6990+6970 against 580 SLI showdown and review.

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LEVESQUE

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1000$ against 1000$. 2 cards against 2 cards. Even ground. Same price bracket, 2 PCIe slots.

Ouch. 580 SLI is coming out with a black-eye out of this. A real masssacre. And this with pre-release early 6990 11.4 drivers. Ouch.

Read it here, and discuss.

http://www.hardware.fr/articles/822-8/dossier-amd-radeon-hd-6990-carte-tous-records.html

Crysis 2560X1600, 8AA, 6990+6970: 59 fps, 580 SLI, 32 fps. DOUBLE the framerate for the same price. 1000$ against 1000$, 2 cards against 2 cards.

Metro 2033. 2560X1600 and 5760, 4XAA. Same results. 6990+6970 dominating 580 SLI. Same price. Early 6990 drivers.

http://www.hardware.fr/articles/822-15/dossier-amd-radeon-hd-6990-carte-tous-records.html

Stalker COP. 2560X1600 and 5760, 4XAA. Same results. 6990+6970 dominating 580 SLI. Same price. Early 6990 dirvers.

http://www.hardware.fr/articles/822-13/dossier-amd-radeon-hd-6990-carte-tous-records.html
 
Crossfire scaling for this round > SLI.

I like the reviews. Expect some ruffled feathers about 3 vs 2 gpus no fair whining. too bad no Battlefield for the review.
 
I love how you keep posting a couple of cherry picked slides showing off a nvidia memory limitation. 8x AA, really? Hey, other people can cherry pick:

Look how incredibly loud that 6990+6970 setup is!

IMG0031256.gif

http://www.hardware.fr/medias/photos_news/00/31/IMG0031256.gif


102 deg C? lol

IMG0031257.gif

http://www.hardware.fr/medias/photos_news/00/31/IMG0031257.gif

Wait, TWO 580s in SLI easily beats three AMD GPUs? Really?

IMG0031274.gif

http://www.hardware.fr/medias/photos_news/00/31/IMG0031274.gif

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http://www.hardware.fr/medias/photos_news/00/31/IMG0031320.gif

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http://www.hardware.fr/medias/photos_news/00/31/IMG0031283.gif

As a matter of fact, there are plenty of charts in that review that make the 6990+6970 look pretty poor versus the 580 SLI setup considering its 3 GPUs versus 2 GPUs. I could only imagine how dominating 3GB 580s would be. But ya, AMD has won the price/performance ratio if cost is a huge concern. I just hate people that cherry pick small items out of large reviews to prove their "point".
 
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Meh, if you can afford that setup then you can probably afford 2 waterblocks and watercooling. Better put: who in their right mind would stay with stock cooling with the loud furnace setup?
 
Vexerz said:
Meh, if you can afford that setup then you can probably afford 2 waterblocks and watercooling. Better put: who in their right mind would stay with stock cooling with the furnace setup?
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Ok, so toss another $300 in water blocks to the cost of the 6990+6970 setup. Noted.
 
Vega said:
Ok, so toss another $300 in water blocks to the cost of the 6990+6970 setup. Noted.
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Indeed. Goes both ways doesn't it? Add another $200 to the GTX 580 sli. I wouldn't touch either without watercooling. Too loud and too much heat.
 
Vexerz said:
Indeed. Goes both ways doesn't it? Add another $200 to the GTX 580 sli. I wouldn't touch either without watercooling. Too loud and too much heat.
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Not really. Plenty of people run 580 vanilla fine on air at acceptable sound levels. The 6990 in this review is some 70% louder than a 580 SLI setup.
 
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Vexerz said:
Indeed. Goes both ways doesn't it? Add another $200 to the GTX 580 sli. I wouldn't touch either without watercooling. Too loud and too much heat.
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Do you actually have 580 GTX SLI? I bet you don't. I do, and it's not that loud, and both of my cards run ~85C max overclocked and overvolted on the stock cooling. At normal clocks and volts they run very quietly and ~70s.
 
Rizen said:
Do you actually have 580 GTX SLI? I bet you don't. I do, and it's not that loud, and both of my cards run ~85C max overclocked and overvolted on the stock cooling. At normal clocks and volts they run very quietly and ~70s.
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85C and 70C? no thanks ! :D
 
Strange review. It looks like somehow the cards were locked into a 70hz vsync in one of the far cry slides.

