570, 6970, or 580 for my new build

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DivineDark

n00b
Joined
Dec 16, 2010
Messages
27
I was very good over the last week... I waited for ATI to show their card before pulling the trigger on my new build. However, it just seems to make things worse. I'm horrible at both making up my mind and not buying the best in the market even if I don't need it. So, I come to you, my brothers and sisters in arms. What would make the most sense?

CPU: i7 950
Motherboard: Rampage III Formula
RAM: Corsiar Dominator 1600 CL8
GPU: ???
Powersupply: XFX 850w Black Edition
Case: HAF X
Cooler: Thermaltake Frio

Money isn't that big of a deal, but I won't spend money I don't need to. I play at 1920X1080 for everything, I like my eye candy, and I LOATHE framerate dips... I can pick up the 570 locally for ~$329. The 6970 is online only at the moment and it's ~$389, and I can get a deal on the 580 and pull it for ~$475. That makes me lean heavily toward the 570, but the possibility of the drivers dramatically improving the 6970 looms over me, which makes me lean toward the 580 to just "Be done with it..." as my wife says.

My standard gaming fare are below:

World of Warcraft (most played by far)
Battlefield BC2
Resident Evil 5
EVE Online
Starcraft 2
Borderlands
Black Ops
 
DivineDark said:
I was very good over the last week... I waited for ATI to show their card before pulling the trigger on my new build. However, it just seems to make things worse. I'm horrible at both making up my mind and not buying the best in the market even if I don't need it.
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DivineDark said:
Money isn't that big of a deal, but I won't spend money I don't need to. I play at 1920X1080 for everything, I like my eye candy, and I LOATHE framerate dips...
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DivineDark said:
That makes me lean heavily toward the 570, but the possibility of the drivers dramatically improving the 6970 looms over me, which makes me lean toward the 580 to just "Be done with it..." as my wife says.
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I'm in the same boat, with pretty much the same specs for my computer. I've even toyed with the idea of getting an NVSurround / Eyefinity setup, but the cost of extra monitors as well as potentially a PSU upgrade along with another video card just doesn't seem entirely practical.

Having said that, I'm looking at:
  • 6970 - decent price / performance
  • 580 - best single card out atm
  • 6850 CF - seems to outpace the 6970 at about the same cost, but longevity may be an issue. What happens down the road with newer games?

Currently I'm on a 280GTX gaming at 19/12 and the card is starting to show it's age (WoW, Borderlands, Metro, etc). Part of me wants to save the money and see what the next refresh / drivers will do, but the other part of me says "just do it", so I'm very interested in hearing what advice you get. TBH, I haven't even looked at the 570, but have you considered 6850 in CF?
 
Really at 1080 any card will play those games.... but to prepare for future games...

If you can spend all the money you want go with the 580

I have been in a bad mood about the AMD/ATI drivers. but other wise I would suggest the 6970 and later you could get another for CF is you wanted.
 
Nickbaldwin86 said:
Really at 1080 any card will play those games.... but to prepare for future games...

If you can spend all the money you want go with the 580

I have been in a bad mood about the AMD/ATI drivers. but other wise I would suggest the 6970 and later you could get another for CF is you wanted.
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same, don't risk it.
 
I am currently trying to make a similar decision. I game at 1680x1050 (NEC 20WMGX2) and I currently have a GTX260. The 260 has been a FANTASTIC card, but I've been itching for an upgrade for a while now. I would like to have a card in which I can max out everything on most any game and still get 60+ FPS.

I play a lot of BC2, so I've been leaning toward getting a 570. However, the 6950 appears to be a damn good deal and I could always add a second down the road...
 
Those are the "smart" purchases for my resolution, sure, but I don't ever want to see dips under 60FPS. I'm willing to spend a bit more for a card that will allow me to completely max things out without ever (rarely?) having to worry about noticeable drops in framerate.
 
A single 580 won't cut it for a few games...

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_580/10.html
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_580/5.html
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_580/15.html

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...s/37789-nvidia-geforce-gtx-580-review-15.html

Some reviews show drastically different results, even for the same games, but are using different settings (Sometimes no AA).
Anyway, you're looking at an SLi/CF setup of some kind.

