SLI GTX 570 vs ???

[bookwormsy]

So right now. I have 2xGTX 570 in SLI. Problem is, they have VRAM of
1280MB. I wanted to play BF3 on Ultra but I the low VRAM is causing
stuttering at times. (Even dropped to 1 fps a few times)

What I was thinking, was selling these two cards, for $150-180 on the
forums, and buying a single card.


The question is, which card? I don't want to go over $350 if I can
help it, and I need enough VRAM to play BF3 on at least High with
60fps.

Any suggestions are welcome.

SPECS:
Intel i7 3930k @ stock (but can overclock if it'll make a difference)

32gb DDR3 1600

1250W Coolermaster PSU

24" monitor, 1900x1200

 

[blazorthon]

Anything that you buy short of a good 7950 for about $300 with a huge overclock is going to be a down-grade in overall performance, excluding the memory capacity boost of course.

For the 7950, I'd recommend this:
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/gigabyte-video-card-gvr795wf33gd

For around $200, I'd recommend a discounted 7870 such as this:
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/xfx-video-card-fx787acnfc

For more strictly in your budget, there's this:
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/gigabyte-video-card-gvr785oc2gd

However, both would be significant downgrades in overall performance, ignoring the memory capacity increase.

If it must be a Nvidia card, then say so and I'll change my recommendations, but overall, nothing from Nvidia would be able to match AMD options, although a GTX 660 would come close in stock performance to the 7850 I suggested (at a slightly higher price) and a GTX 670 meet the 7950 in stock performance with a loss in price and overclocking performance.

 

[bookwormsy]

I'm willing to take a performance hit. Like I said, my main concern is playing BF3 on at least High at 60fps minimum and I believe that's because of the VRAM.

I'd prefer NVIDIA, only because I do a good amount of video editing on Adobe Premiere which uses CUDA for rendering some effects, which I found to be nice, and I think that Folding @ Home runs better on NVIDIAs. (IIRC)

Other games I play: Portal 1/2, Supreme Commander 2, Counterstrike: GO.

None of those games are very taxing, so I'd be fine with a performance hit as long as my BF3 requirements are met.

 

[blazorthon]

OK: Maxing out budget:
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/gigabyte-video-card-gvn670oc2gd
Not too far behind two 570s, overclocking should let you get closer, but you're unlikely to quite meet the performance of two overclocked 570s.

Sticking near $200:
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asus-video-card-gtx660dc2o2gd5
This 660 isn't anything special either and is about on-par with the earlier mentioned 7850 overall.

IDK about the specifics, but I've heard that folding@home likes AMD's new cards more than any of Nvidia's cards and that Adobe's newest versions of their programs have been getting more and more OprnCL acceleration in which AMD's Radeon 79xx cards kick the crap out of any and all Nvidia Geforce cards in dual-precision throughput.

If you're open to an AMD card, then I'd recommend looking into further, but if not and/or don't care enough to look far into it, then sticking with Nvidia shouldn't hurt too much in comparison and would still be an upgrade over your current stuff, at least in gaming. My one concern is that in dual-precision math, the new Nvidia cards that use Kepler GPUs such as those that I recommended are actually greatly inferior to the older cards (even the 670 would be between a third and a fourth as powerful in this type of work as two 570s).

Yeah, Nvidia made a huge trade-off compared to Fermi GPUs when they made the Kepler GPUs

 

[Guest]

This 660 isn't anything special either and is about on-par with the earlier mentioned 7850 overall.

why do people keep saying that?!?!

the 660 is on par with a stock 7870
AMD Catalyst 12.11 Performance Analysis

i'd throw some benches of a MSI 660 hawk but the 12.8 drivers were used.

but please understand the 7870 would be a better choice when looking to come close to a 570 SLI performance, just me getting "picky" about passed on info . . .

 

[bigcyco1]

http://pcpartpicker.com/mr/newegg/gigabyte-video-card-gvn670oc2gd

 

[blazorthon]

why do people keep saying that?!?!

the 660 is on par with a stock 7870
AMD Catalyst 12.11 Performance Analysis
http://tpucdn.com/reviews/AMD/Catalyst_12.11_Performance/images/perfrel_1920.gif
i'd throw some benches of a MSI 660 hawk but the 12.8 drivers were used.

but please understand the 7870 would be a better choice when looking to come close to a 570 SLI performance, just me getting "picky" about passed on info . . .