The major point is that for a two-slot solution (stop looking at it as a 3gpu vs 2gpu battle), it is generally better than SLI 580's and at about the same price-point.

The subtler point is that you can get dual 560 ti's and get enough performance to do tri-screen gaming while saving $500+ if you're willing to kill a bit of IQ. Lets be real, at high resolution and across 3 screens theres little reason to pump up to 8x aa.
 
Vega said:
Look how incredibly loud that 6990+6970 setup is!
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Yep. I love how a guy with a Quad-SLI set-up is complaining about ''noise''. Alot of credibility here. :rolleyes: Still waiting for your waterblocks I think? CAN YOU HEAR ME OVER THE SOUND OF YOUR 4 X 580? Sorry for the shouting, but you must be already deaf. (just kidding here). :D

If you have a Quad-SLI set-up , it's only because of the PERFORMANCE. You TOTALLY don't care about the NOISE or power consumption. Pleeeeeaaase. So why now do you care about the ''noise'' of the 6990? Please explain that point.

So look at the performance of 6990+6970 compared to 580 SLI only. Forget the noise. Dude, you are in Quad SLI! And for the same 1000$, 6990+6970 is simply dominating 580 SLI. And with early pre-released drivers! Why is it so difficult to look at the slides? performance, not noise. Remember the guy with the Quad-SLI set-up for the performance?

Forget the sound and noise. Quad SLI is alot noisier. :) So why do you care about sound suddenly? Because it's the only argument you still have? BTW, it's not that noisy. Just read around. End-users are getting their 6990 in hands this week and they all say the same thing. Exagerated and overblowned issue by green drama-queens. Not worst then the 5970 or an OCed 580 SLi set-up. On OCN, a guy has 2X 6990 and says it's not that bad. Yes, 2. And probably that your Quad-SLI set-up is making alot more noise btw. :)

Wrong arguments. Good arguments in the Nvidia forum with your friends, but not here.

Next?
 
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Vexerz said:
85C and 70C? no thanks ! :D
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What exactly do you consider reasonable? My water cooled i7 hits 85C under load. All my video cards over the last 2-3 years, even mid-range cards like 4850s, hit 70+C under load. If that's too hot for you, you're on the wrong forum.
 
Rizen said:
What exactly do you consider reasonable? My water cooled i7 hits 85C under load. All my video cards over the last 2-3 years, even mid-range cards like 4850s, hit 70+C under load. If that's too hot for you, you're on the wrong forum.
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I guess so I've been watercooling all my sli + crossfire setups in the past.
 
LEVESQUE said:
Yep. I love how a guy with a Quad-SLI set-up is complaining about ''noise''. Alot of credibility here. :rolleyes: Still waiting for your waterblocks I think? CAN YOU HEAR ME OVER THE SOUND OF YOUR 4 X 580? Sorry for the shouting, but you must be already deaf. (just kidding here). :D

If you have a Quad-SLI set-up , it's only because of the PERFORMANCE. You TOTALLY don't care about the NOISE or power consumption. Pleeeeeaaase. So why now do you care about the ''noise'' of the 6990? Please explain that point.

So look at the performance of 6990+6970 compared to 580 SLI only. Forget the noise. Dude, you are in Quad SLI! And for the same 1000$, 6990+6970 is simply dominating 580 SLI. And with early pre-released drivers! Why is it so difficult to look at the slides?

Forget the sound and noise. Quad SLI is alot noisier. :)

Wrong arguments. Good arguments in the Nvidia forum with your friends, but not here.

Next?
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He's going with phase change. That will be a lot quieter than 4X fans going. Also, why couldn't he remark on the noise differences between the two setups, regardless of his own personal setup? The 6990 is a loud card, it's a lot louder than a 580.
 
Vexerz said:
[/U]

I guess so I've been watercooling all my sli + crossfire setups in the past.
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Watercooling video cards is a pain in the ass. Buying $250 of water blocks every time I upgrade video cards, no thanks. :( And my watercooled 5870s still hit ~65C under load.
 
Vega said:
I love how you keep posting a couple of cherry picked slides showing off a nvidia memory limitation. 8x AA, really? Hey, other people can cherry pick:

Look how incredibly loud that 6990+6970 setup is!

