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7970, or a second GTX570?

I

I3eyond

Gawd
Joined
Jan 14, 2006
Messages
937
What to do what to do!

I currently have a single 1.25GB GTX570...

Thinking about getting a second.

On the flip side, however, I'm thinking about just selling my GTX570 and getting a 7970.

I've always wanted to run SLI, however, at the same time with the potential for "micro stuttering" and other potential issues that could arise, make me lean towards getting a 7970.

Now, I play a lot of games, but the only one I'm not currently happy with the performance of is BF3. I expect 60FPS minimum.

So, with that in mind....what do you guys think?
 
60 fps at what resolution and settings? Based on that, 7970 may or may not be the answer. Regardless I'd go with 7970 for the issues you mentioned, gobs more vram and new tech. During your next upgrade you'd have a single 7970 to sell vs two GTX 570 - that's worth considering too.
 
Karolis said:
60 fps at what resolution and settings? Based on that, 7970 may or may not be the answer. Regardless I'd go with 7970 for the issues you mentioned, gobs more vram and new tech. During your next upgrade you'd have a single 7970 to sell vs two GTX 570 - that's worth considering too.
Click to expand...

Financially speaking which is smarter for resale down the road?

60FPS @ 1920x1080, as high as they go. . . though I could live with 4xAA
 
Hard to tell, but top high end cards were never too good on the price/performance ratios. However I still see selling two video cards instead of one being a hassle I'd rather not deal with. You'll be able to sell two of those only to an enthusiast with appropriate power supply and machine anyway and enthusiasts are not known to buy old tech, so there's bigger chance you'd have to find two separate buyers.

For that res. 7970 will absolutely max out BF3 at single player with random drops to mid 40s, you'll have to tune down a bit for MP.
 
At 1080p the SLI setup won't drop to the mid 40s. GTX 570 SLI is faster than a single 7970, so it comes down to whether or not you want to switch to AMD or have a single card solution.

Also, FWIW, I've never experienced micro stutter with this setup.
 
Hmmm. . .

A buddy of mine had two 5-series ATI cards in CrossFire and with BFBC2, I saw none of this "micro stuttering" . . .

If I'm not overclocking anything and I do go to a double card solution, would it be 100% necessary to get an aftermarket cooler for my CPU?
 
570 sli will be faster, but you will have to decide for yourself if dual GPU is worth it. You will run into issues from time to time with dual GPU and you'll have to be more cognizant of updating drivers and such, in addition you'll have more heat/power use issues.

If you're doing *heavy* overclocking you may need a better PSU, but at stock clocks or mild GPU / cpu overclocks you'll be fine. To expand on this comment, in my case a heavy cpu overclock combined with heavy GPU overclock added 250w consumption at load.(compared to stock settings) This is with a 2500k oc'ed and gtx 580s oc'ed.
 
So I guess if I want a 0 headache solution go 7970, but if I want the absolute best performance pick up a second 570 and deal with some of the headaches...
 
I3eyond said:
What to do what to do!

I currently have a single 1.25GB GTX570...

Thinking about getting a second.

On the flip side, however, I'm thinking about just selling my GTX570 and getting a 7970.

I've always wanted to run SLI, however, at the same time with the potential for "micro stuttering" and other potential issues that could arise, make me lean towards getting a 7970.

Now, I play a lot of games, but the only one I'm not currently happy with the performance of is BF3. I expect 60FPS minimum.

So, with that in mind....what do you guys think?
Click to expand...


Well, if you have the money, get the best single card you can afford. If you are worried about resale value well, here is another thing to think about, Kepler is coming out this year, so if you buy a second 570 now, it's resale value will be way less.

another option is to wait a month see if there are any solid info on Kepler at that stage. Also AMD should have released the 7950 by then and as well as that the 7970's might have dropped a little in price as the price gouging settles.
 
Highly overclocked 7970 should get close to 570 SLI so I'd go with single card (or wait for Kepler since it's not like 570 is ultra slow card now)
 
Forceman said:
Really? What's your VRAM usage? I hit 1.3GB on my 580 with no MSAA (only FXAA). I know BF3 seems to be VRAM-aware, but 1080p Ultra with MSAA has to be chewing through some VRAM.
Click to expand...

