5870--->GTX 580 upgrade?

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polonyc2

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I currently have a Radeon 5870 (1 GB) and am contemplating going back to Nvidia but am not sure if it would be worthwhile or not...I have a 24" LCD and game at 1920 x 1200 with as much graphical eye candy enabled as possible

the main reason I want to upgrade is that I like Nvidia's drivers better and 90% of games are optimized for Nvidia hardware (I also have a spare GTX 260/Core 216 card which I can use for dedicated PhysX)...plus games just seemed to work better with Nvidia...does the 5870 deliver better image quality in games as ATI used to be known for having the best IQ while Nvidia had better FPS...I mainly play FPS and RPG's...am also looking ahead to Crysis 2 which is said to be much more optimized for Nvidia

my current specs:

CPU: i7 980X
Mobo: ASUS P6X58D Premium
Memory: G.Skill 6GB (3 x 2GB)
 
I think it's most definitely a worthwhile upgrade. If you browse through these threads, there are even 5970 owners jumping ship and switching to gtx 580. Now, that should tell you something. As a 5970 owner myself, I've even contemplated switching over to gtx 580 but have decided against it, since the 5970 runs pretty much everything I play at very good frame rates. But you might want to wait another week, though, and see what the 6970 brings to the table before upgrading. As for image quality, have no idea. I imagine they'd be about the same, no?
 
I moved from 5970 to 580GTX and i was not blown away, actually i was disappointed had to go SLi to feel the diference.
But from 5870 to 580GTX should be a nice upgrade, but why don't you wait till next week for new 6950/6970 cards and then decide....
 
gamingarena23 said:
why don't you wait till next week for new 6950/6970 cards and then decide....
Click to expand...

if early reports are to be believed then the GTX 580 will end up being the faster card...apparently the 6970 is a bit faster then the 480 but not able to topple the 580
 
gamingarena23 said:
I moved from 5970 to 580GTX and i was not blown away, actually i was disappointed had to go SLi to feel the diference.
But from 5870 to 580GTX should be a nice upgrade, but why don't you wait till next week for new 6950/6970 cards and then decide....
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's exactly why I didn't upgrade from 5970 to gtx 580. In looking at the benchmarks, the 5970 still beats the 580 in many games. It's only when you bump up the antialiasing at very high resolutions where the 580 trumps the 5970.
 
polonyc2 said:
if early reports are to be believed then the GTX 580 will end up being the faster card...apparently the 6970 is a bit faster then the 480 but not able to topple the 580
Click to expand...

Regardless of what you will decide, his statement means wait a week to see the Nvidia GTX 580 go down in price (not 100% chance but very high). I feel stupid for having to spell that out, no offense.

PS all "reports" (lol lemme guess fudzilla?) are complete fud. Nobody knows anything other than reviewers with the cards.
 
I had the intention of replacing my 5870 for a GTX 580 until after using one for a little over 2 weeks -- it is a great card, much better than the 3 separate GTX 480s I owned over the course of a few months...the performance, sound, heat, watts, etc were all superior to the 4xx series; however, it just wasn't enough of a worthwhile evolution to persuade the release of a 5870 in my case.

Ultimately the reasons I returned the card were due to the price/performance ($541 for about 10-15% performance gain over my 5870), the heat (still way too hot vs a 5870) and after getting over the 'placebo' on my game of choice (Battlefield Bad Company 2) noticed it is definitely not as smooth as a 5870.

Looking forward to buying a 6970 -->
 
yes waiting till next week is the best move...but I meant that if the 6970 is not the faster card then Nvidia will have no incentive to drop prices...plus the 580 always seems to be out of stock over the past few weeks (at least the EVGA version I am interested in)

people like to discount fudzilla when it doesn't report what they want to hear but the fact is that they are right a lot of times...I don't care either way as I have no brand loyalty but I have a feeling that the 580 will end being the faster performing card...there are other factors to consider as well so that doesn't mean it will be the 'best' card
 
BM00 said:
I had the intention of replacing my 5870 for a GTX 580 until after using one for a little over 2 weeks -- it is a great card, much better than the 3 separate GTX 480s I owned over the course of a few months...the performance, sound, heat, watts, etc were all superior to the 4xx series; however, it just wasn't enough of a worthwhile evolution to persuade the release of a 5870 in my case.

Ultimately the reasons I returned the card were due to the price/performance ($541 for about 10-15% performance gain over my 5870), the heat (still way too hot vs a 5870) and after getting over the 'placebo' on my game of choice (Battlefield Bad Company 2) noticed it is definitely not as smooth as a 5870.