I keep saying that because your review is outdated. Catalyst 12.11 has eight or nine versions and at least two of them were significant performance improvements with a few others being minor performance improvements and the rest being bug fixes. The reference 660 is between the reference 7850 and the reference 7870 with a slight lean towards the reference 7870 (EDIT: With current version of Catalyst 12.11, which is Beta 8 last I checked).

 

[coolermaster_72]

I recommend HD 7970 or the GTX 670..

 

[Guest]

I keep saying that because your review is outdated. Catalyst 12.11 has eight or nine versions and at least two of them were significant performance improvements with a few others being minor performance improvements and the rest being bug fixes. The reference 66 is between the reference 7850 and the reference 7870 with a slight lean towards the reference 7870.

yes the review is outdated but it is the last "valid" comparison for reference cards. the same can be said of nvidia drivers, they put out betas on close to a weekly basis but apparently they don't need the PR of releasing a driver that actually improves performance; that is what a recent release should do anyhow(?)

as an example:
GeForce 310.33 Beta Drivers Boost Performance By Up To 15%

Performance Improvements
We’ve increased performance in numerous games over the past year, and today we’re increasing performance yet again, with gains of up to 7.5% on the GTX 660, and 15.7% on the GTX 680. Other GTX 600 Series products will see gains also, though the extent of those improvements will of course vary and be further influenced by a user’s software and hardware configuration.

so IF you consider the ~ 7% improvement (that was proven) for the 7870 that put the 660 back ahead of the 7870.

but that is just PR and until it is replicated in real world testing; i take that with a grain of salt just as i would with any reported improvements over the last testing of the 12.11 drivers.

but lets look at those:
AMD Catalyst™ 12.11 Beta Driver

FEATURE HIGHLIGHTS OF THE AMD CATALYST 12.11 BETA DRIVER:

This driver introduces significant performance improvements for many games across ALL 28nm AMD Radeon™ HD 7000 Series products: HD 7700, HD7800 and HD7900.

Performance Highlights of the AMD CATALYST 12.11 BETA Driver

10%-15% more performance in Battlefield 3 in most cases
More than 20% in certain missions and sequences (Comrades)
Up to 7% more performance in Metro 2033
Up to 10% more performance in DIRT Showdown
Up to 8% more performance in Sleeping Dogs
Up to 12% more performance in Civilization V
Up to 10% more performance in StarCraft II
Up to 8% more performance in Sniper Elite: V2

well, it looks like considering the last known testing and then both AMD and nvidia claiming 7%-15% performance increases since; we are back to square 1; which is the posted benchmark.

 

[blazorthon]

yes the review is outdated but it is the last "valid" comparison for reference cards. the same can be said of nvidia drivers, they put out betas on close to a weekly basis but apparently they don't need the PR of releasing a driver that actually improves performance; that is what a recent release should do anyhow(?)

as an example:
GeForce 310.33 Beta Drivers Boost Performance By Up To 15%

Performance Improvements
We’ve increased performance in numerous games over the past year, and today we’re increasing performance yet again, with gains of up to 7.5% on the GTX 660, and 15.7% on the GTX 680. Other GTX 600 Series products will see gains also, though the extent of those improvements will of course vary and be further influenced by a user’s software and hardware configuration.

http://www.geforce.com/Active/en_US...s/geforce-310-33-beta-gtx-660-performance.png
http://www.geforce.com/Active/en_US...s/geforce-310-33-beta-gtx-680-performance.png
so IF you consider the ~ 7% improvement (that was proven) for the 7870 that put the 660 back ahead of the 7870.

but that is just PR and until it is replicated in real world testing; i take that with a grain of salt just as i would with any reported improvements over the last testing of the 12.11 drivers.

but lets look at those:
AMD Catalyst™ 12.11 Beta Driver

FEATURE HIGHLIGHTS OF THE AMD CATALYST 12.11 BETA DRIVER:

This driver introduces significant performance improvements for many games across ALL 28nm AMD Radeon™ HD 7000 Series products: HD 7700, HD7800 and HD7900.

Performance Highlights of the AMD CATALYST 12.11 BETA Driver

10%-15% more performance in Battlefield 3 in most cases
More than 20% in certain missions and sequences (Comrades)
Up to 7% more performance in Metro 2033
Up to 10% more performance in DIRT Showdown
Up to 8% more performance in Sleeping Dogs
Up to 12% more performance in Civilization V
Up to 10% more performance in StarCraft II
Up to 8% more performance in Sniper Elite: V2

well, it looks like considering the last known testing and then both AMD and nvidia claiming 7%-15% performance increases since; we are back to square 1; which is the posted benchmark.

