The GTX570 has huge frame latency problems,as noted by Bright Candle and other NV users here.
It must be just a stuttering mess when compared to the ATi cards of the same period.
Unplayable...damn near unsellable almost.
Reference:
http://techreport.com/review/23150/amd-radeon-hd-7970-ghz-edition/7
Its important to understand the 99th percentile graph says nothing about microstutter, at all. It is actually a graph trying to exclude the worst frame rate drops and give an impression of if the card has quite a lot of these drops. Turns out the 570 does. Infact the more useful graph to show this is the Skyrim frame latencies by percentile, that gives a fuller picture of the what is going on.
The ideal graph is flat and the earlier it curves up the worse the average frames per second will be.
On to the real issue does the 570 microstutter? For that we need to look at the frame time graph.
There are clearly three areas where the card is showing quite a significant microstutter, with a magnitude of 20, 20 and 17. These are very severe microstutter periods, well above my 6ms or so threshold. Otherwise however the card does not microstutter. The 6970 would actuall be worse for me, it consistently has a periodic frame stuttering of a magnitude I can detect, I would find the 6970 unplayable but not the 570, the 570 would annoy me occasionally and I would eventually go and turn a setting down and mess with it as those periods of microstutter would irritate me.
Comparatively we can see a 680 and 7970 Ghz both do much better, with no momentary jumps and almost no periodic oscillations.
Of course if you look at the other games you can see that the experience varies quite a bit, in some games the 570 has no such issues and in others it shows worse. In skyrim I would not play with the settings presented.
I'll keep saying it until it sinks in - if you can't see this you really shouldn't comment on it further, because honestly your opinion is worthless to those that can.
please - no personal attacks or baiting others into replying with personal attacks. -Admin DrPizza
To the op: do you see microstutter in skyrim with the same settings? Do you see the momentary drops in frame rate? Its a worthwhile to test to do because it is helpful to know if you care about these problems or not. Because if you don't AMD is a lot cheaper and faster.
PS - I am not an NVidia user, I own 2x680s and 2x7970s. I have used and played both all year.