For BC2 specifically you're probably fine with less than a 580...
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_580/6.html
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4061/amds-radeon-hd-6970-radeon-hd-6950/18

edit;
This post was @Prophecy.
 
Hah, I would love a 580 but I don't think my wife would appreciate me spending so much on a video card. I will hear enough complaining if I spend $350. An extra 150+ would doom me.

I also considered going with dual 6850s, but I've never dealt with SLI/CFX before and I'm a bit leery of it. I'm afraid that I am one of those types that would notice microstuttering.
 
lol! I don't have to worry about the wife thing. Luckily, I'm one of those guys that beats himself up if I make a decision that I later regret. That leads to complaining. My wife doesn't do complaining, so she tells me just get what I really want and spare her the days of brooding and discontent... I very rarely spend money and only upgrade my pc about once every two years. Nothing compared to the money she spends on shoes and other clothes.
 
DivineDark said:
lol! I don't have to worry about the wife thing. Luckily, I'm one of those guys that beats himself up if I make a decision that I later regret. That leads to complaining. My wife doesn't do complaining, so she tells me just get what I really want and spare her the days of brooding and discontent... I very rarely spend money and only upgrade my pc about once every two years. Nothing compared to the money she spends on shoes and other clothes.
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if you only upgrade every 2 years or so, get the 580 and don't look back ...that what I would do and probably will do , very shortly.......
 
UtopiA said:
[W]hippedForum is that way
--------->
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Hah! To be honest she's pretty chill about the amount of money that I spend on games/tech. She didn't even complain (much) when I bought a $1500 subwoofer a few years ago. I just have a feeling that she will have a hard time understanding why I would want to spend half a grand on video card, especially when my last one was only $170 and has lasted me nearly two years.
 
I just buy it and don't tell her how much I just spent... haha... if she asked I would tell her, good for her that she doesn't.
 
Prophecy said:
Hah, I would love a 580 but I don't think my wife would appreciate me spending so much on a video card. I will hear enough complaining if I spend $350. An extra 150+ would doom me.
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lol sounds just like the situation I was just in. I was able to guilt her into me getting a 570 atleast for the bedroom computer. Eventually it will be 570 in sli lol. I play on the 6870 xfire in the livingroom when the kids are awake or she is at work. What I do is "act" like what I have is absolute crap when something new I want comes out. She gets sick of my fake complaining and lets me get it heh. I dont have much say with the money since I got a bad back and she brings home tons more money than me so this works. Anyways I would get the 570/580 because the 6970 minimum frame rates don't look good. I hear what you're saying about the possible driver improvements for the 6970 it bothered me in my decision also but I couldn't wait any more.
 
Buy TWO of either the 580 or 6970. If the bitches complain about it... pimp them out for the money to pay for them.
 
I was also recently in the same boat and decided to use a little of my xmas bonus from work to just buy two GTX 570s. I am going for a multiple monitor setup and it came down to xfire vs SLI and I like the nvidia drivers more. So it was settled. Coming from a 2GB 5870 that I loved dearly.
 
CJRP said:
I was also recently in the same boat and decided to use a little of my xmas bonus from work to just buy two GTX 570s. I am going for a multiple monitor setup and it came down to xfire vs SLI and I like the nvidia drivers more. So it was settled. Coming from a 2GB 5870 that I loved dearly.
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So how do you like your setup?
 
J Macker said:
Which subwoofer did you buy?

I bought the Epik Dynasty. It's great.
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Epik's give me a chubby. I loved mine. Got stolen last christmas when my place was broken into. Made me a sad panda. Thanks for bringing that up J. I'm going to go cry now.

Before I go cry, if money is no object then get the 580. Any of your three choices will work just fine.
 
Prophecy said:
Those are the "smart" purchases for my resolution, sure, but I don't ever want to see dips under 60FPS. I'm willing to spend a bit more for a card that will allow me to completely max things out without ever (rarely?) having to worry about noticeable drops in framerate.
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Hmmm that will be hard even on a 580. Depends on how much eyecandy you turn up but it is the fastest single gpu solution.