Dunno, but I don't get any stuttering or slowdown because of it, so clearly it's not an issue.

I'm also not sure what "headaches" are being referred to regarding SLI. Never had a problem, here.

Keep in mind, OP, you can get another 570 which will handily outperform a 7970 for less than half the price. If you are worried about resale over value, then get the 7970. If you think you are going to increase your resolution or go multi-monitor, probably get two 7970s.
 
Tough call, from the looks of it, a decently oc'd 7970 will perform close to a GTX 590 / HD6990, so if you do get one and OC it, I'd take that over 2 cards
 
Unless you need specific features of Nvidia - like 3D Vision, I'd go with single card - less driver, profile issues. ALso propably less heat, noise and used power.

If not for my 3D Vision love, and having a display that can't do AMD 3D gaming, I'd trade my setup for single 7970.
 
when i ran SLI 460's i experienced no 'headaches' with SLI. SLI is a well-tuned technology IMO. the only issue i had was microstutter in a couple of games which is the nature of AFR. SLI 570's would be your most cost-effective route but you will be limited in BF3 by the 1.25GB of VRAM. i can push around 1550MB of VRAM usage in BF3 multiplayer at 1080p. it's up to you if it's worth the extra cost to go with a 7970, i'm not sure what i'd do in your situation. adding another 570 would be pretty tempting.
 
One thing to consider is that if you sell your 570 now you could probably get $250 or so, which would offset the cost of the 7970 by a fair bit (almost as much as buying another 570)

However, also consider that a single 7970 is a slower solution and you are switching to AMD, which is not a bad thing but if you're used to nVidia it would be a change.

Again, it comes down to how much money you want to spend and how much performance you are willing to accept. If money is no object then you might as well just get the 7970 (or two, for that matter).

Also, from what I've seen in benchs, GTX 570 SLI will beat a 6990 by anywhere from 0-20%. Considering the 6990 is still a bit faster than the 7970...you can make a conclusion from that.
 
There are lots of pros and cons either way. With dual GPU of course you'll have increased heat, noise, power and cramping issues, and some games may not get along on day 1 (although NV has been pretty good in the past couple of months about this). Another thing to consider is resale value. 570 might not be the best long term proposition, whereas you could sell a 570 now and get pretty close to 80-90% of the original investment. Another con of SLI/crossfire is that your overclocks will typically not be as good in dual GPU mode, whereas 1 GPU may oc fairly easily. I have found that most of the time you have settle for lower or wimpy overclocks when running more than 1 gpu.

Hard call. Although the 570 sli should be faster, depending on how highly oc'ed a 7970 is.
 
My(Overclocked) 5850's in CFX would be somewhat comparable to a GTX570 in SLI, and I'm upgrading to a single 7970 or Kepler when the $ permits, if that helps at all.
 
Um...6970 (or 6950) CFX is much more comparable to 570 SLI than 5850 CFX...
 
If you can, wait until next week when more news is supposed to come out. If PhysX doesn't mean that much to you, go with the DX11.1 Radeon. Newer tech. Cooler temps.
 
Rauelius said:
My(Overclocked) 5850's in CFX would be somewhat comparable to a GTX570 in SLI, and I'm upgrading to a single 7970 or Kepler when the $ permits, if that helps at all.
Click to expand...

Dual 58xx series cards don't scale nearly as well as a 570's do. SLI 570's is markedly faster than CFX 5850's
 
Yeah I read it wrong at first. Thought he was comparing dual 5850 to 570 single.

This is my 2nd mistake , so my lifetime record is still pretty good ;)
 
Wow...SLI-570 massacres the CFX-5850...it's been a while....Makes me anticipated the performance boost (and less headache) a single 7970 that much more...For the OP, you might want to sit tight, I also have two 5770's in CFX on another machine (which I know is comparable to a single 5850/5870/GTX460/GTX560) and have yet to find a game that stresses them to unplayable levels...
 
I3eyond said:
I've always wanted to run SLI, however, at the same time with the potential for "micro stuttering" and other potential issues that could arise, make me lean towards getting a 7970.

Now, I play a lot of games, but the only one I'm not currently happy with the performance of is BF3. I expect 60FPS minimum.