IMG0031256.gif

http://www.hardware.fr/medias/photos_news/00/31/IMG0031256.gif


102 deg C? lol

IMG0031257.gif

http://www.hardware.fr/medias/photos_news/00/31/IMG0031257.gif

Wait, TWO 580s in SLI easily beats three AMD GPUs? Really?

IMG0031274.gif

http://www.hardware.fr/medias/photos_news/00/31/IMG0031274.gif

IMG0031320.gif

http://www.hardware.fr/medias/photos_news/00/31/IMG0031320.gif

IMG0031283.gif

http://www.hardware.fr/medias/photos_news/00/31/IMG0031283.gif

As a matter of fact, there are plenty of charts in that review that make the 6990+6970 look pretty poor versus the 580 SLI setup considering its 3 GPUs versus 2 GPUs. I could only imagine how dominating 3GB 580s would be. But ya, AMD has won the price/performance ratio if cost is a huge concern. I just hate people that cherry pick small items out of large reviews to prove their "point".
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agree.. even though i can't stand nvidia. i'm still a realist. the GTX 580's limitation has always been the memory. gpu/shader wise its a friggin beast. we need some reviews of the damn 3GB cards. a single gtx 580 3GB card will probably be pretty close to 2 6970's at triple 19x12+ resolution. even now with the cost of the gtx 500 line of cards i can't figure out why nvidia would skimp so badly on the video memory? i mean really at $500 per card how much extra would it of really cost Nvidia to put 2GB of ram on the card instead of 1.5GB? it sure as hell wouldn't of hurt their profit margins. if anything it would of helped them. just makes me wonder what those idiots were thinking when they designed the card.
 
LEVESQUE said:
Yep. I love how a guy with a Quad-SLI set-up is complaining about ''noise''. Alot of credibility here. :rolleyes: Still waiting for your waterblocks I think? CAN YOU HEAR ME OVER THE SOUND OF YOUR 4 X 580? Sorry for the shouting, but you must be already deaf. (just kidding here). :D

If you have a Quad-SLI set-up , it's only because of the PERFORMANCE. You TOTALLY don't care about the NOISE or power consumption. Pleeeeeaaase. So why now do you care about the ''noise'' of the 6990? Please explain that point.

So look at the performance of 6990+6970 compared to 580 SLI only. Forget the noise. Dude, you are in Quad SLI! And for the same 1000$, 6990+6970 is simply dominating 580 SLI. And with early pre-released drivers! Why is it so difficult to look at the slides?

Forget the sound and noise. Quad SLI is alot noisier. :) So why do you care about sound suddenly? because it,s the only argument you still have? BTW, it,s not that noisy. Just read around. End-users are getting their 6990 in hands and they all say the same thing. Exagerated and overblowned issue. Not worst then thge 5970 or an OCed 580 SLi set-up. On OCN, a guy has 2X 6990 and says it,s not that bad.

Wrong arguments. Good arguments in the Nvidia forum with your friends, but not here.

Next?
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His point was your post was post was very skewed and that if he went on to a forum and posted what he did everyone would be in the exact opposite shoes your in. Everyone would go, GEE look how much better the 580 is! . .which isn't true at all. Both setups have weaknesses. He's not actually being serious, he's telling you to get real and post objective information instead of cherry picking for your fanboy benefits. You try to skew it further with your "2 cards vs 2 cards" as if you think nobody knows that a 6990 is two gpus. Nobody cares about the cards, if you were running three 6970s it'd be the exact same thing as a 6990+6970 and then that comparison would be "tri crossfire vs sli". I looked at that review and there were plenty of slides showing domination by the SLI, just like vega said.
 
Vega said:
Not really. Plenty of people run 580 vanilla fine on air at acceptable sound levels. The 6990 in this review is some 70% louder than a 580 SLI setup.
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I run my 580 SLi on air.
Fan speed 70% when I game in Surround.
Temp runs in the high 60 to low 70C and there is minimal noise. No more fan noise than when I had 5870 E6 cards in CF.

I read those slides....looked at the pictures, don't speak or read French....The FPS there are pretty bound up by memory limitations.....If you had 580 GTX SLi on the 3GB Palait models, I think it would be dead even.

