SLi GTX570 or CF 6970 for BF3 (stock cooler or Gigabyte)

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PHOBOS-82

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 21, 2003
Messages
157
Hi All

Part1:

**** 2 x GTX 570's in SLI or 2 x 6970's in Crossfire ****

All benchmarks show these combo to be closely matched, which leaves me still undecided as to which route to go.
The 6970 has 2GB ram while the GTX570 has 1280MB, but the benchmarks don't show that have a huge impact, at least not a my res.

This will be for BF3 (and other FPS and Car games) at 1920 x 1080.
New mobo to go with it will be P67 Sabertooth with i5 2500K and 850w Corsair PSU.

Part2:

I had another thread in nVidia section which has made me take the Asus 3 slot cards off my list.
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1037988640#post1037988640

After I decide AMD or nVidia, there's still the question of cooling.
As mentioned the 3 slot Asus cooler is ruled out.
Now it's between stock coolers or Gigabyte 2 slot 3 fan coolers.
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3685#ov
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3784#ov

My choices are limited based on my location but both the Gigabyte GTX570 and 6970 are the same price, and just a bit more than stock cooler Asus GTX570 and XFX 6950.
 
Do you ever plan to do any multi-monitor gaming or 3D Gaming down the road? Stock coolers will usually exhaust the heat through the back of the card, while aftermarket cooling solutions will exhaust some of the air out the back, with some staying in the case. What case or cooling are you going to be using?

As for Brand I personally always go with ASUS for their build quality and cooling or XFX for their Double Lifetime warranty.
 
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I'm gonna vote for the gigabyte Windforce 6970s. In crossfire they will outperform GTX 570 SLi by a decent margin, if your sig is up to date then consider that geforce cards seem to be more cpu dependent than radeon cards, in that you need a stronger cpu to take better advantage of a geforce card than with a radeon. 2 GTX 570s would be held back by your cpu much worse than 2 6970s.

6970s > because they scale better as resolution goes up, have better crossfire scaling, are more future proof because of the vram.
 
SaViOr- said:
Do you ever plan to do any multi-monitor gaming or 3D Gaming down the road? Stock coolers will usually exhaust the heat through the back of the card, while aftermarket cooling solutions will exhaust some of the air out the back, with some staying in the case. What case or cooling are you going to be using?

As for Brand I personally always go with ASUS for their build quality and cooling or XFX for their Double Lifetime warranty.
Click to expand...

No multi-monitor or 3D in future.
Just 1920x1080, but on a 46" LCD TV. lol. (60Hz like a normal LCD though)

Case cooling will most like have a 120mm blowing cool are from the front and might have side fan blowing out if need be (or in, which ever works better).

3 slot Asus cards are out, 2 slot (3fan) Gigabyte cards on top of the list, just not sure which type, GTX570 or ATI 6970.

PC is for long term, so at least 3 years, so even though SLI or CF might seem overkill in some peoples books for this res, it needs to last a while.
 
Lord_Exodia said:
I'm gonna vote for the gigabyte Windforce 6970s. In crossfire they will outperform GTX 570 SLi by a decent margin, if your sig is up to date then consider that geforce cards seem to be more cpu dependent than radeon cards, in that you need a stronger cpu to take better advantage of a geforce card than with a radeon. 2 GTX 570s would be held back by your cpu much worse than 2 6970s.

6970s > because they scale better as resolution goes up, have better crossfire scaling, are more future proof because of the vram.
Click to expand...

Will be a new PC.
"
This will be for BF3 (and other FPS and Car games) at 1920 x 1080.
New mobo to go with it will be P67 Sabertooth with i5 2500K and 850w Corsair PSU.
"
 
PHOBOS-82 said:
No multi-monitor or 3D in future.
Just 1920x1080, but on a 46" LCD TV. lol. (60Hz like a normal LCD though)

Case cooling will most like have a 120mm blowing cool are from the front and might have side fan blowing out if need be (or in, which ever works better).

3 slot Asus cards are out, 2 slot (3fan) Gigabyte cards on top of the list, just not sure which type, GTX570 or ATI 6970.

PC is for long term, so at least 3 years, so even though SLI or CF might seem overkill in some peoples books for this res, it needs to last a while.
Click to expand...

If you're looking to keep the system for 3+ years I would definitely recommend the 6970CF over 570 SLI because of the big difference in vram. We've seen how much vram games such as Metro 2033 and BF3 currently can use with all the eyecandy options on and the vram requirement for future games can only increase. ;) The Corsair 850 will be plenty for the 6970CF setup so you'll definitely be set there. I ran my old setup that consisted of Highly OC'd 6950s with my 2500k @ 5GHz on a TX850 and it ran everything without a hitch.
 
From everything I been reading there is no clear winner.
6970 wins some while 570 wins others.
One could call me an nvidia fanboy as I'm towards the 570, but I can't ignore the extra ram on the 6970.

I think it will come down to cost now.
Maybe what ever cards are cheapest and have 3+ year warranty will win.

To be honest I should have got this PC 6+ months ago.
With next gen cards likely to be less than 6 months away it leaves a sour taste.

UPDATE:
I just need the confirmation on model numbers from my dealer, but it looks like I might have just bagged 2 MSI GTX 570 Twin Frozr III PE-OC for a good price.
Cheapest deal I could get too when compared to other 570 and 6970 pairs.

http://www.msi.com/product/vga/N570GTX-Twin-Frozr-III-Power-Edition-OC.html#?div=Specification

Thanks to all that posted :)
 
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