So, with that in mind....what do you guys think?
Click to expand...
If you want 60 FPS minimum, don't go SLI. If minimums matter to you, you don't go multi-GPU unless you get at least three cards. The other thing is that 1.25GB of RAM is simply not enough for that set up and will actually choke the performance, especially in BF3.

Now, the 7970 at stock won't give you 60 FPS minimum in BF3 with everything cranked, but if you give it a light overclock it will (CCC limits of 1125/1575 is good). I'm talking 1080p, 4xMSAA, HBAO, everything cranked, 60FPS+ no sweat. The other thing to note is that many minimum drops in BF3 multiplayer are caused by the CPU, not the GPU. You need to have a healthy overclock (4.0GHz+) on that CPU to expect 60 FPS minimums except for the odd explosion. Even at 5.0GHz I can drop well below my average, and performance graphs show its the CPU that's the culprit.

I did some testing when I upgraded my 6950 to a 7970 and BF3 showed some insane gains. It's actually the best performing game in my benchmark suite and gained the most from overclocking the 7970: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...FlmUGVQMUZReHI0bFg4czR1Z3AwdXc&hl=en_US#gid=1 . You can also go to the vRAM page and see that BF3 can use upwards of 1.5GB just in single player, never mind multiplayer (which is even higher, around 2-2.2GB). Out of the two choices you proposed, I think you'd be happier with the 7970, it will give an overall better gaming experience.
 
MavericK96 said:
Your first being posting that other thread?

Lolol. :p
Click to expand...

Hey it took barely 11 pages of convincing him, before he realized that Charlie's

"nvidia games make wall street look like Ghandi"

comment has nothing to do with his supposed viral marketing
 
HohnyF said:
Hey it took barely 11 pages of convincing him, before he realized that Charlie's

"nvidia games make wall street look like Ghandi"

comment has nothing to do with his supposed viral marketing
Click to expand...

Oh? Whats it about then. Maybe it wasn't about viral marketing, but Your suggestion that its about TWIMTBP is rubbish because there is absolutely no way it makes sense in that context.

The chiphell story was and is true ;)
 
HohnyF said:
THIS is not about TWIMTBP?

Can you enlighten us then, what's it about?
Click to expand...

(preface: I'm not saying this is the correct interpretation, just the most OBVIOUS one) Most people were interpreting that quote as , the ethics of nvidia are so bad, even worse than wall street. And wall street is full of crooks. The comparison (this was just original specultation) is that nvidia has such poor ethics and so much worse than wall street, that they make wall street look like ghandi (peaceful religious figure??) I'm not saying which interpretation is correct, i'm not saying mine is correct, i'm not saying yours is correct. What i'm saying is : There is no possible way it makes a bit of sense in the context of TWIMTBP, unless you can offer a rational explanation.

You're also trying to deflect away from the Chiphell controversy. That story is real and nvidia did hire marketing drones to flood Chiphell. The chiphell story doesn't involve Charlie, it is a separate incident.
 
Nvidia's games are going to make Wall Street look look like Ghandi.

That does not make sense in the context of TWIMTBP?

I'm done here, if you are THAT slow.
 
ROFL, it doesn't even make sense in that context. Nice that you didn't bother to explain it ;)

Please tell me what the comparison between Wall Street and Ghandi has to do with an actual video game. You're stretching there pal :cool: My brain shuts off at 23:59 on fridays so i'm slow I guess
 
Just wanted to throw in that a single 7970 will get you a consistent 60 fps (maybe dipping down to 55) in BF3 MP with everything maxed except MSAA but if you just use high post process AA you will get the same visual quality with almost 0 performance hit.
 
xoleras said:
ROFL, it doesn't even make sense in that context. Nice that you didn't bother to explain it ;)

Please tell me what the comparison between Wall Street and Ghandi has to do with an actual video game. You're stretching there pal :cool: My brain shuts off at 23:59 on fridays so i'm slow I guess
Click to expand...

It probably relates this quote.

CDemerjian Charlie Demerjian
@
@ryanshrout The really interesting bit isn't the raw performance, but how it is going to play out on the financial side. Lots of nuance...
19 Jan
 
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