Tiny little GTX 570 vs. HD 5870 mini-review

[Qbah]

Played some Borderlands and enabled MLAA after reading this thread. Does look nicer, the text does get kind of sketchy, and even some Flash games I play show the difference. I probably still like super-sampling AA better, but that's a huge performance hit with just my 6870. I'd probably need Crossfire or a 6970 to make that playable.
Despite what some say about mid-range systems being too fast for today's games, that's obviously not with everything cranked. Maybe I need another 6870

I found 2 games where MLAA beats MSAA and SSAA quality-wise: Borderlands and Darksiders. Every other game I run with the other types of antialiasing - SSAA when I can (for example FNV, ME1, ME2), MSAA when the game is too demanding (like Crysis and Warhead, run them both at in-game AAx4) or no AA (like Metro 2033 ). Plus the odd-ball where MSAA beats SSAA and MLAA for the end result (like Batman : AA - even though it's running on UE3!).

The best thing about MLAA is it gives you an extra option in addition to the standard modes and should work with any game, technically. For some reason the only game that it doesn't work is DeathSpank : Thongs of Virtue (I don't know how is that possible, but it doesn't - I can see it by the Steam Overlay) and this game could use a bit of AA for sure!

EDIT: There are other games I have seen screenshots from, where MLAA beats the other modes - the biggest one, coming close to Borderlands, is Dead Space. Also, GTA IV shows great results with MLAA.

 

[n7]

Yeah no matter how magical MLAA might be, there's no way i'm going to run non-native rez.

I run scaling set up as 1:1 pixel scaling for UT2k4 (so i can run 2048x1536 since WS doesn't look good), so running non-native for anything means black borders around stuff.

Anyway, i put the GTX 570 back in.

5870 served me well, but it's time to move on to greener pastures, hah. :awe:
I love bad puns.

Also, if you play Borderlands, or are interested in doing so, fire a PM my way.
I'm always seeking new pals to play with, since well, pretty much every person i play with always eventually moves on from the game, while i continue to play, haha.

 

[Qbah]

Just a small update - the non-native res, even with MLAA, looks worse than no AA IMO. Most people probably have a similar opinion. At 1600x900 it was still better looking with MLAA, but if I went any lower, it was just bad. 2560X1600 -> 1920x1080 is roughly like going from 1920x1080 -> 1360x768, percentage wise and the game looked really bad at that low resolution on my screen.

As for the game itself, thanks for the offer n7. However, I have finished the game many many times already, both on my Xbox and PC (SP and coop). I know the game by heart However, if I ever feel like playing it, I'll fire a PM your way for sure.

So enjoy your card! In my opinion a GTX570 is *the* card to get these days as it offers the best value for the money spent on it and is the card I recommend to my friends

 

[evolucion8]

Moving from an HD 5870 to an GTX 570 isn't a great performance upgrade, as the HD 5870 never was much slower than the GTX 480 which performs identically to the GTX 570. I think that moving to an HD 6970, GTX 580 or a Crossfire/SLI setup would had give you more performance.

 

[n7]

As for the game itself, thanks for the offer n7. However, I have finished the game many many times already, both on my Xbox and PC (SP and coop). I know the game by heart However, if I ever feel like playing it, I'll fire a PM your way for sure.

Oh same here...i have 11 characters technically, though i've only played thru with 7 thus far.
It's an addiction

Moving from an HD 5870 to an GTX 570 isn't a great performance upgrade, as the HD 5870 never was much slower than the GTX 480 which performs identically to the GTX 570. I think that moving to an HD 6970, GTX 580 or a Crossfire/SLI setup would had give you more performance.

Correct on all points excepting the 6970 giving me better performance.
It might on average out of many games overall, but according to the reviews out there, not for the games i play.
Well that, & it wasn't nearly as cheap as i got the GTX 570 for. I couldn't see it being worth an extra $50.

I was very well aware that my "upgrade" isn't much of one, but i do foolish upgrades all the time.
And based on the games i tested, it's giving me the boost pretty much just as i expected.

My new i7 970 ain't any faster in games than my i7 930, which wasn't really much faster than my i7 860, which in games, was actually probably a bit slower than my higher clocked i5 750.
Yeah, i do lots of silly upgrades.

 

[Skurge]

Oh same here...i have 11 characters technically, though i've only played thru with 7 thus far.
It's an addiction



Correct on all points excepting the 6970 giving me better performance.
It might on average out of many games overall, but according to the reviews out there, not for the games i play.
Well that, & it wasn't nearly as cheap as i got the GTX 570 for. I couldn't see it being worth an extra $50.