Looking forward to buying a 6970 -->
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nice post...you hit all of my major concerns...especially the fact that the 580 is not enough of an evolution over the 5870...the price/performance issue can be somewhat neutralized if I sell the 5870...definitely hotter during load versus the 5870...I'm surprised that BC2 does not run as smooth with the 580

but I'm also thinking long term...Crysis 2 and I believe Deus Ex: Human Revolution are Nvidia branded games that I am really looking forward to and want to make sure I'm getting the best performance
 
polonyc2 said:
yes waiting till next week is the best move...but I meant that if the 6970 is not the faster card then Nvidia will have no incentive to drop prices...plus the 580 always seems to be out of stock over the past few weeks (at least the EVGA version I am interested in)

people like to discount fudzilla when it doesn't report what they want to hear but the fact is that they are right a lot of times...I don't care either way as I have no brand loyalty but I have a feeling that the 580 will end being the faster performing card...there are other factors to consider as well so that doesn't mean it will be the 'best' card
Click to expand...

Didn't get the memo eh? Here ya go just a friendly passing of info. http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=30891884&postcount=59

As for him being right a lot of times. I lol'd.
 
Vexerz said:
Absolutely. Why not? Slide has been proven fake and Faud = Fraudzilla for the countless time.
Click to expand...

re-read the article...looks like Fudzilla has admiited they were duped

Update:

It appears that our usually well informed source failed us, and forwarded a photoshopped roadmap. So, we plainly got served. We are in the process of gathering more reliable info on Cayman performance and we will write an update as soon as we get something worthwhile. It will clearly end up quite a bit faster and we apologize for the inconvenience.

so now what do you think about Fudzilla?...lemme guess your opinion has now changed :rolleyes:
 
polonyc2 said:
re-read the article...looks like Fudzilla has admiited they were duped

Update:

It appears that our usually well informed source failed us, and forwarded a photoshopped roadmap. So, we plainly got served. We are in the process of gathering more reliable info on Cayman performance and we will write an update as soon as we get something worthwhile. It will clearly end up quite a bit faster and we apologize for the inconvenience.

so now what do you think about Fudzilla?...lemme guess your opinion has now changed :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Fudzilla is still a fraud. No my opinion hasn't changed. I know many here still are laughing at his Fermi 1 monthly predictions starting with November ---> March. Good times
 
Vexerz said:
Fudzilla is still a fraud. No my opinion hasn't changed.
Click to expand...

a fraud doesn't admit they were wrong and completely change their opinion...they obviously have credibility otherwise they would have stuck to their original story...they are not pro Nvidia and are doing their best to get the story right...wish everyone could be as honest
 
Latest rumors seem to be leaning that 6970 will be anywhere from a little to a lot faster than 580.

Look at it this way, it's been confirmed to be at least 20% faster than 6950, so that doesn't leave a lot of wiggle room. It almost has to be faster than 580.
 
Shark974 said:
Latest rumors seem to be leaning that 6970 will be anywhere from a little to a lot faster than 580.

Look at it this way, it's been confirmed to be at least 20% faster than 6950, so that doesn't leave a lot of wiggle room. It almost has to be faster than 580.
Click to expand...

Just wait for benches, less than a week now.
 
polonyc2 said:
nice post...you hit all of my major concerns...especially the fact that the 580 is not enough of an evolution over the 5870...the price/performance issue can be somewhat neutralized if I sell the 5870...definitely hotter during load versus the 5870...I'm surprised that BC2 does not run as smooth with the 580

but I'm also thinking long term...Crysis 2 and I believe Deus Ex: Human Revolution are Nvidia branded games that I am really looking forward to and want to make sure I'm getting the best performance
Click to expand...

Funnily enough Crysis seems to perform better on AMD GPU's now. I wouldn't put too much stock into TWIMTBP titles anymore.
 
AceCR42 said:
I wouldn't say 90%. AMD has made a lot of strides into working with developers recently.

Check out this page: http://sites.amd.com/us/game/games/Pages/games.aspx

They have pretty much all of EA, Sega and Codemaster.
Click to expand...

Not that I like the whole developer sponsorship programs, but...

Wow, I didn't know their list was getting that long, even some developers like Turbine too. Guess their video cards sold well, and at a profit (that one is the main reason I see), over that last good while, so AMD has some financial room to sponsor AAA Titles again and keep the wheel moving. And a good varied portfolio too.


