Tri 6950's or 580's in SLI?

[cusideabelincoln]

Wrong.

You do know those results are with broken Crossfire drivers for the 5870? HardOCP posted a follow-up article... go find it. And the 6900 cards have even better scaling than the 5870.

 

[SirGCal]

Wrong.

The AMD HD5xxx Series Crossfire sucks compared to the HD6xxx series. They seem to have finally figured out how to pair up cards after all these years. The 6 series is the first to scale really strongly in a multi-card setup. Hence the strength of the CFX 6950 setups.

 

[Skurge]

Doesn't 2 6950's run just as well as 2 580's at the high resolutions? I'd go with a pair of 6950's for under $600.

They run as well as 570s i think, 6970s run as well as 580s.

 

[notty22]

You do know those results are with broken Crossfire drivers for the 5870? HardOCP posted a follow-up article... go find it. And the 6900 cards have even better scaling than the 5870.

You do know, the main point of my post was to refute, 560s would be fine for single monitor resolutions, but they are hopeless for surround..
You didn't have a problem with Skurges blanket statement, that is absolutely incorrect ?

Those are current dx11 games that were playable in surround on the gtx 460, never mind countless less demanding games that would play 'at fast fps' in surround.
Such as the COD's, Mafia II without AA, NFS Shift, WoW,
probably anything with adjustments except Crysis, Metro 2033.

Skurges post

560s would be fine for single monitor resolutions, but they are hopeless for surround.

would have to apply to any 1gb card, including single 1gb gpu AMD eyefinity.


edit: Sorry to have taken the OP off topic :
I would go with 2 more powerful cards VS 3 less powerful.
Less problems in many areas, going that route.
2-gtx 570- 580's

 

[Skurge]

You do know, the main point of my post was to refute, 560s would be fine for single monitor resolutions, but they are hopeless for surround..
You didn't have a problem with Skurges blanket statement, that is absolutely incorrect ?

Those are current dx11 games that were playable in surround on the gtx 460, never mind countless less demanding games that would play 'at fast fps' in surround.
Such as the COD's, Mafia II without AA, NFS Shift, WoW,
probably anything with adjustments except Crysis, Metro 2033.

Skurges post would have to apply to any 1gb card, including single 1gb gpu AMD eyefinity.


edit: Sorry to have taken the OP off topic :
I would go with 2 more powerful cards VS 3 less powerful.
Less problems in many areas, going that route.
2-gtx 570- 580's

My quote had links with the 560s against 6870s and they were losing in every benchmark.

2 6950s would get him the better performance than 2 570s (mainly cause of the 2GB of ram) if he is running eyefinity, so I wouldn't call them "less powerful".

 

[Mistwalker]

You do know, the main point of my post was to refute, 560s would be fine for single monitor resolutions, but they are hopeless for surround..

To be fair it was hard to see what the point of your post was, as it consisted of a single word followed by benchmarks of unrelated hardware several months old.

Those are current dx11 games that were playable in surround on the gtx 460, never mind countless less demanding games that would play 'at fast fps' in surround.
Such as the COD's, Mafia II without AA, NFS Shift, WoW,
probably anything with adjustments except Crysis, Metro 2033.

Skurges post would have to apply to any 1gb card, including single 1gb gpu AMD eyefinity.

I don't think the 560s would be anything close to hopeless from a performance perspective, I assumed that comment stemmed from the fact that you do hit 1GB VRAM limitations with surround setups.

As you say, the 1GB 6950 would also be a poor choice for that reason. In any case, the 560 and other 1GB cards are not really the point of this thread, they would be memory limited and the OP obviously has the resources to buy hardware avoiding that problem.

I think two more powerful cards vs. three lesser cards is a valid argument. The thing is, with multi-monitor a pair of unlocked 6950s would not be far behind the ridiculously more expensive 580s, and three of them would easily outpace them and still be significantly cheaper. In this case, there is definitely an argument to be made for tri-6950.

570s are again a subpar choice vs. cheaper, higher memory, better scaling, unlockable 6950s.

 

[Mistwalker]

Doesn't 2 6950's run just as well as 2 580's at the high resolutions? I'd go with a pair of 6950's for under $600.

