Need Help! 6970 CF vs 570 SLI vs 580 SLI

[bloodcraze]

After hours of research Im to the point now I need some people who actually have these setups to tell me what they think. Ive got it narrowed down to these 3 cards for my new build but not sure which setup to go with. Ive been toying around with the idea of getting 2 MSI 580GTX Lightning Extremes , but I just cant pull the tiger knowing that for $400 less with a pair of 6970's in Crossfire almost perform the same.

Can Anyone give me some thoughts on which would be the best setup to really go for out of the 3 above ? (I don't want to do CF 6950's).

I will be playing MW3, BF3, D3, and whatever else comes out, at least 1960x1080 res , However I might mess around with 3 monitor res for BF3 since I have it.

Any advice on helping me buy one of these cards soon would be great! The core 216 260gtx I have now needs to go!

Also right now im running an i5 760 , HX1000W psu,8 gig of ram and a pair of 80gig SSDs in raid 0.

However once Bulldozer is out (October 12th I hope) and see how it compairs in gaming to the 2600 / 2500k I will be upgrading to either BD or 2600 / 2700k (if its out).

 

[Gothams Finest]

2 580s should give you the best performance, but if you are finding it hard to justify the cost (which it sounds like you are) then it is probably not the right set up for you.

There is hardly any difference in performance between a pair of 570s and a pair of 580s in most games, this is down to (as far as I know) GTX 580s in SLI being bottlenecked by the CPU.

After reading up on benchmarks it does seem that a pair of 6970s competes well with a pair of 580s and could save you a lot of money.

 

[bloodcraze]

Yeah that's pretty much my problem. A pair of MSI 6970 Lightnings run about $800, A pair of MSI 580GTX Lightning Extremes are about $1200 .... I guess that brings me to my next question , at 1920x1080 is 3gigs of ram on a 580gtx even worth it ? I think that's been the hardest thing for me to find is true good bench marks on any of the 3 gig 580gtx cards.

As far as the 570GTX ... Isnt 1 single 570GTX faster than a 6970 by 1% but a pair of 6970s vs a pair of 570gtx the 6970s are 5% faster ?

Just trying to get the most for my money is all. I am going to Skip the 7 series for two reasons. One I don't like the idea of Rambus and personally I think there will be a lot of issues with these cards due to new technology AND PCI-E 3.0 mobos. I would rather wait till that's all hammered out and by then Nvidias Maxwell will be out .

I am pretty much building a new PC to last me till summer 2013. Right now I have the following items as a for sure deal.

Corsair 800D Case
HX1000W PSU
2 120gig Corsair FORCE 3 in Raid 0
2 2TB WD Storage Drives
Noctua DN-14

The stuff that has me hung up right now are
ASUS EXTREME IV Z68 or the EVGA Z68 FTW Motherboard - Im going back and forth on this one
MSI 6970 Lightning, MSI 580GTX Lightning Extreme, EVGA plain 570 GTX (Its funny I even like these MSI cards I've never bought one before but people / reviews show they are some of the best)
Intel I7 2600k (I want the 2600k for the threading I do a lot of work on VMware Workstation) or Bulldozer 8150p
Ram - There are just so many options im not sure if its worth going over 1600mhz.

 

[phishy714]

Ram - Ram is sooo cheap right now that you might as well spend an extra $15 to get 1866mhz ram (or whatever the next mhz is).

Graphics cards - Honestly, a pair of 6950's in SLI wil llast you a very long time, but if you had to pick from the cards you mentioned, go with CF 6970's. AMD cards scale much better than nvidia cards right now, so a pair of those can actually match and sometimes even beat the 580's in SLi (once again because of the bottleneck most likely). Not to mention you can get them much cheaper.

As for your resolution, no.. you will not be needing anything more than 1gb to be honest. Anything more, at least for 99% of the games out right now, is going to waste so there is no point in geteting a 3gb version of the gtx580. The fact that the AMD cards give 2gb is a great bonus and you should definately jump on that.