Y.
 
I'm one of the people who jumped ship from a 5970 to a gtx 580. I even had my 5970 watercooled running at 1000/1050 and I'm still glad I made the jump. I couldn't stand ATIs lack of crossfire support for pretty much any new game that came out. It would take up to several weeks for support to be added. The GTX 580 is atleast 85% of what that card was without any of the headaches and I haven't even o/c'd the 580 yet. Minimum framerates and avg framerates are fantastic with this card and it is a true beast. To me, not having to worry about the lack of support is worth a small drop of performance. Maybe it's just me and my upgraditis. :)
 
I ditched an HD 5870 CrossFireX setup for a single GTX 580 purely because I was bitterly disappointed with AMD's drivers which left my second card idle or poorly utilised in most of the games I was playing. Admittedly many are multiformat games anyway but it doesn't change the fact that CFX and probably SLI are pointless when only 15-20% of PC games at most make full use of them.

I have no regrets about losing some performance in a small number of games for the sake of having a card that is far less dependent on driver updates and profiles (a weakness of AMD in my opinion since they can take months to support or fix games with CFX issues such as negative scaling: Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands being a very good example... it took them FIVE months to fix a slowdown bug when the prince died! Does anyone think that is acceptable?). In the three weeks I've had my GTX 580 I've had zero issues compared with what felt like seven months of beta testing AMD's CFX drivers!!!
 
gamingarena23 said:
I moved from 5970 to 580GTX and i was not blown away, actually i was disappointed had to go SLi to feel the diference.
But from 5870 to 580GTX should be a nice upgrade, but why don't you wait till next week for new 6950/6970 cards and then decide....
Click to expand...

OP is talking about the 5870.

no need to bring up the 5970, but i know you did what you had to do:rolleyes:
 
yup going from dual GPU's to a single is a whole different story...he would probably have good experiences going from a 5970 to a 5870 as well
 
Granted AMD updates about once a month and its a headache for all the guys who buy the game THE DAY ITS RELEASED for $59.00

But for a guy like me who waits till they are $39 to $49 and gets them about 2 or 3 months after release....

ZERO PROBLEMS AND SUPERIOR PERFORMANCE.


ONLY using the example of the guy who buys the games the DAY OF RELEASE and had problems for 3 to 5 weeks as the "defacto standard for why X-fire (or even SLI) is a waste of money is a completely riduclous argument.

The last three 4 games i bought was Dirt 2 (for $4.99) Metro 2033 (for $9.99) and COD Black Ops for $54.99 over cyber weekend. Zero problems on the first 2 as they have been out a while and zero problems on the third as it would run perfectly fine even on a SINGLE 5870.

My plan is to buy a second 5870 for x fire when they hit around the $200 mark..why on earth would i pay almost $500 or more for LESS performance than i can get for $200 on top of what i already have invested?

Lets leave the "what happens in the first 3-5 weeks of a game being released" argument where it belongs....as a MINIMAL and only slight inconvience as a concern please.

Thank you.
 
So you will buy 2 expensive high powered video cards but not games at anything more than $10. I see. /sarcasm
 
I went from 5870 CF to GTX 580 SLI and the difference is night and day due to the better SLI scaling. However, with a single card it may not be as much of an upgrade. But, it will be an upgrade.
 
Headfoot said:
So you will buy 2 expensive high powered video cards but not games at anything more than $10. I see. /sarcasm
Click to expand...

Touche'

But the reality is more like this. I buy my games at around $39 to $49 and would much rather spend around $200 for a tad better performance then i would get by spending over $500. (this in my case being that i already own a 5870. If i were about to buy....the case for buying the 580 would STILL be a difficult one as its almost twice as much.) Thats a TOUGH sell when the 5870 is still turning in MORE THAN PLAYABLE scores on todays current games (and adding a second 5870 is likely to be cheap later on).

When i put it like THAT i think it makes total sense. :)

Edit: i think $59 is crazy for a game as you could buy the 580 for less than what 9 games cost at that price. However we all have our weaknesses. I bought Black ops a week after release and i WILL BUY Crysis 2/Half life 3 the DAY they come out.
 
Daz1967 said:
I ditched an HD 5870 CrossFireX setup for a single GTX 580 purely because I was bitterly disappointed with AMD's drivers which left my second card idle or poorly utilised in most of the games I was playing. Admittedly many are multiformat games anyway but it doesn't change the fact that CFX and probably SLI are pointless when only 15-20% of PC games at most make full use of them.