You're only looking at beta 1 for 12.11, there have been 7 beta releases of Catalyst 12.11 and you're only considering the first which wasn't even the most significant. Yes, Nvidia has made significant improvements recently too, but not as significant, at least not according to the few online reviews (although I don't particularly like any of them that I've seen, they all measure in FPS and FPS is hardly any better than a synthetic compared to measuring frame latency) and my own tests.

 

[Guest]

You're only looking at beta 1 for 12.11, there have been 7 beta releases of Catalyst 12.11 and you're only considering the first which wasn't even the most significant. Yes, Nvidia has made significant improvements recently too, but not as significant, at least not according to the few online reviews (although I don't particularly like any of them that I've seen, they all measure in FPS and FPS is hardly any better than a synthetic compared to measuring frame latency) and my own tests.

beta 8:
same link:
The AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta8 driver can be downloaded from the following links:

AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta8 Driver for Windows® 8, Windows 7 and Windows Vista®
AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta8 Driver for Windows® 8, Windows 7 and Windows Vista® - with .NET 4 Support
AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta8 Driver for Linux

 

[dscudella]

Normally I would jump in and add my .02, but I've participated in quite a few of these "AMD v. NVidia" bloodbaths in the past couple days. I'm going to sit this one out.

*BEEP*

Ooh, popcorn's ready

 

[blazorthon]

beta 8:
same link:
The AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta8 driver can be downloaded from the following links:

AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta8 Driver for Windows® 8, Windows 7 and Windows Vista®
AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta8 Driver for Windows® 8, Windows 7 and Windows Vista® - with .NET 4 Support
AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta8 Driver for Linux

What's the point of this post? It doesn't even explain the improvements made in all releases of 12.11 and it clearly states in what it does say further improvements over the original release in some of the concurrent releases.

I'm not trying to make this an AMD versus Nvidia war, just explaining the current situation with these cards. Nvidia's only real problems right now for gaming are their pricing and memory buses. Fixing either one would solve this because the first would improve price per performance and the latter would do the converse. Nvidia isn't doing bad, just not quite as good (although in actual sales, they're still winning, but that's not the point in a purely technical discussion) in improvements. They're both doing incredibly well with these ridiculously high-paced driver releases.

 

[barto]

I agree with dscudella. The whole point of this thread is to help out someone out and answer their questions. Now there's a pissing contest going on.


Can't you guys just answer the man's question?


OP, I would honestly suggest a 670 GTX. The 670 is not too far off from a 680 or 7970. And, you can get it in 4GB versions which is plenty of room for large resolutions. Also considering the fact that BF3 is currently Nvidia's bread and butter, I honestly think that a 670 is a great choice. Now there are other games where AMD leads the race. With all the factors you listed, I think your have a simple choice.

 

[blazorthon]

I agree with dscudella. The whole point of this thread is to help out someone out and answer their questions. Now there's a pissing contest going on.


Can't you guys just answer the man's question?


OP, I would honestly suggest a 670 GTX. The 670 is not too far off from a 680 or 7970. And, you can get it in 4GB versions which is plenty of room for large resolutions. Also considering the fact that BF3 is currently Nvidia's bread and butter, I honestly think that a 670 is a great choice. Now there are other games where AMD leads the race. With all the factors you listed, I think your have a simple choice.

With current drivers, AMD and Nvidia are on roughly equal terms with BF3 with the 7950 versus the 670. Furthermore, the 7950 is currently on-par with the 670 overall while being generally cheaper and having one or two more free games than most 670s while having generally superior overclocking performance, hence my recommendation towards it.

The 670 is an excellent recommendation, but not quite as good of one overall.

Also, the 4GB models of the Nvidia cards are almost worthless. There aren't many situations where the 2GB models run out of memory capacity, but still have enough memory bandwidth to be able to compete with AMD and since the 4GB models have the same amount of bandwidth (less in some cases), that's not much of an advantage.

Overall, I like the 670 suggested by bigcyco1 earlier. It's two free games are still worth more than the $100 of three free games with the AMD cards and it's performance is comparable to the 7950 that I brought up and has comparable power consumption.

 

[Guest]

What's the point of this post? It doesn't even explain the improvements made in all releases of 12.11 and it clearly states in what it does say further improvements over the original release in some of the concurrent releases.