 

[Gothams Finest]

Yeah that's pretty much my problem. A pair of MSI 6970 Lightnings run about $800, A pair of MSI 580GTX Lightning Extremes are about $1200 .... I guess that brings me to my next question , at 1920x1080 is 3gigs of ram on a 580gtx even worth it ? I think that's been the hardest thing for me to find is true good bench marks on any of the 3 gig 580gtx cards.

As far as the 570GTX ... Isnt 1 single 570GTX faster than a 6970 by 1% but a pair of 6970s vs a pair of 570gtx the 6970s are 5% faster ?

Just trying to get the most for my money is all. I am going to Skip the 7 series for two reasons. One I don't like the idea of Rambus and personally I think there will be a lot of issues with these cards due to new technology AND PCI-E 3.0 mobos. I would rather wait till that's all hammered out and by then Nvidias Maxwell will be out .

I am pretty much building a new PC to last me till summer 2013. Right now I have the following items as a for sure deal.

Corsair 800D Case
HX1000W PSU
2 120gig Corsair FORCE 3 in Raid 0
2 2TB WD Storage Drives
Noctua DN-14

The stuff that has me hung up right now are
ASUS EXTREME IV Z68 or the EVGA Z68 FTW Motherboard - Im going back and forth on this one
MSI 6970 Lightning, MSI 580GTX Lightning Extreme, EVGA plain 570 GTX (Its funny I even like these MSI cards I've never bought one before but people / reviews show they are some of the best)
Intel I7 2600k (I want the 2600k for the threading I do a lot of work on VMware Workstation) or Bulldozer 8150p
Ram - There are just so many options im not sure if its worth going over 1600mhz.

No 3GB of VRAM for 1920 x 1080 is not worth it, 1920 x 1080 will only use around half of that.

You can't got wrong with either a pair of 570s or a pair of 6970s, just go with your prefered brand, Nvidia or AMD. Do you care about physx for example? If so then go for the 570s if not then go for the 6970s. Instead of focusing solely on benchmarks this is the sort of stuff that can help you decide.

And as for RAM you won't be able to notice a benefit over 1600Mhz. Maybe a slight benefit in benchmarks (if your into that kinda thing), but not in real world use.

 

[Gothams Finest]

I have a 1Gb HD6950 and it runs 1080p just fine,

Thats great pal, but the OP doesn't want 6950s

 

[bloodcraze]

No 3GB of VRAM for 1920 x 1080 is not worth it, 1920 x 1080 will only use around half of that.

You can't got wrong with either a pair of 570s or a pair of 6970s, just go with your prefered brand, Nvidia or AMD. Do you care about physx for example? If so then go for the 570s if not then go for the 6970s. Instead of focusing solely on benchmarks this is the sort of stuff that can help you decide.

And as for RAM you won't be able to notice a benefit over 1600Mhz. Maybe a slight benefit in benchmarks (if your into that kinda thing), but not in real world use.

I used to be hardcore AMD back in like the 9800pro / xt days (Best card ever btw) Then I upgraded from the 9800pro to a 8800GTX from EVGA (I still have it and that card is actually playing BF3 on low settings) Then I went to a 260gtx and that was "Meh" thats what im on currently. I don't really have a preference other than im worried about AMD drivers a bit. Im actually not interested in the 570's now I want either 1 flag ship or the other not 2nd place (I know there's the 590 and 6990 but they don't compair to single 580's 6970's in crossfire)

Do you have a crossfire or SLI setup ? The last worry I had was the issue with Microstuttering, but with a 580 or 6970 I don't think that would happen. I did however read something about the 6970 issue with the shaders making artifacts in games have you heard about that ?

 

[Gothams Finest]

I used to be hardcore AMD back in like the 9800pro / xt days (Best card ever btw) Then I upgraded from the 9800pro to a 8800GTX from EVGA (I still have it and that card is actually playing BF3 on low settings) Then I went to a 260gtx and that was "Meh" thats what im on currently. I don't really have a preference other than im worried about AMD drivers a bit. Im actually not interested in the 570's now I want either 1 flag ship or the other not 2nd place (I know there's the 590 and 6990 but they don't compair to single 580's 6970's in crossfire)

Do you have a crossfire or SLI setup ? The last worry I had was the issue with Microstuttering, but with a 580 or 6970 I don't think that would happen. I did however read something about the 6970 issue with the shaders making artifacts in games have you heard about that ?

