Quad 5970 vs Nvidia 580gtx?

[Darkstar757]

I currently own two 5970s and I am thinking about going the nvidia route?

Which would be faster and should I even bother? BTW I game on a Dell 2008 at 2560x1600.

Thanks,

 

[EliteRetard]

You own a Veyron and you want to switch to a Corvette? Odd...

 

[3DVagabond]

How many 580's are you planning on?

Seriously, you'd need at least 2 to not adversely effect your gaming experience. It might not be quite as fast as your current setup, but should handle anything you throw at it at your res. One will slow down in some scenarios with high IQ settings.

 

[Dark Shroud]

For the price of 2 GTX 580s in SLI you could buy a HD 6990 & HD 6970 to run in tri-fire. You'll get more power and AMD has stepped up crossfire performance & support with the HD 6900 series.

 

[OCGuy]

You own a Veyron and you want to switch to a Corvette? Odd...

*looks down. shakes head*

 

[EliteRetard]

*looks down. shakes head*

Hey, Im a retarded nerd...that was the first and best analogy I could come up with.

 

[Arkadrel]

I currently own two 5970s and I am thinking about going the nvidia route?

Which would be faster and should I even bother? BTW I game on a Dell 2008 at 2560x1600.

Thanks,

You do realise that 1 x 5970 (dual gpu card with 2x 5870's in it), is faster than a single 580 right?

So the *only* thing that would be a decent upg, would be SLI 580's... or so.

Tradeing 2x 5970's in for 1 x 580 is a bad idea.

 

[DaveSimmons]

I currently own two 5970s and I am thinking about going the nvidia route?

Which would be faster and should I even bother? BTW I game on a Dell 2008 at 2560x1600.

What games aren't running as well as you'd like them to?

 

[Soccerman06]

I dont think there are many games that 2x5970s would lose to 2x580s, maybe the ones nvidia helped design?

 

[cusideabelincoln]

I dont think there are many games that 2x5970s would lose to 2x580s, maybe the ones nvidia helped design?

VRAM could be an issue.

 

[nitromullet]

I would personally take SLI GTX 580 over 5970 Crossfire any day. The scaling isn't there for the money. Plus, you've horribly unbalanced between vRAM and gpu power in that any res that could actually take advantage of four Cypress chips will probably need more than 1GB per gpu.

Edit: of course, this was most likely the most awesome set up available at the time you purchased it, and was for a long time. It's still awesome but there has been some new stuff that makes it less so, which is really the point of new stuff.

Now, if you were comparing SLI GTX 580 to TriFire 6950/6970, that's a different story.

 

[bryanW1995]

*looks down. shakes head*

lol...yeah, it's more like going from a viper to a z06: they're both fast as hell, but the viper is definitely faster than the z06.

I dont think there are many games that 2x5970s would lose to 2x580s, maybe the ones nvidia helped design?

Care to wager on that? 580 is pretty close to 5970, but scaling from 1 to 2 gpus is a LOT better than from 2 to 4. I'd be surprised if any but the most blatant AMD titles was faster on quad 5970.

 

[Darkstar757]

Folks I should have been more clear. I was referring to 580gtx sli vs my current setup. I want to upgrade but at this point I dont know if I should. I want to be more than prepared for BF3!!!

 

[3DVagabond]

Folks I should have been more clear. I was referring to 580gtx sli vs my current setup. I want to upgrade but at this point I dont know if I should. I want to be more than prepared for BF3!!!

I don't think there will be much overall difference in speed. It would be slower except SLI scaling on the 580 is in all likelihood better than quadfire on the 5870 (2x5970). You'll also have more RAM for memory intensive games. As someone else said, 6990/6970 crossfireX wipes the floor with the 580SLI for the same money. If you want nVidia though, then 580SLI is a good setup.

 

[EliteRetard]

Yeah Im gonna toss in another vote for 6990+6970...thats much more an upgrade than 580 SLI and for the same money to boot. I bet you could sell your 5970s for 350$ each and your upgrade cost would be about 300$.

 

[cusideabelincoln]

Folks I should have been more clear. I was referring to 580gtx sli vs my current setup. I want to upgrade but at this point I dont know if I should. I want to be more than prepared for BF3!!!

If you are not getting the performance you desire, then upgrade.

The thing is that if you really aren't getting the performance you desire, most likely you are running into VRAM limitations with your current setup. You have enough raw processing power to handle just about anything. A couple of 580s would most definitely be an improvement, as would 6970 Trifire, because you get more VRAM with at least as much processing power (factoring in multi card scaling issues).

But if you are getting satisfactory performance, then don't bother upgrading. Just wait until you aren't satisfied. Pretty simple strategy.

And yes, I'm assuming you have the 2GB 5970 because the 4GB versions were pretty expensive.

 

[Starcrosser]

No, you shouldn't even bother.

 

[Spikesoldier]

i wouldnt bother, youre good for a while

 

[Ben90]

Lol, I think you should stay on 2x5970s. You get a whole 66ms of free input delay if running at 60fps. If everyone did this id be pro as hell in no time.

Btw quad GPUs adds a shitload of input delay

 

[Skurge]

Yeah Im gonna toss in another vote for 6990+6970...thats much more an upgrade than 580 SLI and for the same money to boot. I bet you could sell your 5970s for 350$ each and your upgrade cost would be about 300$.

I'd avoid the 6990 unless you are going to run 2 of them. Better to get 3x6970s, might be about $120 more expensive, but should be much friendlier on the ears and faster.

If you wanna go nvidia, the 3 570s for the same price are just as fast.

 

[EliteRetard]

His board does support 4 cards...but there would be problems spacing 3 or more. In the case of the ATI cards that would be bad. In the case of 3x570s, I think hed run into the same VRAM limitations as he would have now.

The extra 120$ on 3x 6970s could also be put to work silencing the 6990, and youd probably be much better off that way with heat and noise (vs an overcramped trifire solution).

But as has also been said a few times...youve already got a really fast setup, theres no real reason to upgrade. But if you did, 580 SLI wouldnt really be much of an upgrade.

But heres another option, how about getting a pair of 2GB 6950s and unlocking them? It might be a "downgrade" but with 2GB and improved scaling it would be plenty to run a 30" and you could actually pocket some money in the process (~150$). You can get a Powercolor PCS++ 6950 2GB that comes from the factory with an unlock if you dont want to risk it.

 

[Dark Shroud]

Would this be a good time to point out that a 6990+6970 tri-fire wouldn't be any louder than xfire 5970s?

 

[Starcrosser]

If you had to whore yourself out for the 5970s, I wonder why you'd even worry about upgrading at this point.....

 

[badb0y]

IMHO, the GTX 580 SLi is better than the Quad HD5970s but If I already had the 5970s I wouldn't sidegrade to the GTX 580 SLi setup.

I think you would be better off waiting for the 28nm cards to come out

 

[Lepton87]

Just OC those cards to 5870 clocks or more and you will get 25% improvement in FPS.