If you remove the single 6970 extra card, the two set-ups are pretty much even game for game.

i agree with Vega....who runs 8X AA at these extreme resoultions? I have Surround at 6030 x 1200 and see no need for AA at all.;)

If your point is that AMD has made an advantage out of lower priced products, I will agree with that, but gaining 7 or 8 FPS in a game already at 60-70 FPS is by no means getting "slammed"......10%, meh.......50% would be getting slammed.

and please include the slides where the three GPU combo actually does get it's ass handed to it, sometimes by over 20 FPS......It just shows there are pluses and minuses all around.
 
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DOUBLE the fps in Crysis 2560X1600 4AA, and the guy with the Quad-SLI set-up complains about the noise? Not 10%, not 20% better, but DOUBLE the fps!

It's Crysis for god sakes! Double the fps for the SAME PRICE! Come on! Reality check guys! 3 months down the road, DOUBLE the fps of 580 SLI in Crysis. No one is happy about that? For the same price!

We should be applauding, not arguing!

Those green-glasses are blinding alot of people.
 
Great review. The stars of that review are the 6950 1GB and 2GB. Amazing performance for the price.
 
LEVESQUE said:
Yep. I love how a guy with a Quad-SLI set-up is complaining about ''noise''. Alot of credibility here. :rolleyes: Still waiting for your waterblocks I think? CAN YOU HEAR ME OVER THE SOUND OF YOUR 4 X 580? Sorry for the shouting, but you must be already deaf. (just kidding here). :D

If you have a Quad-SLI set-up , it's only because of the PERFORMANCE. You TOTALLY don't care about the NOISE or power consumption. Pleeeeeaaase. So why now do you care about the ''noise'' of the 6990? Please explain that point.

So look at the performance of 6990+6970 compared to 580 SLI only. Forget the noise. Dude, you are in Quad SLI! And for the same 1000$, 6990+6970 is simply dominating 580 SLI. And with early pre-released drivers! Why is it so difficult to look at the slides?

Forget the sound and noise. Quad SLI is alot noisier. :)

Wrong arguments. Good arguments in the Nvidia forum with your friends, but not here.

Next?
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It is interesting how you completely ignored the many tests in which a measly 2x 580 GPU setup not only matched, but out-performed the AMD 3x GPU setup in that review. In aviation, we call that "fixation/fascination" in which you only focus on something small that you "want" to see. You better hold onto your handful of winning 6970+6870 / 580 VRAM limitation slides for dear life. :rolleyes: Preview drivers? Really, your going to fall back on that as an excuse? Because nVidia hasn't been working on yet- to be released drivers for the launch of the GTX 590. :rolleyes:

Yes I have a Quad-SLI setup with non-reference air coolers (interim). You know what the sad thing is? My setup on air is much quieter than 2x 6990s. Do you even know how dB measuring works?

Lets see, I have extensive testing with the following setups: 4GB 5970+2GB 5870 Tri-Fire, GTX480 SLI, GTX580 SLI, Triple/Quad-Crossfire 6970s, Triple/Quad 3GB GTX 580s. And your testing experience? Does it go beyond cherry picking a few 580 memory limitation slides from an obscure French review site?

Like I said before, AMD currently holds the price/performance crown. They do not hold the ultimate performance crown. If you read the whole review in question, you can see the 580 SLI setup holding up quite well in many of the tests versus the 6990+6870 setup. You just decided to pick a few GTX 580 memory limited slides at high AA levels in which the higher memory AMD setup wins and come all over the web declaring some sort of "massacre" as you put it. Subjectivity versus objectivity is poor form.
 
LEVESQUE said:
DOUBLE the fps in Crysis 2560X1600 4AA, and the guy with the Quad-SLI set-up complains about the noise? Not 10%, not 20% better, but DOUBLE the fps!

It's Crysis for god sakes! Double the fps for the SAME PRICE! Come on! Reality check guys! 3 months down the road, DOUBLE the fps of 580 SLI in Crysis. No one is happy about that? For the same price!

We should be applauding, not arguing!

Those green-glasses are blinding alot of people.
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Your "red-glasses" are truly blinding you. The rest of the review points towards SLI 580s beating three gpus in some tests and 3 amd gpus beating sli 580s in other tests. If you think more heat + more noise @ same cost for one game, at ONE resolution, at ONE AA setting is worth it, then have your fun with your red-glasses. Most other people like good performance across a LOT of games.
 
