Trade from 2x 5970's to 2x 580's a Trade Up?

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NExUS1g

Gawd
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Aug 15, 2004
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Currently I have two 5970's in my system. I got them because I was disappointed with the 400 series of NVidia. But I do have money invested in NVidia 3D Vision and I also like being able to have PhysX enabled. I've looked, but I personally can't find reviews that compare these two setups (understandably so). So, the question is simple, are two 580's at least the same as or better than two 5970's if all else is the same? I am running at a lower resolution (1680x1050), but I like keeping my FPS maxed as much as possible (120 FPS for non 3D Vision and 60 FPS while using the 3D Vision). I know the lower resolution should help the cards perform more similarly than at higher resolutions.
 
Honestly at that resolution multi-GPU just can't do what it was intended except in the case of 3D. On paper two 5970's should be faster but its going to be very game dependent and at that resolution the 4 GPUs in the 5970 CF setup are not going to scale well. At least go to 1920x1200 or 1080P.
 
NExUS1g said:
Currently I have two 5970's in my system. I got them because I was disappointed with the 400 series of NVidia. But I do have money invested in NVidia 3D Vision and I also like being able to have PhysX enabled. I've looked, but I personally can't find reviews that compare these two setups (understandably so). So, the question is simple, are two 580's at least the same as or better than two 5970's if all else is the same? I am running at a lower resolution (1680x1050), but I like keeping my FPS maxed as much as possible (120 FPS for non 3D Vision and 60 FPS while using the 3D Vision). I know the lower resolution should help the cards perform more similarly than at higher resolutions.
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Two GTX 580s should have better scaling in SLI than 5970 in CF, but that rez one GTX 580 is over kill. 120Hz in every game is very expensive. Go for if that's what you want.
Be sure to OC the CPU above 3.8GHz.
 
Seems like a pretty low resolution to have so much power for. You'd probably be set with a single GTX 580.
I personally don't like crossfire setups, between the microstuttering and the power drain it's not really worth it for me to have more than 1 gpu.
 
heatlesssun said:
Honestly at that resolution multi-GPU just can't do what it was intended except in the case of 3D. On paper two 5970's should be faster but its going to be very game dependent and at that resolution the 4 GPUs in the 5970 CF setup are not going to scale well. At least go to 1920x1200 or 1080P.
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yep, which is why he is gonna use 3d vision to make it worthwhile for sli. at that res, 5970xfire and 580sli are both gonna still be somewhat bottlenecked by his o/c i7 in many games, so both should perform similarly. so everything you mentioned is correct. i would also go 1080p or 1200p if that is the native resolution of the monitor. but if he wants to maintain higher fps, i can't fault the op for wanting to lower the res a bit (hopefully not on an lcd though cause that would look fugly).

WorldExclusive said:
Two GTX 580s should have better scaling in SLI than 5970 in CF, but that rez one GTX 580 is over kill. 120Hz in every game is very expensive. Go for if that's what you want.
Be sure to OC the CPU above 3.8GHz.
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he already has 2x 5970s. expensive is already a foregone conclusion, lol. so assuming he is gonna play in stereo3d, which will cut his fps in half most of the time, then sli is definitely needed to maintain playable frames (not to mention the additional load for physx in those select gpu enabled games). yeah, his i7 is at 3.7, so close enough.

so op, if you already invested in 3dvision and want to make use of it along with gpu physx, go for it. otherwise, i would actually keep only one 5970 (or downgrade) if i was playing at that resolution and save the money from the one i sell for the next gen, but it's your hardware.
 
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kumquatsrus said:
yep, which is why he is gonna use 3d vision to make it worthwhile for sli. at that res, 5970xfire and 580sli are both gonna still be somewhat bottlenecked by his o/c i7 in many games, so both should perform similarly. so everything you mentioned is correct. i would also go 1080p or 1200p if that is the native resolution of the monitor. but if he wants to maintain higher fps, i can't fault the op for wanting to lower the res a bit (hopefully not on an lcd though cause that would look fugly).



he already has 2x 5970s. expensive is already a foregone conclusion, lol. so assuming he is gonna play in stereo3d, which will cut his fps in half most of the time, then sli is definitely needed to maintain playable frames (not to mention the additional load for physx in those select gpu enabled games). yeah, his i7 is at 3.7, so close enough.

so op, if you already invested in 3dvision and want to make use of it along with gpu physx, go for it. otherwise, i would actually keep only one 5970 (or downgrade) if i was playing at that resolution and save the money from the one i sell for the next gen, but it's your hardware.
Click to expand...

I'm running a Samsung 2233rz and its native res is 1680x1050. I made a mistake when I got this one. I intended for a 1920x1080 monitor (largest available for 120 Hz that I've seen). Furthermore it doesn't even support Blu-ray 3D, so I'll definitely be selling this one before long.
 
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