I was very well aware that my "upgrade" isn't much of one, but i do foolish upgrades all the time.
And based on the games i tested, it's giving me the boost pretty much just as i expected.

My new i7 970 ain't any faster in games than my i7 930, which wasn't really much faster than my i7 860, which in games, was actually probably a bit slower than my higher clocked i5 750.
Yeah, i do lots of silly upgrades.

What do you do with your old hardware?

 

[RaistlinZ]

Oh same here...i have 11 characters technically, though i've only played thru with 7 thus far.
It's an addiction



Correct on all points excepting the 6970 giving me better performance.
It might on average out of many games overall, but according to the reviews out there, not for the games i play.
Well that, & it wasn't nearly as cheap as i got the GTX 570 for. I couldn't see it being worth an extra $50.

I was very well aware that my "upgrade" isn't much of one, but i do foolish upgrades all the time.
And based on the games i tested, it's giving me the boost pretty much just as i expected.

My new i7 970 ain't any faster in games than my i7 930, which wasn't really much faster than my i7 860, which in games, was actually probably a bit slower than my higher clocked i5 750.
Yeah, i do lots of silly upgrades.

And your new i7 970 will be slower in gaming than an i5-2500K now. Time to upgrade, sucka.

 

[n7]

What do you do with your old hardware?

Sell it, eventually.
I'm really bad about getting stuff posted for sale though, so it tends to lose value a lot because i'm too lazy to get around to it D:

And your new i7 970 will be slower in gaming than an i5-2500K now. Time to upgrade, sucka.

Yup, i saw those numbers & was surprised; didn't realize it'd be that impressive.
I may indeed want to upgrade

 

[slayernine]

You should have done a comparison with Team Fortress 2, I've seen you playing that a fair bit recently. If I remember correctly that games favors the red team.

 

[Wreckage]

AA will never make up for running below native res on an LCD.

Yeah games can look really bad if they are not running at the native res. OP have you tried using transparency AA on the 570?

Sell it, eventually.
I'm really bad about getting stuff posted for sale though, so it tends to lose value a lot because i'm too lazy to get around to it D:

This is why I have a stack of P4 boards among other things.

Moving from an HD 5870 to an GTX 570 isn't a great performance upgrade, as the HD 5870 never was much slower than the GTX 480 which performs identically to the GTX 570. I think that moving to an HD 6970, GTX 580 or a Crossfire/SLI setup would had give you more performance.

A 6970 is no faster and sometimes even slower than a 570.

 

[thilanliyan]

A 6970 is no faster and sometimes even slower than a 570.

a 6970 is no slower than a 570 and sometimes even faster than a 580.

 

[Childs]

AA will never make up for running below native res on an LCD.

It'll look fine if you do it windowed. I do that for BFBC2 when I want to record via Fraps. 1920x1080 windowed on a 2560x1440 LCD looks fine, and its still like you are playing on a 20".

 

[evolucion8]

a 6970 is no slower than a 570 and sometimes even faster than a 580.

You are totally right, there's no game or scenario that the GTX 570 can match the GTX 580, something that the HD 6970 can do sometimes. Overall, the HD 6970 is a bettery buy than the GTX 570.

 

[Wreckage]

You are totally right, there's no game or scenario that the GTX 570 can match the GTX 580, something that the HD 6970 can do sometimes. Overall, the HD 6970 is a bettery buy than the GTX 570.

Other than the occasional slanted benchmark the 6970 gets destroyed by the 580. In newer DX11 games the 570 also passes the 6970 by a good margin. I can show benchmarks where the GTX460 surpasses the 5870.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/20126/17

In the GTX 570's favor are a host of traditional winning attributes for a graphics card. It's 20 bucks cheaper, draws a little less power under load, and generates less noise. What's more, although most games aren't yet taking advantage of it, the GTX 570 has measurably and markedly superior geometry processing throughput. That may be a forward-looking architectural feature, and the question of whether and how much that matters is far from settled. Given the performance parity elsewhere, though, it's hard to ignore.

The 6970 needs to drop in price by a lot to consider it over a 570.

 

[cusideabelincoln]

Other than the occasional slanted benchmark

L.O.L.

 

[evolucion8]

L.O.L.

