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GTX580 or HD 6970??


MercuryDoun

  

31 members have voted

  1. 1. Which one should i go with?

    • The 6970 with performance near the GTX580 and cheaper to boot, but So loud it hurts?
      10
    • The more expensive but higher performance GTX 580?
      13
    • Or just sit back and wait to see what the GTX595/HD6990 have to offer.
      8


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It took 9 months for the GTX 580 to come out after the GTX 480 came out. Before that, it took 14 months for the GTX 480 to come out after the GTX 295 was released. In about a year, the GTX 580 is going to be replaced with another top-of-the-line card supporting new architecture and DX12. You're not going to be adding another GTX 580, just like you're not going to be adding another HD 5770 with your current system now.

 

There's a big misconception that going SLI/Crossfire later is going to be cheaper when prices go down. While that may be true, price/performance wise, it won't. Just like someone else made a thread whether to get another HD 5850 from eBay to crossfire for $170, the better path was to sell his HD 5850 and get a HD 6970 for $170 more. You should SLI/Crossfire now for the price/performance, and when a year goes by, sell it and upgrade. The longer you wait to sell your current card, the less likely other people will buy it at a decent cost.

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If money is a concern, I'd get a GTX570. They have the same performance, and don't lock you out of PhysX and 3d like AMD cards.

(and the 570s are cheaper)

 

Otherwise, 580. The 6970s fail to excite with their next gen/last gen performance. AMD screwed up here, there's never been a next gen part with so little gain over last gen.

 

BTW- if this was a refresh part like the 570s/580s I'd be OK with the level of increase, it would be common. You don't re-design your whole chip to get 15-20% though.

 

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the 6000 series IS a refresh part... and that 15-20% performance is the exact same performance increase nvidia dug up with the refresh of the 480 and its GF100 core... into the 580 and its GF110 core... i dont see how this is relevant... 15-20% performance increase with a core architecture redesign is exactly what id expect. Now to be fair, nVidia refresh was to address power consumption and temps, But that doesnt change that they also released the card with the FULL Fermi core in effect unlike the 480, to gain that 15-20% performance increase. If you look at it that way, the AMD's redesign was actually more effective than nVidia's!! GF100 core = like 10 months old... the old 5000 series core = like 18-20 months old... So im still yet again impressed with the work that AMD did on this.

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It took 9 months for the GTX 580 to come out after the GTX 480 came out. Before that, it took 14 months for the GTX 480 to come out after the GTX 295 was released. In about a year, the GTX 580 is going to be replaced with another top-of-the-line card supporting new architecture and DX12. You're not going to be adding another GTX 580, just like you're not going to be adding another HD 5770 with your current system now.

 

There's a big misconception that going SLI/Crossfire later is going to be cheaper when prices go down. While that may be true, price/performance wise, it won't. Just like someone else made a thread whether to get another HD 5850 from eBay to crossfire for $170, the better path was to sell his HD 5850 and get a HD 6970 for $170 more. You should SLI/Crossfire now for the price/performance, and when a year goes by, sell it and upgrade. The longer you wait to sell your current card, the less likely other people will buy it at a decent cost.

 

I wont be selling my card. My current 5770 will be going into my brother rig for Xfire goodness there.

 

God damnit! I hate when your right Capi... I could definitely see myself upgrading to an entirely new card rather than drop another 580/6970 into my rig. But Also i really could see myself putting another 580/6970 in just a few months from now to enjoy the benefits of current gen awesomeness. And actually i was more thinking along the upgrade path of... waiting for the 6990/595 and use those with my current 580/6970 for some tri-sli/tri-fire.

 

Any thoughts on that upgrade path?

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So far, tri-sli isn't very optimized: http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-580-3-way-sli-review/ and overkill.

 

By the time the dual GPU cards come out, the prices will drop slightly for the GTX 580's and the HD 6970's. I would wait until they come out if you want to save some money, but it won't be that much. I don't think Nvidia will want to sell a dual GPU card for over $1,000. Plus, buying two single GPU cards are usually cheaper than buying a single dual GPU card, so it would make sense that the GTX 580 will drop in price down to $460 when they come out, which will make it more competitive against the HD 6990, which will probably start at around $700, with prices of the HD 6970's going down to $320.

 

However, the next card in line will be the GTX 560, which will probably be around $250.

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Hmm... Thanks Everyone! I think ive decided to wait until atleast the release of the 6990... see if that doesnt set some more aggressive pricing on the 580 and even the 6970 maybe. Ive also put some consideration for 2x GTX460's or possibly 2x AMD 6870's... Not sure yet.

 

Regardless i think im going to sit on my $$$ for a few more weeks and see how everything turns out!

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the 6000 series IS a refresh part... and that 15-20% performance is the exact same performance increase nvidia dug up with the refresh of the 480 and its GF100 core... into the 580 and its GF110 core... i dont see how this is relevant... 15-20% performance increase with a core architecture redesign is exactly what id expect. Now to be fair, nVidia refresh was to address power consumption and temps, But that doesnt change that they also released the card with the FULL Fermi core in effect unlike the 480, to gain that 15-20% performance increase. If you look at it that way, the AMD's redesign was actually more effective than nVidia's!! GF100 core = like 10 months old... the old 5000 series core = like 18-20 months old... So im still yet again impressed with the work that AMD did on this.

 

 

At first i was a little disappointed about the 6970 outcome, but as you say if we look closely how AMD managed to get that extra performance basically from a 5870 revamp its clearly more than a nice effort. For the 580 Nvidia used 7% extra cuda cores, higher memory and core clocks to have and average performance increase over the 480 of 15%. In the other hand AMD with 4% fewer stream processors, higher memory and core clocks managed to set an average of 20% performance increase over the 5870. And price/performance wise is a good choice and will get better as drivers mature. its starting to grow on me!!!! =P

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It took 9 months for the GTX 580 to come out after the GTX 480 came out. Before that, it took 14 months for the GTX 480 to come out after the GTX 295 was released. In about a year, the GTX 580 is going to be replaced with another top-of-the-line card supporting new architecture and DX12. You're not going to be adding another GTX 580, just like you're not going to be adding another HD 5770 with your current system now.

 

There's a big misconception that going SLI/Crossfire later is going to be cheaper when prices go down. While that may be true, price/performance wise, it won't. Just like someone else made a thread whether to get another HD 5850 from eBay to crossfire for $170, the better path was to sell his HD 5850 and get a HD 6970 for $170 more. You should SLI/Crossfire now for the price/performance, and when a year goes by, sell it and upgrade. The longer you wait to sell your current card, the less likely other people will buy it at a decent cost.

 

 

Damn Straight. :withstupid:

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You should SLI/Crossfire now for the price/performance, and when a year goes by, sell it and upgrade.

 

 

The only other factor to consider though when going for new technology is that other system parts will need to be changed in order to fully support the new technology. For example, next gen card dx12, os dx12, pcie x32, games? I seem to count about 2 video card releases per os. New tech gives full support but higher cost, and old tech is cheaper with less support.

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With the 580 costing around 120-130 dollars more then the 6970 there is NO way its wroth the super small margin of performance gain you will get for your money. Buy a single 6970 then save that money u would've spent on the nVidia card and get a second one in month or so and boom you're set for at least a year and a half...... you can get 2 AWESOME 6970's for 750.00 OR 2 barely more powerful 580s for 1100.00...... it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure this one out. It really doesn't matter anyway because when the 6990 comes out everyone's going to forget bout the 580 anyway lol. And I REALLY doubt if nVidia ever comes out with a 595 just saying...... They haven't been too good on their promised "releases" in the past so I wouldn't put money on it......

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