Vega said:
It is interesting how you completely ignored the many tests in which a measly 2x 580 GPU setup not only matched, but out-performed the AMD 3x GPU setup in that review.
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Not at all. Did you read the first post???? I said with EARLY PRE-RELEASED 11.4 drivers. Non-optimized 6990 pre-release beta drivers. So it's normal! Crossfire profiles are not tweaked for now, since it's in beta.

So it's getting more impressive!

Since I read french, they are explaning in details each time why the 6990+6970 is not dominating. Because of the early pre-release drivers, and bugs with some games in the benchmark. They explain each of them one by one.

But for Stalker COP, Crysis (for god sakes, Crysis!) and Metro 2033, in 2560X1600 4AA, we get almost DOUBLE the framerate 3 months down the road after 580 SLI! For the same price.

I won't translate the review for you.

And you perfectly know it's because of the non-optimized pre-released drivers. Don't be an hypocrit here.

In 2 months, with proper Crossfire profiles, the results will be the same, just like Stalker COP, Metro 2033 and Crysis. 3 of the most demanding games on the market. 6990+6970 will be alot better the 580 SLI.
 
LEVESQUE said:
Not at all. Did you read the first post???? I said with EARLY PRE-RELEASED 11.4 drivers. Non-optimized 6990 pre-release beta drivers. So it's normal! Crossfire profiles are not tweaked for now, since it's in beta.

So it's getting more impressive!

Since I read french, they are explaning in details each time why the 6990+6970 is not dominating. Because of the early pre-release drivers, and bugs with some games in the benchmark. They explain each of them one by one.

But for Stalker COP, Crysis (for god sakes, Crysis!) and Metro 2033, in 2560X1600 4AA, we get almost DOUBLE the framerate 3 months down the road after 580 SLI! For the same price.

I won't translate the review for you.

And you perfectly know it's because of the non-optimized pre-released drivers. Don't be an hypocrit here.

In 2 months, with proper Crossfire profiles, the results will be the same, just like Stalker COP, Metro 2033 and Crysis. 3 of the most demanding games on the market. 6990+6970 will be alot better the 580 SLI.
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You do know Google translate works pretty good eh? You also want to know what the ironic thing is? All of those games that you mention run around ~2500MB VRAM usage at my resolution. The FPS of a 6990+6870 setup would plummet as it runs out of VRAM on my setup, just like what happened in those vanilla 580 test. Maybe I should go around the net saying how 3GB 580s "massacre" 6990s and 6970s at 13 mega-pixels! :eek:
 
he hwas a 5970+5870 so this could be a big break for him. anyways i had a 5970 and said screw it. now i'm loving my 580's in SLI. :D
 
Uh, isn't it going to be 6990 X 2 vs 590 X 2 or lord can they do 3 6990 and 4 590s? Might cause a blackout.
 
What I found interesting, if I read correctly......two 6970s performed better than three GPUs in a copuple of those tests!!

Are you also saying that the 11.4 Catalyst drivers were/are not intended for use by the 6990? Does AMD have the magic drivers that are going to allow these 6990s to dominate the landscape?

I'm happy they do well in Crysis, since I haven't played that game in.....let me guess, 2 years.

Metro 2033 was impressive. Cudos to the three GPU set up for winning that one.
 
Ok ok. I give up.

Double the fps in Crysis, Metro 2033 and Stalker COP at 2560X1600 4XAA, but screw AMD.

580 are so much better. *580 owner's ego-stroking each others and patting their shoulders.* Less noise, less heat, less problems with drivers... and 1/2 the fps in Crysis, Metro 2033 and Stalker COP. But that's not important. 3 of the most demanding games ever done. But how cares?

Same price, but 1/2 the fps in those 3 games. But who cares?

We prefer the noise and the drivers. Screw the performance improvement. Not important on a HARD forum. Attack the messenger, but not the message. The green-team is gang-banging on me, so I give up.

Kirk out.
 
Levesque, I see your point, and I agree with the point that GTX 580 SLi is not as good of a value as 6990 + 6970 Tri Crossfire, both at $1000.00.

I'm gonna share Vega's sentiment because you specifically picked 3 situations where the AMD cards come out on top, In that same review SLi beat tri crossfire and that's with only 2 gpu's vs 3 and with gimped 1.5GB Vram vs 2GB vram. Because of that alone they both walk away with black eyes. For a triple vs double setup there should be 0 scenarios where the triple loses.