At high resolutions 6970s trade blows (but ultimately end up slower) than 580s. The small performance delta is not worth the staggering price difference, especially since (at the time of this post as far as I know) 6950s can also be unlocked and run at those levels.

Right now at the high end, at high resolutions, there is no better value than 6950 Crossfire, period (IMHO). When 2GB variants of the 560 show up I expect that to change, but until then...

 

[Grooveriding]

There is no question with this usage scenario, that the 6950 trifire is far and away the better choice.

Look at thies comparison a hardforum member has done between 580SLI and 6970CF for multi monitor gaming.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1573598

6970CF is generally faster by a little or a lot. 6950 trifire will be faster still, AMD's superior crossfire scaling holds true with three cards. AMD cards are the best solution for 3 monitor gaming.

And btw, the 570 in any configuration is a terrible choice due to the limited memory.

 

[notty22]

To be fair it was hard to see what the point of your post was, as it consisted of a single word followed by benchmarks of unrelated hardware several months old.

My single word, initial response, was preceded by his single sentence in QUOTES that said
560s would be fine for single monitor resolutions, but they are hopeless for surround.

The hardware is related. The only way to run Nvidia surround is in sli, gtx 460's are sister cards to gtx 560's.
Both being 1gb, sorry I need to make that clear to you.

My quote had links with the 560s against 6870s and they were losing in every benchmark.

No , your post I responded to did not. Go back and look.

 

[bryanW1995]

Crushing AMD is a tough task especially with the numbers Crossfired 6950/6970s put up, in the past this would be easy to do but these new chips are top notch when paired. If they choose GTX 580s and underclock them, I think it would not be enough to "crush" a 6990. At best it would end up with the GTX 595 being 5-10% faster but when all is said and done, it would probably be a wash.

they're going to need to be 2x3gb memory, too, b/c at the ultra high settings those cards are designed for the 6990 at 2x2 would be a big advantage over 2x1.5. of course, amd might just go for a 2x4 and, um, lay the wood on NV... 😉

@OP: I'd go with the 2x580 just b/c of uncertainty about 3+ card drivers.

 

[bryanW1995]

Has anyone done any comparisons between 3x6950 vs. 2x6950? Going for 3 cards might be a waste of money unless you're getting a large performance increase over 2 cards.

I hear there are going to be 560 TI 2GB cards out too. You may also consider running three of them in SLI for around $810.

can't run more than 2x560 iirc.

 

[RaistlinZ]

they're going to need to be 2x3gb memory, too, b/c at the ultra high settings those cards are designed for the 6990 at 2x2 would be a big advantage over 2x1.5. of course, amd might just go for a 2x4 and, um, lay the wood on NV... 😉

@OP: I'd go with the 2x580 just b/c of uncertainty about 3+ card drivers.

I'd love to see the 6990 debut with 8GB of RAM.

 

[bryanW1995]

well, I don't know if there are even any 3 monitor setups that run out of ram right now on the 2gb cards. theoretically 2560x4800 SHOULD run out at ultra high settings, maybe in a quad-fire setup, but I'd bet it's very very rare. gtx 590/5 getting 3gbx2 is much more likely imho.

 

[Skurge]

My single word, initial response, was preceded by his single sentence in QUOTES that said
560s would be fine for single monitor resolutions, but they are hopeless for surround.

The hardware is related. The only way to run Nvidia surround is in sli, gtx 460's are sister cards to gtx 560's.
Both being 1gb, sorry I need to make that clear to you.No , your post I responded to did not. Go back and look.

Sorry, my mistake. my next post had links backing up what I said. A single 6970 gets the same framerates as the 560s I linked and it wasn't the 1GB of ram holding it back, as the 6870s were doing much better.

So yes, I still think 560s are still hopeless for surround when cheaper (supposedly slower) cards do much better.

 

[Elfear]

@OP: I'd go with the 2x580 just b/c of uncertainty about 3+ card drivers.

Even in the few scenarios where Trifire performs the same as Crossfire it will still be on par with a pair of 580s and cheaper too. Unlocked 6950s are a great performance bargain for high-res gaming.

 

[djnsmith7]

Wow, $1k on graphics cards...some of us really are crazy...

 

[SolMiester]

I can't honestly decide. I'm going with a 3 monitor setup and the 2GB from the 6950's is an advantage but i'm scared of Amd's drivers with 3 cards. What does everyone think?