I'm not trying to make this an AMD versus Nvidia war, just explaining the current situation with these cards. Nvidia's only real problems right now for gaming are their pricing and memory buses. Fixing either one would solve this because the first would improve price per performance and the latter would do the converse. Nvidia isn't doing bad, just not quite as good (although in actual sales, they're still winning, but that's not the point in a purely technical discussion) in improvements. They're both doing incredibly well with these ridiculously high-paced driver releases.

the point was to show where and what information i had knowledge of however i did miss

AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta8 is now available, and includes the following updates:
(Please note that AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta8 includes all of the fixes found in previous versions of AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta)

Improves performance up to 5% in Max Payne 3
Includes single GPU performance updates for Far Cry 3
Improves CrossFire scaling for Planetside 2 (Crossfire scaling is still limited to ~30% at 2560x1600)
Resolves the Skyrim lighting issue (missing a lighting pass) for the AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series
Resolves the hang encountered playing Dishonored on the AMD Radeon HD 6000 and AMD Radeon HD 5000 Series
AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta 8 for Linux includes significant performance improvements for Left for Dead 2

5% in max payne . . .an undisclosed improvement in far cry2 . . . .bug fixes . . .undisclosed in improvement in linux playing left for dead . . .

thanks for pointing that out.

i am not looking for a war either - i will admit as far as having any "discussion" that you at least have some intelligent and thoughtful insight esp. compared to most. and i will also confess to completely agreeing to your POV with the competition and nvidia's state of affairs. personally i have the suspicion that they purposely hamstrung the first release of kepler so the refresh would be a vast improvement.

but even given it's memory bandwidth limitations in certain instances - it still provides some great performance depending on what prices and non reference card(s) is/are being considered compared to an AMD card.

with that and giving you the respect and appreciaton by reading your next/last post, i am exiting stage left in this peticular discussion

(but there could be an encore :lol: )

cheer

 

[burntpizza]

yes the review is outdated but it is the last "valid" comparison for reference cards. the same can be said of nvidia drivers, they put out betas on close to a weekly basis but apparently they don't need the PR of releasing a driver that actually improves performance; that is what a recent release should do anyhow(?)

as an example:
GeForce 310.33 Beta Drivers Boost Performance By Up To 15%

Performance Improvements
We’ve increased performance in numerous games over the past year, and today we’re increasing performance yet again, with gains of up to 7.5% on the GTX 660, and 15.7% on the GTX 680. Other GTX 600 Series products will see gains also, though the extent of those improvements will of course vary and be further influenced by a user’s software and hardware configuration.

http://www.geforce.com/Active/en_US...s/geforce-310-33-beta-gtx-660-performance.png
http://www.geforce.com/Active/en_US...s/geforce-310-33-beta-gtx-680-performance.png
so IF you consider the ~ 7% improvement (that was proven) for the 7870 that put the 660 back ahead of the 7870.

but that is just PR and until it is replicated in real world testing; i take that with a grain of salt just as i would with any reported improvements over the last testing of the 12.11 drivers.

but lets look at those:
AMD Catalyst™ 12.11 Beta Driver

FEATURE HIGHLIGHTS OF THE AMD CATALYST 12.11 BETA DRIVER:

This driver introduces significant performance improvements for many games across ALL 28nm AMD Radeon™ HD 7000 Series products: HD 7700, HD7800 and HD7900.

Performance Highlights of the AMD CATALYST 12.11 BETA Driver

10%-15% more performance in Battlefield 3 in most cases
More than 20% in certain missions and sequences (Comrades)
Up to 7% more performance in Metro 2033
Up to 10% more performance in DIRT Showdown
Up to 8% more performance in Sleeping Dogs
Up to 12% more performance in Civilization V
Up to 10% more performance in StarCraft II
Up to 8% more performance in Sniper Elite: V2

well, it looks like considering the last known testing and then both AMD and nvidia claiming 7%-15% performance increases since; we are back to square 1; which is the posted benchmark.

Nope, Forceware 310.33 beta did not change anything. Granted, its not a very good comparison as they reduced the settings for 660ti, hd 7870

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/11/12/fall_2012_gpu_driver_comparison_roundup/

 

[Guest]

I agree with dscudella. The whole point of this thread is to help out someone out and answer their questions. Now there's a pissing contest going on.

Can't you guys just answer the man's question?

#1 we did answer the guys question

#2 we disagreed and discussing why we disagree.

#3 sorry if you don't like it.

 

[Guest]

Nope, Forceware 310.33 beta did not change anything. Granted, its not a very good comparison as they reduced the settings for 660ti, hd 7870

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/11/12/fall_2012_gpu_driver_comparison_roundup/

well it isn't a good comparison to conclude if the 310.33 beta improved performance or not because the betas were the only drivers tested. you would need 306.xx drivers tested to say there was no improvement.