Waiting for a Anandtech comparison of the AMD 6970 and the nVidia 580

[boed]

While numbers on fudzilla are interesting I'm certainly not going to make a decision based on them or Tom's Hardware. I get very good info from Anandtech so I can't wait for them to be allowed to release their findings. Hopefully they'll be ready this week!




Things that might convince me to go one way or another on my next purchase:

1. Performance in Crysis (frankly 3dmark and other stuff like that don't convince me of much - they used to about a decade ago now they are just a reference point).
2. Power consumption (I don't want to fire up a generator to turn on my PC)
3. Card noise (I hate having to yell to have a conversation over the propeller on my GPU).
4. Card Length (I live in an apartment and can't build an addition to house my card).
5. Picture quality (did they skimp on picture quality to get higher FPS).

 

[Hallowed_Dragon]

Some other good sites to visit are Hardocp and Techpowerup.

 

[boed]

Thanks - I'm looking forward to some benchmarks I can trust. Who knows maybe fudzilla got something right but I'm certainly not going to base my next card purchase on anything they post.

 

[digitaldurandal]

While numbers on fudzilla are interesting I'm certainly not going to make a decision based on them or Tom's Hardware. I get very good info from Anandtech so I can't wait for them to be allowed to release their findings. Hopefully they'll be ready this week!




Things that might convince me to go one way or another on my next purchase:

1. Performance in Crysis (frankly 3dmark and other stuff like that don't convince me of much - they used to about a decade ago now they are just a reference point).
2. Power consumption (I don't want to fire up a generator to turn on my PC)
3. Card noise (I hate having to yell to have a conversation over the propeller on my GPU).
4. Card Length (I live in an apartment and can't build an addition to house my card).
5. Picture quality (did they skimp on picture quality to get higher FPS).

1) Crysis is really almostas bad as 3dmark now because it is so popular to use, both companies have probably already optimized the heck out of the game. I prefer to use recent titles that I actually play or have engines related to games I am going to play.

2) Rumor for power is that it is about the same as the 570. I am running two 570s with an 850w PSU.

3) 570 SLI is only marginally louder than my 5870 was. But I did forget that nvidia cards sometimes have a thing about making a noise when heavy processing occurs, hard to explain the noise - my 8800 had it too.

4) 570 was actually about 2 cm shorter than my 5870

5) Finally, yes they did optimize their performance with some type of texture tweaking, BUT you can turn it off if the idea bothers you.

6) Supposedly 12.5 hours and counting until they are unveiled. Sorry to hope that they don't impress but I did buy two of the competition.

 

[boed]

I'm short on slots so I'll probably stick with a single card solution - but good to know 2 cards aren't much louder than 1. I also would prefer not to replace my 600W power supply if possible - not that that would be a deal breaker - just a preference.

I had the 8800 a while back - good bang for the buck. Then I got the 4870 which fortunately came with a nice heat pipe alternate cooling solution already on board - still the loudest fan in my compouter but much better than the stock coolers. I don't think I could ever go back to stock coolers until they create a peltier cooler that is powered by the heat of the GPU I still have the 4870 as my video card and it has served me very well for a long time -looking forward to an upgrade though!

I'm not fixed on one or the other yet so I'm hoping they impress in some ways if nothing else than to generate competition and lower prices and to spur greater driver optimization.

"Supposedly 12.5 hours and counting until they are unveiled." - I can't wait that long! I thought it would be this morning to tell you the truth.

 

[boed]

Yep - performance is OK on the 6970 but certainly nothing like what I'd hoped however the price I expected to pay for a card I thought was going to be more impressive was about $150 more. Since it isn't an impressive card, the price seems OK. I am also disappointed with the power draw on it.

They definitely didn't bring their A game, seems more like they just modified the 5870 with a little more of this and a little less of that. I'm not saying the card sucks by any means but the 5870 was a significant improvement over the 4870 but I figured I'd hold out for the 6870 (now it would be the 6970) a year or so and just skip a generation - looks like there wasn't much point in waiting - unless I wait for nVidias next card as I can't imagine their next card is going to have numbers that aren't as good as the 580. Seriously though, AMD, WTF? Is this going to be what we get now that the name has changed from ATI to AMD - just a scramble of the chip without any real improvement and some drawbacks in other areas? It's almost like they are plagiarizing their own work and hope no one noticed they handed in the same paper on Huckleberry Finn they did last year, just moving the paragraphs around in a different order.

 

[solofly]

But I did forget that nvidia cards sometimes have a thing about making a noise when heavy processing occurs, hard to explain the noise - my 8800 had it too.

Video card noises are usually due to power supplying issues, aka power supply...

 

[shangshang]

the ATreview is up. Go read it.

The 6970 is a dissapointment! Why? umm let's see, it fails to beat the 580 in ANY game. It also fails to beat the 570 is some of the games. As a matter of fact, it even fails to beat the 5870 in some of the games too. How could the latest top-end GPU fails to beat the previous top-end GPU???? On the other hand, the 580 beat the 480 in ALL of the tests.

Conclusion: 6970 is slight faster then 570 and is the latter's competitor. Competitor to the 580 it is NOT. I think best bang now is get 570 & oc it to get 6970 performance!

 

[Zargon]

I'm def a little sad I didnt pull the trigger in the 210 AR 5870's during bf/cm

 

[Acanthus]

We wont see significant bumps in performance until we get down to the 28nm transition.

They should, in theory, be a near 100% performance increase. It is literally double the transistor density.

 

[shangshang]

I'm def a little sad I didnt pull the trigger in the 210 AR 5870's during bf/cm

You got that right!

 

[SolMiester]

Time to find the bookmarks from those spouting..what was it 15-20% performance over the 580!...LMAO!
Now where were they?