Well, Im not sure how 3 x 6950's perform as apposed to the 580's, however perhaps 2 x 570 would be a better choice....Cheaper and quiet capable of clocking to 580 performance.

If you got cheaper 16x10 120hz monitors, you would have another feature in 3D vision to play with also!??

6 of one, half a dozen of the other I guess.....You would need a serious amount of PSU PCIe cable for the 3 cards though!

 

[dust]

Since there's no option for two 6950's, I say go with tri-fire.

I do believe the best setup would be dual 6950's unlocked, granting very similar performance to the 580's for ~400$ less. The third card isn't worth the premium though, often enough the scaling sucks, so you'll eventually get more heat/noise rather than horsepower.

 

[SolMiester]

Lets see if we can gather some benches from around the web for tri SLI 570/580 and trifired 6950/6970.

Here is one on the 570s but with older drivers. From December.
http://benchmarkextreme.com/Articles/GTX 570/P1.html

Here is a Unigine 2.1 570 triSLI score. Not sure what CPU or driver version though.

I'll look for any others as well as trifire.
Something from Xtremesystems forum with Tri 6970s.
http://67.90.82.13/forums/showthread.php?t=263672

From Skurge:
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=265548 6950 trifire

LOL, that was mental!!!...3 cards in a row....imagine having that much wonga to splash on GPU's....I didnt understand his Metro bench though...it had PhyX enabled?? for 31 FPS @ 25x14??

 

[SolMiester]

Not many games and no straight comparison between tri-fire vs SLI GTX580, but considering that the tri-fire isn't far from tri-sli, it might be useful:

http://www.hardwareheaven.com/revie...-review-3-way-crossfire-eyefinity-vs-sli.html

If you can manage the heat and noise I would go with 3x 6950.

SLI scaling on the 5xx is crap on those drivers, Im waiting to see if the Anandtech SLI revision shows better performance on the new drivers as stated by Ryan...

 

[badb0y]

Can't go wrong with either but I would go for 2x GTX 580s, I just think it's a safer choice overall.

 

[SolMiester]

I think we know that was when crossfire wasnt working.

http://www.hardwareheaven.com/revie...d-sli-performance-bad-company-2-surround.html
http://www.hardwareheaven.com/revie...-sli-performance-crysis-warhead-surround.html
http://www.hardwareheaven.com/revie...iew-and-sli-performance-f1-2010-surround.html

More demanding games. Show up the 560s weakness. I would rather pay the premium and get 570s, even if they have less ram.

I think 5xx series SLI isnt really broken, but not up to the 4xx series mark in scaling....new drivers mentioned should see better results

 

[Castiel]

Thanks guys. Is there an ETA on 3GB 580's? I'm still leaning both ways.

 

[Baasha]

OP, I'm in a similar situation in terms of getting new GPUs and I've decided to wait for BOTH the AMD 6990 and GTX-590/595 to be released. Once there is some solid information on those cards, I will decide on Quad SLI vs QuadFire.

The thing is, jumping in now is a bad proposition all around IMO. The GTX-580, especially in SLI, Tri-SLI, and Quad-SLI, trounce any setup out there. The AMD 6970 CrossFire, for very high resolutions (2560x1600 and above), edges out the GTX-580 SLI. However, if I were to get something TODAY, I would get GTX-580 SLI and OC them. There is no doubt about that.

Having said that, I would really wait (which I am doing LOL) for the 6990 and the 590/595 to be released before making a final decision.

 

[Castiel]

OP, I'm in a similar situation in terms of getting new GPUs and I've decided to wait for BOTH the AMD 6990 and GTX-590/595 to be released. Once there is some solid information on those cards, I will decide on Quad SLI vs QuadFire.

The thing is, jumping in now is a bad proposition all around IMO. The GTX-580, especially in SLI, Tri-SLI, and Quad-SLI, trounce any setup out there. The AMD 6970 CrossFire, for very high resolutions (2560x1600 and above), edges out the GTX-580 SLI. However, if I were to get something TODAY, I would get GTX-580 SLI and OC them. There is no doubt about that.

Having said that, I would really wait (which I am doing LOL) for the 6990 and the 590/595 to be released before making a final decision.

Thanks Baas. I wish they would give us some good solid dates for the 6990 and 595.