Unfortunately I don't at the moment so I can't really advise you on that. However, I'am going to be buying a pair of 570s in the next week or so, and I was asking the same question about microstutter, the answers I was given and was able to find out was microstutter is more apparent in mid range cards than the high end cards and it is very unlikely
to see microstutter as long as the CPU is clocked high enough. A 2500k/2600k and 1600Mhz ram will be fine.
I have also heard there is less micro stutter with Nvidia though I don't know if there is any truth in this
or if it is just "fanboyism"

So to sum it up GTX 570/580s and 6970s should not see any microstutter at all as long as your CPU and RAM are good too.

 

[ilysaml]

AMD 6K series generally scales better than nVidia 5K series, so a pair of 6970/50 in CF will beat GTX 570s SLI.
HD 6850/70 are garbage GPUs because of microstuttering explained recently by toms, you can look at the charts, basically they do pretty creepy...

and IMO too, i would get a signle GTX 570 or HD 6970 and enjoy the new XDR2 rambus technology from the AMD 7K series in addition to the 28nm process, 1 GHz GPU frequency

 

[bloodcraze]

I'm starting to learn toward the 580gtx lightnings. I really don't trust the 7k series at all. Your going to take two brand new technology (PCI-E 3.0 and Rambus) and put them together, I don't see the launch of that going very well. I would rather wait a year for PCI-E 3.0 to bake in and see what Nvidia is going to do with Maxwell. The other problem is, if the 580GTX are being bottlenecked by processors right now, the 7000 series will most def be bottlenecked by CPUs (At least affordable ones the $1000 LGA2011 might be a bit different)

 

[Gothams Finest]

Hey well go for the 580s its a good choice, its all down to £$£$ if thats no problem then treat yourself.

 

[indianjoke]

this is killing me...
i cant find any button to post my own topic!
can sum1 pls help me?

i also have questions! this is not userfriendly!
you disappoint me TOM!

 

[Gothams Finest]

this is killing me...
i cant find any button to post my own topic!
can sum1 pls help me?

i also have questions! this is not userfriendly!
you disappoint me TOM!

Try the big red button at the top that says Ask the community

 

[bloodcraze]

LOL right!

So next on the list , EVGA Z68 FTW or Asus Maximus Extreme-z ?

I think the MSI 580GTX are a good buy really , with 3 gig of ram it will future proof things some I think. Like I said 7 series is going to be a huge mess I already know it. That and its 4-5 months away at least. I got to have my new one built by the end of October.

 

[ilysaml]

Nvidia's 5k series were AGP and couldnt do SLI

sorry, i should have said AMD HD 6K series, and nVidia's GTX 5K series, funny man :S

 

[ilysaml]

LOL right!

So next on the list , EVGA Z68 FTW or Asus Maximus Extreme-z ?

I think the MSI 580GTX are a good buy really , with 3 gig of ram it will future proof things some I think. Like I said 7 series is going to be a huge mess I already know it. That and its 4-5 months away at least. I got to have my new one built by the end of October.

Again, what you don't know is that a high end GPU such as HD 7950 is gonna perform close to HD 6990, if not better...
so you don't have to invest too much on a GPU that might become a legend while a cheap high end GPU such as GTX 570 can do the Job.

 

[Gothams Finest]

oh...[strike]Bruce[/strike] Batman, you're so helpful to the [strike]Toms[/strike] Gotham Community :lol:

Dont get smart pal all I'm doing is helping others which is what this forum is for.

 

[bloodcraze]

So I was looking around today and I decided to save (some) money and go with the Asus 580GTX matrix edition. Well now that I want one they are like sold out everywhere =(

 

[indianjoke]

tnx man. now i can post senseless topics.