[Mid-to-High End Rig] Radeon HD 6970 or GeForce 570GTX?

[3DVagabond]

I honestly couldn't justify buying a 6870 over a GTX560ti at that price. 6870 just does not overclock.

The 560ti is a good card too. You could buy either one. Lots of sales on nVidia at the moment. It will still cost you $35.00 more for a 560ti with a lifetime warranty. Just a basic reference design cooler, but they run pretty cool anyway.

Edit: Just checked though, and the EVGA 560ti gets into the 6950 1Gb price range. I think saving the $35.00 for the 6870 is worthwhile.

 

[cusideabelincoln]

He'd have to have a beast GPU and lots of memory but even then... my Core 2 was becoming a major bottleneck, as was having just 2GB of DDR2 665.

So you get the low to mid 30s I mentioned or bottom out at 50ish?

In mild firefights I get high 30s to high 40s.

With a lot of action I sometimes drop to high 20s and low 30s.

If someone gets jarate'd or there are a lot of mini crits i drop to low and mid 20s.

In the new maps (like Hightower) with big open areas I'm usually at mid 30s.

My GPU utilization drops every time my framerate drops, so my processor is doing the best it can. I wish I could bottom out at 50. I would definitely be a better player.

 

[Arg Clin]

I think either is a good card - +1 on looking for a good deal on either card.

With that being said, I'd probably lean towards the 6970 myself, because it's slightly more quiet than the GTX570

 

[bryanW1995]

You are right. You did not specifically say it was faster. It is the way I took you to mean "dominate".

The reason nVidia is faster in civ 5 is because Civ V is the first game to use DX11 multi-threaded rendering. It's a single Dx11 feature. It doesn't mean that as other Dx11 features are utilized that nVidia will be faster. It only means that nVidia is faster with that one feature only. You can't extend that to any other features. I'd be surprised if AMD doesn't pick up multi-threaded rendering, as well. Time will tell.

Remember though that it's only one game that currently uses it. Do you know that Crysis 2 and BF3 are going to use it too? If not then you can't say nVidia will have any advantage in those games. Eventually I would imagine other games will use it, just as I imagine AMD will support it as well.

Keep in mind too that the 570 is limited to 1gig of VRAM, when you are suggesting it will be better in future games. That could very possibly kill it quick if games demand more RAM. We are on the cusp in some games now. More than just one game using multi-threaded rendering.

Wow, I'm surprised that AMD still doesn't have multi-threaded rendering working yet. I remember months ago when Ryan Smith wrote his article about it, when NV let him talk about their implementation I figured that AMD must be hot on their heels to get it done. I wonder if there's something hardware-related that is causing the delay? Definitely makes me glad I got the 460 instead of a 5850.

@OP: 6970 and gtx 570 are literally within 1% of each other at 1920x1200. At higher res the 6970 starts to pull ahead, at lower res the 570 is slightly better. Since you're gaming exclusively at 1920x1200 and sometimes lower, I'd put a very slight premium on the 570 for you, say $5-$10 or so. And since gtx 570 is actually cheaper these days, I think that your best bet is to get one of those.

 

[bryanW1995]

Sheeyit, lots of feedback here. The general consensus still seems to lie with the 6970.

Having finally built my system with everything but a new GPU, I have noticed a great performance increase in all games but Crysis, which for some reason I have yet to nail down seems to run worse than it did prior to the build. And that's on Gamer settings all around, minus motion blur. In fact, the game crashed shortly before the first segment in Warhead that says "use strength mode to vault over this cliff!" or what have you.

Anyway, being that I don't play Crysis all that much and that the games I do play regularly have seen such a great increase in performance (I really <3 my new system), I think I'll instead invest in a faster harddrive, either SSD or disk, come payday rather than a GPU, and I'll wait a few months for news on the next generation of GPUs.

With all that said, by all means continue debating the ins and outs of either board. It's been an interesting read.

By the same token, though, I could really use some suggestions on fast, but reasonably priced, SSDs and disk drives. According to windows my harddrive is my single biggest bottleneck in terms of performance (I bought it for its size, not its speed). Perhaps I should start a thread in the other forum?