I have no regrets about losing some performance in a small number of games for the sake of having a card that is far less dependent on driver updates and profiles (a weakness of AMD in my opinion since they can take months to support or fix games with CFX issues such as negative scaling: Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands being a very good example... it took them FIVE months to fix a slowdown bug when the prince died! Does anyone think that is acceptable?). In the three weeks I've had my GTX 580 I've had zero issues compared with what felt like seven months of beta testing AMD's CFX drivers!!!
Click to expand...

Also I wanted to point out...what do you EXPECT from a game entitled "The FORGOTTEN sands"????

I doubt they would take more than a couple weeks to get support for something like Crysis 2, half life 3, any of the COD games etc etc.
 
polonyc2 said:
I currently have a Radeon 5870 (1 GB) and am contemplating going back to Nvidia but am not sure if it would be worthwhile or not...I have a 24" LCD and game at 1920 x 1200 with as much graphical eye candy enabled as possible

the main reason I want to upgrade is that I like Nvidia's drivers better and 90% of games are optimized for Nvidia hardware (I also have a spare GTX 260/Core 216 card which I can use for dedicated PhysX)...plus games just seemed to work better with Nvidia...does the 5870 deliver better image quality in games as ATI used to be known for having the best IQ while Nvidia had better FPS...I mainly play FPS and RPG's...am also looking ahead to Crysis 2 which is said to be much more optimized for Nvidia

my current specs:

CPU: i7 980X
Mobo: ASUS P6X58D Premium
Memory: G.Skill 6GB (3 x 2GB)
Click to expand...

Umm, unless you count MLAA which I believe is 6xxx series only, then no AMD doesn't have better image quality than Nvidia.

A GTX 580 would be a significant upgrade over a GTX 580 but you might want to wait for the 6970 to release because it has 2GB of VRAM and will also support MLAA postprocessing. It might also offer more performance or a better performance/dollar value. We'll see when it finally comes out.
 
when the 6900s come out, I'll have any answer, I don't think it's worth it at the 580's current over-pricepoint
 
I echo other sentiments. At this point, its silly NOT to wait the 4-5 days to see real benchmark info

A lot of rumored numbers being thrown around are based off things that either straight lies or synthetics which don't tell us how cards actually perform.

AceCR42 said:
I wouldn't say 90%. AMD has made a lot of strides into working with developers recently.

Check out this page: http://sites.amd.com/us/game/games/Pages/games.aspx

They have pretty much all of EA, Sega and Codemaster.
Click to expand...

People forget that at one point, ATI's market share (around the time G80/G92 were out and kickin butt) had plummeted to something like 30% of the discrete GPU market share. Nvidia, flush with money and developer support, pushed TWIMTBP hard. Today, they're getting towards the 50-50 mark, and that's just 3-4 years later. AMD moved a TON of GPUs since the 4800's were released - and when the 5800's were actually on-time, AMD seeded them developers, hence a lot more games these days are actually neutral and/or even AMD leaning. BFBC2 for example has AMD cards performing better than they would otherwise

TWIMTBP was definitely a big factor in 2006-2008, but since then, AMD's market share growth has caused it to lose a lot of its luster when Nvidia failed to deliver mid-range GT200 derivatives and Fermi had its epic delay
 
vjcsmoke said:
Umm, unless you count MLAA which I believe is 6xxx series only, then no AMD doesn't have better image quality than Nvidia.
Click to expand...

I dunno, the two brands kinda trade blows now ever since AMD got its AF together. Personally not a fan of MLAA at all, but am a huge fan of nVidia's driver panel Ambient Occlusion offering. Singlehandedly makes a lot of older games and console ports bearable. As well, the way PhysX is used, it's effectively an IQ enhancer for now. Thing with AMD's cannons on that front though is they tend to be more general in usage whereas PhysX and AO and etc are game-by-game.
 
vjcsmoke said:
Umm, unless you count MLAA which I believe is 6xxx series only, then no AMD doesn't have better image quality than Nvidia.

A GTX 580 would be a significant upgrade over a GTX 580 but you might want to wait for the 6970 to release because it has 2GB of VRAM and will also support MLAA postprocessing. It might also offer more performance or a better performance/dollar value. We'll see when it finally comes out.
Click to expand...