LOL Wreckage is quite funny, look at the results here:

Metro 2033, DX11, Tessellation High and Anti Aliasing, the HD 6970 snipping the heels of the GTX 580 and the HD 5870 smoking the GTX 460 for breakfast as the resolution and load increases.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4061/amds-radeon-hd-6970-radeon-hd-6950/15

And look, another DX11 tittle showing, STALKER COP, the same tendence, this time, the GTX 460 can't even outperform the HD 6850.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4061/amds-radeon-hd-6970-radeon-hd-6950/19

Look again, another DX11 tittle (Allien vs Predator) which shows that the GTX 460 can't match the HD 6870 and the HD 6970 is consistently faster than the GTX 570 which always trails the GTX 580.

http://alienbabeltech.com/main/?p=22610&page=22

Or here that the GTX 460 is below the HD 6850 again.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-6950-6970-review/22

Or this benchmark (Battefield 2 BC) which the HD 6850 kicks the GTX 460 without issues, also the GTX 570 is consistently slower than the HD 6970 again.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-6950-6970-review/23

And thanks to driver improvements, the Tessellation performance got up considerably that the nVidia's stronhold known as Unigine 2.0 is no longer their stronghold.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/HIS/Radeon_HD_6970/26.html

The same thing happens here: http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...899-amd-radeon-hd-6970-hd-6950-review-23.html

Wreckage, try to nitpick any benchmark that you want, but I posted reviews from different sites proving you wrong and not handpicking a single site. So in the end, the HD 6970 still a better buy than the GTX 570 overall, and the performance gap will widen once new drivers arrives to optimize its Vec4 architecture.

 

[Wreckage]

HAWX2, Lost Planet 2

http://techreport.com/articles.x/20126/8

The 570 is far, far ahead of the 6970. The 6970 is closer to a 460

In fact virtually every conclusion at best places the 6970 equal to the 570 but no where near the 580

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/radeon-hd6970-hd6950_14.html#sect0

Although AMD's Radeon HD 6950 and Radeon HD 6970 are not absolutely superior to the Nvidia GeForce GTX 570 in sheer speed and cannot match the GeForce GTX 580

Even AMD favorable sites.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/radeon-hd6970-hd6950_14.html#sect0

Our concern was that AMD would shoot themselves in the foot by pricing the Radeon HD 6970 in particular at too high a price. If we take a straight average at 1920x1200 and 2560x1600, its performance is more or less equal to the GeForce GTX 570. In practice this means that NVIDIA wins a third of our games, AMD wins a third of our games, and they effectively tie on the rest, so the position of the 6970 relative to the GTX 570 is heavily dependent on just what games out of our benchmark suite you favor. All we can say for sure is that on average the two cards are comparable.

My point is when you said that "Moving from an HD 5870 to an GTX 570 isn't a great performance upgrade" but said that "I think that moving to an HD 6970 would give you more performace" was extremely misinformed advice.

 

[evolucion8]

Obviously, all sites posts terrible performance numbers with AMD Radeon hardware with Lost Planet 2 and Hawx 2, which are related to driver issues or crippled Tessellation usage.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/12/14/amd_radeon_hd_6970_6950_video_card_review/9

AMD Radeon HD 6970 vs. Radeon HD 5870


"The next criteria is to see if the Radeon HD 6970 is an upgrade from the Radeon HD 5870. The Radeon HD 5870 is the previous single-GPU champion that AMD offered. The Radeon HD 6970 firmly takes its place, but is it worth the upgrade?


In F1 2010 the Radeon HD 6970 improves upon the Radeon HD 5870 by 34%! In Civ 5 the Radeon HD 6970 improves upon the Radeon HD 5870 by 19% faster performance. This 19% allowed a rather drastic difference in the playable settings, greatly favoring the new Radeon HD 6970. In Metro 2033 there is a 20% performance difference favoring the HD 6970. In BC2 there was a smaller 6% difference. Finally, in Mafia II there was a 20% performance difference.


In many of the games, there were significant gameplay experience differences between the Radeon HD 6970 and Radeon HD 5870. The Radeon HD 6970 is an upgrade to the Radeon HD 5870, but performance will depend on the game. In some cases you could see 30%+ greater performance, in others you may see only a 20% or less difference."

"AMD Radeon HD 6950


If there is a real champion in this evaluation, it is the AMD Radeon HD 6950. AMD has set the MSRP at $299 for the 2GB Radeon HD 6950. 1GB models may even be cheaper. The least expensive GeForce GTX 570 is currently $349. That is a difference of $50. In all of our tests, the new Radeon HD 6950 either matched or beat the GeForce GTX 570.

In F1 2010 there was a 5% difference in performance favoring the Radeon HD 6950. In Civ 5 the performance between the two video cards was dead even. In Metro 2033 is just slightly faster than the GeForce GTX 570. Once again in BC2 the two video cards are neck and neck. In Mafia II once again the video cards are very close.


The GeForce GTX 570 just got some new competition in town, and the competition is winning. For the same performance, you can save $50 and get the AMD Radeon HD 6950."