If you're not averse to dual GPUs - 2x 6950 or 2x570 will pretty much guarantee you have 60 fps at that resolution even with max eye candy in most cases.
 
I'm fully aware that I won't be able to get 60+ FPS on EVERY game maxed, even with a 580. I would just like to get 60+ on as many games as possible without spending over $400 :).

I'm not necessarily adverse to dual GPUs, but like I mentioned a bit earlier in the thread, I've never tried them before. Two 6850s cost around the same as a single 570 and perform better, but I'm afraid of any headaches that Crossfire may cause.
 
Get the 580 and overclock it - it scales and overclocks well.

The included heatsink seems to do a good job of keeping the 580 cool, whereas the 6970 doesn't have much OC-headroom, and runs fairly hot. If you compare the max-potential of each card on stock cooling, the 580 comes out significantly faster.

The 570 has decent OC-headroom, but the 580 is worthwhile if you're going to be keeping the card for 2 years (and if for some reason you switch to a higher resolution, the 1.5GB of RAM may come in handy because it's perfect for any single monitor with maxxed out eye-candy).

6950 2GB Crossfire is an option, but then you'd have to deal with possible driver/xfire issues. Still - this seems to be the fastest reasonably-priced option, it'll overclock some, it's just slightly more power-hungry than a single 580, and it should scale better at VERY high resolutions (Eyefinity) due to that 2GB.
 
Get a GTX 580, of course. Forget the 6970, not worth it, and the GTX 570 is alright but the GTX 580 has more horsepower.
 
I went with the 570. There's no way I could justify the increased cost of the 580 for the extra 15-20% in performance. I ordered from Amazon at a total cost of $320 (no tax and free shipping, plus $30 credit for signing up for Amazon's credit card, which I have been meaning to do for some time now). Now I just have to wait for Amazon to get some more of them in stock...
 
Prophecy said:
I went with the 570. There's no way I could justify the increased cost of the 580 for the extra 15-20% in performance. I ordered from Amazon at a total cost of $320 (no tax and free shipping, plus $30 credit for signing up for Amazon's credit card, which I have been meaning to do for some time now). Now I just have to wait for Amazon to get some more of them in stock...
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570 is a pretty good choice. But going on a waiting list at Amazon? Hmmm that might take a while. There's no guarantee you'll get one before Christmas.
 
Nah, I bought the vanilla 570:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-list...p?ie=UTF8&qid=1292619163&sr=8-1&condition=new

I don't mind if I don't get it until after Christmas. I'm excited, but in no real rush. Plus, the longer it takes to ship, the more time there is for a potential price drop. I know it's not likely, but one can hope!

Then again, if it takes several weeks to ship and AMD significantly increases the performance of the 69 series via driver updates, I may end up switching my order.
 
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I got an "Order delayed" email from Amazon earlier today, even though the box arrived at my door an hour ago. It must have been the out of stock email.
 
All of my gear is being picked up in about 30 minutes. Went with the eVga 580. I'm getting fidgety... Lot of work to do tonight, but it is going to be the truck load of stress relief that I've needed after the last three weeks spent with my mother-in-law...
 
I vote for a GTX 580 but if there is a chance, you can get the extra money and the thumbs up from the wife dual 6950s would only be an extra $125.

If she lets you get the dual 6950s go for those, see if you can space the cards apart a bit say 1st and 3rd slot.
 
I just received my 570... now I just have to suffer through a few more hours of work before I can go home and try it out.

Syphon Filter - That is correct. From what I have seen/read, the 6970 in CF outperforms the 580 in SLI.
 
580's are too expensive.

$500 is absolutely ridiculous money for a GPU. If you're going to spend that kind of coin you better have SSDs and a 27"+ monitor with higher resolutions or else your priorities are fucked.

I love seeing people on this forum with ancient CPUs, shitty hard drives, and terrible $180 TN monitors with $1000 in graphics cards sitting in their cases. F A I L
 
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