What are the big (small) differences between these cards?

[tlgriffith3]

ATI 5850 vs ATI 6870
nVIDIA GTX 560i vs ATI 5850
GTX 570 vs ATI 6970

I've noticed that some cards are 2gb while most are 1gb and yet sometimes 2gb cards are equivalent (+ or -) to the 1gb competition. What kind of advantage does the 2gb have over the 1gb cards, and when will you actually notice it. Will you see a difference 3 years down the road on some new game?

I'm primarily looking for performance and tempature/overheating differences between the cards

Am I wrong to assume that a crossfire of the 5850's would be better than any of these cards standalone other than the fact they will run a little hotter

 

[COLGeek]

The performance difference between a 1GB and 2GB GPU, with today's software, is minimal. 3 years from now, one can assume that a difference will be more noticeable/significant. That being said, if the price difference is not an issue, go with more memory now if you plan to use the GPU for a longer period, as you are suggesting.

For research info, I suggest you read the article at MaximumPC.com I linked below. Pretty good summary analysis of the GPUs you are asking about.

Last, I don't think 2 CFed 5850s will outperform the 570 nor the 6970. However, 2 5850s in CF do perform quite well.

So, what is your budget? And, what do you have now?



http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/amd_vs_nvidia_10_videocards_go_head--head

 

[wolfram23]

CF 5850s would be pretty close to 6970 performance, but that 2gb can help. I think right now not too many games can use that extra VRAM on a 1080p monitor unless you also have some mods to increase the visuals. I know I ran into issues with STALKER because of that and also Metro 2033 you need lots of VRAM to use both DoF and 4xMSAA.

Mostly tho more than 1gb VRAM is good for eyefinity set ups. It definitely is going to be put to use there.

I like my CF 5850s a lot and they play any game at max, 1080p, but if I were in your shoes I'd look at the 6950/6970 (I only list the 6950 because you can usually BIOS flash it into a 6970, and save a little money).

A 6870 is pretty close to a 5850. But it has better CF scaling and tesslation performance. CF6870s perform close to CF5870s.

A 560 Ti should be quite a bit faster than a 5850, actually it's pretty much on par with a 5870.