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4061/amds-radeon-hd-6970-radeon-hd-6950/25

"Meanwhile the Radeon HD 6950 occupies an interesting spot. Above it is the 570/6970, below it are the soon to be discontinued GTX 470 and Radeon HD 5870. These cards were a bit of a spoiler for the GTX 570, and this is once more the case for the 6950. The 6950 is on average 7-10% faster than the 5870 for around 20% more."

What I can say for my opinion, is that the current generation of cards doesn't improve a lot in terms of pure performance numbers, but indeed you can raise some more eye candy with less impact in performance. But in the end, in pure performance numbers, the HD 5970 still the indisputed leader for now until a newer AMD or nVidia dual solution arrives. So in the end, the HD 6950 is closer to the GTX 570 than the HD 6970.

 

[Jules]

If i were going from the GTX 460 in my sig, would it be worth it to pick up the 6950 and unlock it or the gtx 570?

 

[toyota]

If i were going from the GTX 460 in my sig, would it be worth it to pick up the 6950 and unlock it or the gtx 570?

can nobody think for themselves around here? lol. look at reviews and see for yourself if you think its a worthy upgrade.


Thread-crapping is not acceptable and will not be tolerated.

If you have nothing positive to contribute to the thread then you are expected to refrain from posting in it. You know this.

Moderator Idontcare

 

[Jules]

can nobody think for themselves around here? lol. look at reviews and see for yourself if you think its a worthy upgrade.

Yes i can. This is a forum for discussions. Thats why i asked for some advice before i pull the trigger.

 

[GaiaHunter]

Yes i can. This is a forum for discussions. Thats why i asked for some advice before i pull the trigger.

But what is the purpose of your upgrade?

What games you play?

If I was you I would go with 6950 - its the cheapest and should offer playable frame rates at 1680x1050 even at 6950 specs.

 

[Jules]

But what is the purpose of your upgrade?

What games you play?

If I was you I would go with 6950 - its the cheapest and should offer playable frame rates at 1680x1050 even at 6950 specs.

Main reason is because i wanna buy a bigger display. Something with 1920x1200 or 1920x1080. Currently im playing Batman AA, Crysis, Darksiders, Dirt 2, Doom 3, New Vegas, GTA4, Just Cause 2, Killing Floor, Metro 2033 and The Witcher

 

[cusideabelincoln]

Main reason is because i wanna buy a bigger display. Something with 1920x1200 or 1920x1080. Currently im playing Batman AA, Crysis, Darksiders, Dirt 2, Doom 3, New Vegas, GTA4, Just Cause 2, Killing Floor, Metro 2033 and The Witcher

That's a good mix of games. A 6950 or faster is going to chew through most of those games. Crysis and Metro are the most demanding, and the AMD and Nvidia cards battle back and forth but really they are pretty similar in performance and definitely and upgrade over the GTX 460. There isn't a horribly bad decision among the 6950, 570, and 6970. Obviously if you can unlock the 6950 then that will be the best value.

can nobody think for themselves around here? lol. look at reviews and see for yourself if you think its a worthy upgrade.

I'm sick of seeing you being an ass, and calling out the OP who just wants some feedback. Reviews are nice but so is perspective, and you can get other perspectives on forums.

It is of my opinion that a person needs the complete perspective to make the absolute best decision. And perspective includes everything - every variable - and these variables are different from on person to another. So every time someone makes a post, asking for advice, it is going to be different than the other and most likely their situation will be different than the ones typically presented in reviews. However I mostly see you go on about the same drivel over and over. Instead of being a useful teacher, you are a complete ass. "Why didn't you do this OP? Do you not know anything? We need to know this information why didn't you post is there something wrong with you?" You fail to realize there are things we (you) think about that the OP may not have, but you criticize and berate them for these omissions and quite frankly I'm sick of seeing it.


Please refrain from taking matters into your own hands and publicly "dressing down" your fellow forum colleagues like this, no matter how warranted the vigilantism may be.

This level of commentary is best said in pm's or not said at all. Report the post and leave the matter to the discretion of your moderation staff please.

Moderator Idontcare

 

[GaiaHunter]

Currently im playing Batman AA, Crysis, Darksiders, Dirt 2, Doom 3, New Vegas, GTA4, Just Cause 2, Killing Floor, Metro 2033 and The Witcher

WoW that is lot of games.

I generally just play a couple multiplayer ones with the occasional single player thrown in.

I agree with cusideabelincoln - the 6950 unlocked would be the best value. If you don't feel like gambling, well the GTX570 isn't bad either.