blind you to that?

 

[HostileDonut]

lol sorry im just another ATI fanboy with an obsession for their vocabulary

Hahaha NICE! I love AMD! <3

 

[HostileDonut]

Did you not read the bit about the OP having a mobo with an Nvidia 790 SLi chipset or did fanboyism blind you to that?

Hmmm, yeah, I probably should have thought of that.

 

[HostileDonut]

Mousemonkey, BTW you are a fan boy too, so don't act like it is bad.

 

[linh6496]

to OP - You could do with a used high end Core 2 Quad or Extreme RIGHT NOW

 

[HostileDonut]

to OP - You could do with a used high end Core 2 Quad or Extreme RIGHT NOW

Why would he do that if he had an i7 950?

 

[Mousemonkey]

Mousemonkey, BTW you are a fan boy too, so don't act like it is bad.

So when did I recommend that someone get two Nvidia cards to run in SLi on a Crossfire board?

 

[linh6496]

HURR DURR HERPA DERP

Hello,

My ststem is currently

Q6600 Quad core Clocked from 2.4 to 3.00

 

[HostileDonut]

HURR DURR HERPA DERP

Haha, sorry, it was a different thread I was helping someone with when they had the i7 950.

 

[17seconds]

Why would he do that if he had an i7 950?

Are you even reading the posts, or are you just trying to score more forum points to the point that you forget which one you are in?

 

[HostileDonut]

So when did I recommend that someone get two Nvidia cards to run in SLi on a Crossfire board?

You just said it like it was a bad thing. I am nor trying to argue.

 

[HostileDonut]

Are you even reading the posts, or are you just trying to score more forum points to the point that you forget which one you are in?

No I wasn't, I just remembered the CPU from the other forum and then screwed up. Sorry, I am not trying to mess with people and "score forum points". I was just trying to help.

 

[17seconds]

No I wasn't, I just remembered the CPU from the other forum and then screwed up. Sorry, I am not trying to mess with people and "score forum points". I was just trying to help.

I was joking around, anyway. I thought it was funny that we are both tied at 560 points... for today.

 

[HostileDonut]

Oh, okay.