I know your gonna say that the reviewers were saying that the drivers were buggy etc.. Honesly I have been using AMD since Cayman launced for the first time in a long time and it's not far from what I remember from my last AMD experience. I love these cards alot more than those cards from before but fact is AMD will ALWAYS have driver issues as presented in this article. My cards have issues with some games now, AMD will fix them, then adjust something in the driver months later to fix another new game and re-break the game they fixed before.

Does all this mean that I'm ready to sell my 6970 crossfire and get SLi.. Well no. I'm just gonna say that SLi has the advantage of more solid drivers, physX, cuda, and in this case, better noise, better temps etc...

Nvidia's drivers are far from perfect and I've experienced both camps thoroughly and nvidia clearly has an edge there. They simply have better game support PERIOD.

@ Vexers, I'll let the 2 AMD cards get water blocks for $300.00. I'll keep the GTX 580s on air but replace those models for 2 of the 3GB GTX 580s. $1300 vs $1300, 2 cards vs 2 cards, 2 pcie slots LOL

Winner (And I'd bet a kidney) GTX 580 3GB. Again if the nvidia solution didn't run out of vram it would have won every test in this review.
 
Lord_Exodia said:
Levesque, I see your point, and I agree with the point that GTX 580 SLi is not as good of a value as 6990 + 6970 Tri Crossfire, both at $1000.00.

I'm gonna share Vega's sentiment because you specifically picked 3 situations where the AMD cards come out on top, In that same review SLi beat tri crossfire and that's with only 2 gpu's vs 3 and with gimped 1.5GB Vram vs 2GB vram. Because of that alone they both walk away with black eyes. For a triple vs double setup there should be 0 scenarios where the triple loses.

I know your gonna say that the reviewers were saying that the drivers were buggy etc.. Honesly I have been using AMD since Cayman launced for the first time in a long time and it's not far from what I remember from my last AMD experience. I love these cards alot more than those cards from before but fact is AMD will ALWAYS have driver issues as presented in this article. My cards have issues with some games now, AMD will fix them, then adjust something in the driver months later to fix another new game and re-break the game they fixed before.

Does all this mean that I'm ready to sell my 6970 crossfire and get SLi.. Well no. I'm just gonna say that SLi has the advantage of more solid drivers, physX, cuda, and in this case, better noise, better temps etc...

Nvidia's drivers are far from perfect and I've experienced both camps thoroughly and nvidia clearly has an edge there. They simply have better game support PERIOD.

@ Vexers, I'll let the 2 AMD cards get water blocks for $300.00. I'll keep the GTX 580s on air but replace those models for 2 of the 3GB GTX 580s. $1300 vs $1300, 2 cards vs 2 cards, 2 pcie slots LOL

Winner (And I'd bet a kidney) GTX 580 3GB. Again if the nvidia solution didn't run out of vram it would have won every test in this review.
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Pretty much this. The 3GB 580s would massacre their AMD counterparts.
 
Butthurt!

Listen. No one is arguing. Your 6990+6970 setup spanks SLI 580 1.5GB in Crysis, Metro 2033 and Stalker Pripyat. Congrats. Comparing $1000 of AMD to $1000 of Nvidia, AMD wins (in the case of Crysis, Metro 2033 and Stalker Pripyat).

I'm in the market for a new multi-card configuration. If my only options were AMD cards with 2GB and Nvidia cards with 1.5GB or less, I'd opt for AMD without considering noise, heat, drivers, etc. However, 580 3GB is an option. It's about to hit the mainstream with EVGA jumping on the 580 3GB bandwagon in early April. Considering I can run 2 580s on air with decent temps and noise levels, it then becomes a matter of 580s on air versus AMD on water (which would require a major investment for me).

Temps and noise notwishstanding, find someone to run these same tests with an SLI 580 3GB setup and I'll be very interested in the results.
 
wheres this 8xAA at triple screen resolutions people are talking about? the only time i see 8xAA is at 1920x1200 (where it needs it to put a stress on these cards, and 2560x1600.

at 5760x1080 its at 4xAA but, still shows it without the AA as well...I don't really see the point of arguing "who puts AA on, and who doesn't" because no matter what SOMEBODY will always complain they didn't do something, and the complaint this time is they did it TOO much...