Thanks for the input.

Keep in mind that TSMC has a long and distinguished history of delays when it comes out with a new node. I would factor in a 3-6 month additional wait on top of what AMD/NV are saying just to be safe in fact. In spite of this additional delay it might not be a bad idea for you to wait a couple of months since you're still ok with the performance on the games that you play.

SSD is a huge improvement over a spindle drive, but the area that it improves the least is gaming. Video card and, sometimes, cpu are the driving forces there. From what you've written it sounds like your old cpu was slow enough to be the bottleneck in many of your games.

You make some valid points but I've noticed that Hardware Canucks seems to have the Nvidia cards they test running faster than most other review sites I've seen. What I mean by that is if most review sites show a 10&#37; performance difference in AMD's favor, HC will show the advantage going to the Nvidia card. I realize different games and different testing methodologies will result in different conclusions but it seems to happen on a regular basis.

Besides the performance delta though I agree with your other points.

Hardware Canucks is a tier one gpu evaluator in my mind. I don't think that it's fair for you to make a statement like that unless you can back it up with some supporting evidence.

 

[Carfax83]

You make some valid points but I've noticed that Hardware Canucks seems to have the Nvidia cards they test running faster than most other review sites I've seen. What I mean by that is if most review sites show a 10% performance difference in AMD's favor, HC will show the advantage going to the Nvidia card. I realize different games and different testing methodologies will result in different conclusions but it seems to happen on a regular basis.

Thats probably because "most review sites" test using the default driver settings, which gives an advantage to AMD since their default driver settings has texture sampling optimizations enabled by default.

 

[Madcatatlas]

Thats probably because "most review sites" test using the default driver settings, which gives an advantage to AMD since their default driver settings has texture sampling optimizations enabled by default.

I loled at the clueless, cheap shot at AMD and their superior products. I think the reason Nvidia loses out on "driver optimizations" according to your logic, must be that if tuned higher, GTXs will explode. If not that, they could outright die. Killing drivers, could make a movie out of that.

 

[Carfax83]

I loled at the clueless, cheap shot at AMD and their superior products. I think the reason Nvidia loses out on "driver optimizations" according to your logic, must be that if tuned higher, GTXs will explode. If not that, they could outright die. Killing drivers, could make a movie out of that.

Can anyone make sense of this? :\

Nvidia has the same texture sampling optimizations that AMD has, it's just not enabled by default. And these texture sampling optimizations can increase performance by up to 10% according to Nvidia.

 

[Madcatatlas]

Most sites have it turned off. Let me know if you want it any clearer. All that sli and physx, i dont blame you for being abit well...even though I doubt you get the drift, I cant go there.

 

[Carfax83]

Most sites have it turned off. Let me know if you want it any clearer. All that sli and physx, i dont blame you for being abit well...even though I doubt you get the drift, I cant go there.

Well you can't blame me for not understanding your gibberish.. :hmm: Then again, it's possible that english may not be your first language.

Anyway, most sites have it turned off eh? And which sites are these? Anandtech, HardOCP, Tech Report and the other major western review sites all test using default settings as far as I know, since they do not explicitly state that the optimizations are turned off. In fact, Tech Report even states that the default settings are used.

The only websites that test with them off are Xbitlabs and the German review sites, and they tell you exactly what driver settings they use in their testing methods.

 

[96Firebird]

I loled at the clueless, cheap shot at AMD and their superior products. I think the reason Nvidia loses out on "driver optimizations" according to your logic, must be that if tuned higher, GTXs will explode. If not that, they could outright die. Killing drivers, could make a movie out of that.

And I lol at most of your posts...

 

[Skurge]

Can anyone make sense of this? :\

Nvidia has the same texture sampling optimizations that AMD has, it's just not enabled by default. And these texture sampling optimizations can increase performance by up to 10% according to Nvidia.

They arent on by default and havnt been for months. Read up a little before you decide to spam a thread with INCORRECT information.