MLAA is available for the 5000 series via the 10.10 hotfix driver

I doubt 2BG of video memory will prove usueful in any single GPU card

I know in the past ATI definitely had better image quality so I hope Nvidia caught up in this regard...plus I remember reading that ATI also had the best AF filtering as well
 
ZerazaX said:
People forget that at one point, ATI's market share (around the time G80/G92 were out and kickin butt) had plummeted to something like 30% of the discrete GPU market share. Nvidia, flush with money and developer support, pushed TWIMTBP hard. Today, they're getting towards the 50-50 mark, and that's just 3-4 years later. AMD moved a TON of GPUs since the 4800's were released - and when the 5800's were actually on-time, AMD seeded them developers, hence a lot more games these days are actually neutral and/or even AMD leaning. BFBC2 for example has AMD cards performing better than they would otherwise

TWIMTBP was definitely a big factor in 2006-2008, but since then, AMD's market share growth has caused it to lose a lot of its luster when Nvidia failed to deliver mid-range GT200 derivatives and Fermi had its epic delay
Click to expand...

but most of the 'big' AAA titles still go to Nvidia...AMD gets the leftovers...a recent example is AMD got the terrible Medal of Honor reboot as their 'big' game while Black Ops is the one that's doing much better...same with most other games...AMD gets stuck with the games that Nvidia does not want...this is not a victory for AMD

look at most of the titles in that list of AMD branded games...only 2-3 are really AAA titles...the rest are garbage games
 
AllenFX said:
Also I wanted to point out...what do you EXPECT from a game entitled "The FORGOTTEN sands"????
Click to expand...

Hmmmm... yes... I see where you're going with that one! :D

I doubt they would take more than a couple weeks to get support for something like Crysis 2, half life 3, any of the COD games etc etc.
Click to expand...

Well the fact that there is any uncertainty in the first place is a good enough reason for me to have ditched multi-GPU gaming.

85% of PC games are ports from the five-year old Xbox 360 and PS3 that I really don't need all that horse-power. The only reason I even bought a second HD 5870 in the first place was because my preferred GTX 480 turned out to be an expensive, hot and noisy disappointment so I opted for the HD 5870 knowing it was slower. I then bought a second card to make up for that.

I suspect Crysis 2 will run fine on a single GTX 580 (it's another multiformat title!) and by the time the number of games that don't run well on it has increased to annoyance levels then there'll be newer, faster single GPU cards available anyway. HD 5870 CFX was always overkill for me as I game at 1920x1200 with v-sync and triple buffering enabled so my criteria is simply that a game run as close on average to 60 fps as possible on maxed out settings with AA; anything above that is irrelevent except for benchmarking. That is pretty much what I'm getting in 99% of my current games. The remaining 1%, which includes Metro 2033 and Crysis Warhead, still run smoothly at between 30 and 60 fps so I'm happy with that.
 
polonyc2 said:
I doubt 2BG of video memory will prove usueful in any single GPU card
Click to expand...

You'd be surprised.

I use MSI Afterburner to monitor video memory usage on my GTX 580 and I've noticed that many of my games exceed 1 GB when I use lots of AA and transparency sampling at 1920x1200 with maximum graphics settings and triple buffering enabled. So based on that 1 GB is the absolute minimum for a modern card for gaming at 1920x1080 or higher. Several of my games hit 1.3 GB and I got one to exceed 1.5 GB with 32xCSAA and 4x4 Supersampling! I suspect the extra 512 MB of memory that my current card has over my previous HD 5870 is the reason why many games feel perceptively smoother to play. Unfortunately though it wasn't possible to monitor memory usage with the AMD cards so I only have my GTX 580 results to go by.

I don't think it will be that long before games need 2 GB personally, particularly if you game at 2560x1600 on multiple screens. Maybe Crysis 2 running under DX11 will be a game that benefits from lots of RAM for its high-resolution textures? It only takes one triple A game to make your current graphics card look inadequate IMO. ;)
 
What games can't you run on max settings with your 5870 already? Spend your money on something else.
 
polonyc2 said:
a fraud doesn't admit they were wrong and completely change their opinion...they obviously have credibility otherwise they would have stuck to their original story...they are not pro Nvidia and are doing their best to get the story right...wish everyone could be as honest
Click to expand...

So I read it that you've never played a round of poker in your life?

A true fraud will make you think as if he/she is not a fraud. If a "fake" apology is all that's required to convince you that he or she is not a fraud, you are being defrauded. Just for a bigger fraud in the future. Now you have been convinced to the max that FUDzilla is NOT a fraud. Anything and everything they will pull out of their ass in the future, you will believe. WHY? Because you "think" fudzilla "apologized."

You will never know a fraud even if he was sitting right beside ya.

:D
 
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