What ever, i'd still go 6950 X-fire over all the alternatives anyday.
 
LEVESQUE said:
DOUBLE the fps in Crysis 2560X1600 4AA, and the guy with the Quad-SLI set-up complains about the noise? Not 10%, not 20% better, but DOUBLE the fps!

It's Crysis for god sakes! Double the fps for the SAME PRICE! Come on! Reality check guys! 3 months down the road, DOUBLE the fps of 580 SLI in Crysis. No one is happy about that? For the same price!
Click to expand...

What's with the Crysis fascination? Yes, it takes a lot of graphics power, but does anyone even play it any longer? How about commenting on current, relevant games (the Metro 2033 win is a better example to use).
 
Very interesting thread, to say the least. I for one love these heated exchanges, it provides spice to a sometimes mundane forum :). In my case I am considering buying a 6990 and going tri-fire at my resolution of 2560x1600, but I am hesitant due to this issue of excessive noise reported to emanate from the Radeon 6990. I have zero experience in water cooling, so I'm a bit leery about getting into it.

Anyways, I can't for the life of me figure out why nVidia dropped the ball on the VRAM in their $500 flagship card. It certainly does seem that AMD won big this time 'round. For the sake of having a healthy video card market, I hope the green gets things straightened out. I am not partial to either company, my loyalty lies with the best overall product for the price.

Long live Radeon AND GeForce! It would also be nice if a third player came to the scene. I also hope LEVESQUE and Vega stay cool, you guys are two of my [H]eroes! Thanks for the awesome threads!
 
Vagrant_Zero said:
Pretty much this. The 3GB 580s would massacre their AMD counterparts.
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No. Not really, since it's still 3 GPUs against 2 for 1000$.

It would not double the fps, but 3 GPUs would still win. But by a smaller margin.

For those reading french, the reviewers clearly explains why the 6990+6970 was not winning in the other benchmarks, like with Crysis, Stalker COP and Metro 2033.

11.4 are beta pre-release drivers. So some games were not optimized, and Crossfire profiles were not working. That's all. B.E.T.A drivers.

But with non-beta drivers, the results would have been the same, just like Crysis, Stalker COp and metro 2033.

It's not my fault if the 580 1.5gb vanilla version is the most popular. They probably sell 10000:1 1.5Gb : 3Gb. So that review is pretty interesting, and relevant.

If people could, for 10 seconds, put aside their allegiances, and just look at the slides... Doubling the fps in Crysis, Metro 2033 and Stalker COP at 20560X1600 4XAA, compared to the same 1000$ set-up of your competitor, is no small accomplishment IMHO. I know it's difficult to do that. But we are all brother-in-arms here. :)

We can at least agree on that. And that they were using beta drivers. So it's really impressive. And the other games were not optimized for the Tri-Fire set-up. I think that 11.4 is a good sign of what's coming for AMD. The better they get, the harder nvidia will work to fight. So we all win.

Another thing. I never had any problems with my other Tri-Fire 5970+5870 set-up. That's not my ''fault'' either. ''Sorry'' for not having problems. It's working like a charm for me. So, for me, AMD drivers are working like they should. Sorry for those having problems with those. But Nvidia are not better in that regards. I remember the card-killer drivers not so long ago...
 
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LEVESQUE said:
Those green-glasses are blinding alot of people.
Click to expand...

Not at all, I'd applaud more if this weren't an over 3 year game that I've already played multiple times. And plenty of nVidia owners have already conceded that the 6900s are more cost effective. And when you put more memory in the 580s it's a different story. And this nVidia owner wanted S3D.

So yes the 6900s are more cost effective but when cost isn't an issue they aren't the fastest when you look at equivalent amounts of VRAM. I don't know why people are trying to make this into some sort of Red/Green thing as the facts are pretty straightforward without any fanboyism.
 
heatlesssun said:
Not at all, I'd applaud more if this weren't an over 3 year game that I've already played multiple times.
Click to expand...

Metro 2033 and Stalker COP are showing the same doubling of the fps at 2560X1600 4XAA also.

Those game are not relevant anymore? Why do people always bench them then?

Know any better more demanding games to bench instead? More demanding then Metro 2033? Please name them.

And sorry about the green-glasses comments. I shouldn't have. But the green gang-banging is getting annoying. :)
 
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