GTX 580 vs. ATI 6970?

Flyby · #1 04-09-2011, 08:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hellman1966

I'm looking at the 580 3gb. However, I seem to keep finding different builds of supposedly the same card!
The Palit looks like the best value. Link here http://www.ginger6.com/palit-pcie-p-...edium=Shopping

Anyone steer me in the right direction of the 580 of choice?

~S~

85FG_Wolf.

Oh! I see now. Here in the yard (U.S.) the 3gb GTX580 is known as the GTX 590, and it has two GPUs on it. It costs around $700.00 USD and is out of stock. I didn't know such name variations existed, but your 3gb 580 with a single GPU (?) seems to cost as much as the 2-GPU 590 sold here. At least I didn't see a dual GPU listed in the specs of that Palit card. Seems sort of a rip, if so. Here's a link to the 590. It shows dual 512-stream processing GPUs. Probably sucks enough power to dim a city: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-630-_-Product
BTW, I guess no one has an answer to my question about the comparison in the link; which bold-type specs better suit CoD? I wonder if, at those performance levels, it makes a difference? Anyone? ANYONE!!!

Flyby out

Hellman1966 · #2 04-09-2011, 08:18 PM

Yeah, I can get one here for £600
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/p...-U0UAY0YZ.html

Will it really make that much difference having a dual core?

mattag08 · #3 04-09-2011, 08:47 PM

I'm glad you see my dilemma. I will agree that CloD is still in development for all intents a purposes and that coming patches may make one card a clear winner, but for now I'd like to see if there's already a disparity or a clear performance gain from extra VRAM over 1.5 GB and if we're seeing one card clearly beating the other.

To answer one of the earlier poster's questions, I do play other games on a regular basis, but IL-2 is by far and away the one I play most often. (Ex. In a week where I spend 20 hours on video games, about 10-15 will be IL-2).

Also, in response to another poster, I do not want or plan to get the 3GB GTX 580 or the GTX 590.

Meusli · #4 04-09-2011, 08:46 PM

If you can hold off till the end of the year, that is when the new generation of GPU's will be released. These ATI6900s and Nvidia500s are just remodels of the old GPUs and aren't massively more powerful than the 5900s and 400s. These next generation of cards are going to be immense.

Hellman · #5 04-10-2011, 10:46 PM

I wish I had that much patience. I think the single core 580 3gb is the best bet til then. At least I'll get a decent frame rate til the kick ass stuff is out.

~S~

Heliocon · #6 04-13-2011, 02:10 AM

As a person who is big on hardware this is what I would say (sorry if its being repeated).
I would currently go for the 580, it has better general DX11 performance while eliminating the heat and noise issues of the 400 series, nvidia also has very good driver support. The 580 also scales very well in SLI, although at high resolutions not using DX11 features, ATI beats out nvidia (but that would be using eyefinity). Normally ATI + is the lower price, but as a 580 owner I strongly recommend it. The only problem is the 1.5gb of ddr5 ram, which is alittle stingy and while I would stick with EVGA other companies are adding more ram now although it wont help unless the game is running in dx10.1 and win7/vista/64bit which will take advantage of the larger Vram.

T}{OR · #7 04-10-2011, 11:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Flyby

Oh! I see now. Here in the yard (U.S.) the 3gb GTX580 is known as the GTX 590, and it has two GPUs on it.

Not true. 590 is a card with two downclocked chips from 580 in SLI. Think of it as "SLI on a stick". The only problem is - 590 comes with such poor power regulation that many of those uber expensive cards have already died. Nvidia blames it on beta drivers, but there is more to it.

All dual GPU cards should be avoided IMO. Particularly for CoD.

Even if you do get it, it is SLI. So, no matter that you have 3 GB of VRAM total, you are only effectively using 1.5 GB as this is what is assigned to each GPU chip. And CoD doesn't support SLI/XF yet. Even if it did, you are left with 1.5 GB of total VRAM - just "twice as fast".

This is where 3GB 580 comes is. It is specifically custom built for SLI on higher resolutions.

1.5 GB of VRAM on HD resolutions is more than enough for almost every other game out there. But CoD seems to need more. Thus, since 580 is faster than 6970 - the choice is obvious, provided you have the money.

So far, I've seen 3 OM's offering 3GB versions. The latest and baddest (with factory OC) comes from Zotac:

ZOTAC AMP²! GeForce GTX 580