GTX 580 vs HD 9650 CF w/ Newest Drivers

[solomonshv]

It's true, this topic has been discussed inside and out since last December, but I need benchmarks with the newest drivers on Win 7 x64. I know that AMD has made great strides with Catalyst 11.8 and I'm sure nVidia has stepped up on performance and stability with their latest drivers. This is what makes this so damn hard.

I can't find some benchmarks with the newest drivers anywhere and I am hoping someone can help my clueless self.

Games that I will be playing for sure:
-Battlefield 3 (can't sleep at night thinking about the epicness)
-Starcraft (But who cares, it doesn't eat a lot of power)
-Elder Scrolls Skyrim
-The new Batman game, whatever they will call it

As a side note, I will also be buying Modern Warfare 3, even though I hated Black Ops with passion ever since I got bored of Zombie mode. But I will be getting it for PS3 since all my buddies, ex college room mate and co workers will all be playing on the PS3. And, I was surprised at how many hotties (women, duh) play Black Ops. I always imagined that I played with geeks like myself (Double BA in Math/Biochem), unemployed potheads and 7 year olds. It makes video games feel like less of a waste of life now.

 

[renz496]

did you compare a single GTX580 vs 6950 in CF? if so 6950 easily win in terms of raw performance. for battlefied 3 AFAIK no one really knows what hardware needed to make it run on max/ultra setting but i honestly believe the game should work well for both AMD and nvidia card without favoring one side significantly. as for starcraft 2 i heard before the game like geforce more than radeon and faster cpu is more important than faster gpu. for skyrim i'm not sure since there are hardly any performance info about the game. as for the upcoming batman game the geforce clearly have the advantage if you want to play the game with physx enabled. heck, nvidia already promote the game through their main site.

as for the driver thing both AMD and nvidia should be fine for a single card configuration. as for CF and SLI i can't really comment on that because i never have multi gpu setup but so far i heard SLI is better in term of stability.

 

[solomonshv]

Part of what is eating me is that I had some problems with ATI cards in the not so distant past. Blinking screens, black screens, graphic glitches, etc. But I think I'm ready to leave that behind me now and try them again.

Right now I'm looking at getting a pair of these: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=93094
The total cost will be $421.45.

or 1 of these:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=6936558
Which will come out to $393.99 for one of them.

The bonus is that the nvidia card will come with the new batman game. Which should be worth $30+.

If I can get an approximate number that tells me what the advantage of the 6950's is, then this decision will be a lot easier. I will overlook the PhysX thing if the number is appealing enough.


I did find 1 good benchmark, here: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/Radeon_HD_6950_CrossFire/1.html
But the drivers used there are almost a year old. nVidia has claimed 3-15% increases in performances in certain games and scenarios, as did AMD.

 

[solomonshv]

Woah... Just saw this in another thread: http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=686058

Yea... I think I just made up my mind. 2x GTX 560 Ti... here I come.

 

[renz496]

the 6950 in CF attracts me with the price and performance the pair going to offer. GTX580 price has been drop a bit from the original MSRP but still it is still too expensive to compete with with radeon offering in terms of price vs performance. to me if you're willing to deal with multi gpu configuration complexity then go straight for 6950 CF