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Radeon 6970 Vs GTX 570

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I have a lot of experience with a few of these cards.

I've played with 470's, which worked well, but were anoyingly loud.

I've played with 5870's, which was pretty quiet, and I loved Supersampling AA, which the Nvidia cards don't have (there is a 3rd party Nvidia software that enables a lesser version). However, their VRM's overheat on the reference design causing the infamous vertical line crashes.

The 6950 (never tried the 6970) works quite well. It's also quiet and has great Supersampling AA as well as Morphilogical AA for games without AA options or no way to force it. The 2gb of ram is nice for high resolutions, it also showed to stop stuttering that occured in a few games due to lack of vram I'm assuming. (LA statium in Dirt 2 for example and others).
 
@Tamz_msc

Exactly right. The GTX570 is simply a better deal now, assuming you don't plan on going the eyefinity route. However, I read on techpowerup that the 6950 bios can be changed to unlock the extra shader cores found on the 6970 since they are the same GPU and AMD chose not to disable through hardware. This means, with some modding, that we can compare the 6950 to the gtx570. For those willing to try it, what is basically a 6970 @ a 6950 price seems like a better deal than the 570 😱

http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/overclocking/vidcard/159
 
Recently, I was faced with the same decision also except I was leaning only towards the 6970 or 570.

I have used only ATI in the past, but was disappointed by the 68xx series, and I wanted to try something new. With the 68xx I knew what I was getting, and wasn't expecting a miracle card, but it still disappointed me.

For me, a quiet card was most important. From what I had read, the 570 was the quieter card, so it is what I bought.

I couldn't be happier with the 570. It is everything that my ATI cards should have been, but never were. I'm not a doctor but I played as one with the girl next door when I was 5. Your results may vary, but I am VERY happy that I went with the 570.

I am on an amd pii 955 right now. Depending on how bulldozer and sandy bridge compete will depend on who gets my chip set $$$ in the future.

GL!
 
i would still take gtx 570 home... yes hd 6950 can be flashed to hd 6970... but pop... your warranty.. also... flashing bios is not something everyone will do... even with tutorials... do it at your own risk.... speaking of gtx 570... even though you don't need cuda... but its gaming performance speaks for itself.... if you play at full hd resolution and below... that 2gb vram actually helps nothing at increasing performance...
 
The process of flashing the HD6950 is very simple and entirely safe as the card is equipped with a backup BIOS. Also even at 1080p the extra memory will help some when trying to max out setting in the more intensive games like Metro 2033 and at higher resolutions or on a 3 monitor setup it helps a lot.
The GTX 570 is a nice card but that you can basically have slightly better performance for $50 less makes unlocking the HD6950 the obvious choice in terms of value for the dollar.
 
I have noticed with 2gb of ram, games that used to stutter or drop a ton of FPS in a few locations, don't anymore, even though went from a "higher performing" setup.

While these stuttering moments might not effect overall benchmark scores, they definately effect the enjoyment factor. (Dirt 2, especially in the LA statium remains smooth. Crysis used to have a few moments of stuttering, before the 6950, and Dragon Age Origins used to have a few stuttering moments).

Looking at the benchmark comparisons, they also show the 6950/70 does have higher minimum FPS, which matter more for smoothness than your high FPS moments.
 
The GTX 570 is equal to the HD 6970 at full HD with AA enabled, and slightly faster at lower resolutions.The 6970 is a better choice for people with 2560x1600 resolution , but the GTX 570 is a very quiet card.So the HD 6970 and GTX 570 are of equally good value.

Even though its easy to flash the 6950, I feel that its a marketing gimmick on the part of AMD. If I consider that almost all 6950s unlock to a 6970 without problems, then what's the point of selling a HD 6970 for 70$ more?
 


apparently, this guy didn't get the memo (on how the 6950s are being flashed)..
 
i knw how easy it is to flash a hd 6950 into 6970... and i also know so far tech sites who did this had no failed attempt... but can you guaratee each and every one card sold in shop can be successfully turned into hd 6970? no right? so still flashing bios is easy... but do it at your own risk... i think nobody is going to buy a hd 6970 if everyone thinking they can get hd 6970 but paying hd 6950 price... no doubt.. hd 6950 is still very good value card even without the flashing bios thing...
 
jyjjy already mentioned this, and a lot of techwebsites as well, there's a backup bios, so the only way you can screw up your warranty is to be upfront and admit to your retailer you tried to flash the card thereby voiding your warranty.
 
The GTX 570 is much better at DirectX 11 tesselation than the 6970 or a 6950 modded to a 6970. The GTX 570 is also cooler and quieter at load and handles overclocking with minimal impact on heat and noise, particularly in comparison to the 6970, which gets considerably hotter and louder.
 


The noise on the of the two cards are very close, while the 570 fan profiles allows it to run hotter. If you ran the fan profiles the same, I doubt there would be a difference. Either way, both cards are pretty quiet.
 
I'm still a sceptic on the 6950 unlock to 6970... i mean sure peopel are doign them, just like people were unlocking gtx 465 to gtx 470 in some vertions...

but there has to be a downside or some kind of failure rate, what company would sell somethign with an upgrade out there where they make more money then sell the same thign at a lower lvl that unlopcks 100% of the time to the higher product ... there just has to a be a failure rate or somethign hindering the 6970
 
sure winner is nvidia 570 nad with oc:'d its clear

power hungries is same,amd take more and heat is higher.

driver work perfect and games running smoothly.


i say nvidia.

 


There is a "failure rate". When I say failure rate, I mean to say, not everyone has been successful. No damage has been done to any of them, but some just can't handle the higher timings. However, it seems everyone who has failed at the higher timings has been successful at unlocking the extra shaders and still gain a partial 6970.

It seems to me, this particular chip has been successful enough that they could have not sold 6950's, as most seem to be good enough to be 6970's. But from a business standpoint, they need to maintain the 6950 line, so they just artificially hold them back, while some legitimately do need to be held back.
 
Choosing an AMD card in this price range will involve making compromises no matter how you cut it. Choose a 6950, and you will need to do a BIOS upgrade to match the GTX570. Choose a 6970, and you will pay more for less performance than the GTX570. You will compromise PhysX ability and 3D Vision capability (regardless of the value you place on them). You will compromise driver stability and better DirectX 11 performance. You will compromise on the ability to overclock without adding a lot of heat and noise. You will compromise on running a quieter and cooler dual card setup. Get a GTX570 and the only compromise you will need to make is the ability to run three monitors on one card.
 
thats more liek it, i've hear peopel saying it always unlocks to a full 6970 shaders unlocking and being able to unlock some features but not always 100% would be the amd i know 😀

i do have a athlon II x4 that unlocked to a full phenim II x4 btu know not all of them do
 


The benchmarks I've seen have the 6970 slightly faster on average. I'm not sure why you say it's less.

Either way, it's very close. The cost difference is about the difference of the extra vram.

You gain Supersampling AA and Morphological AA, both of which I value more than PhysX, but I know others have their own opinion. I couldn't stand playing a couple of my favorite games due to not having supersampling AA. I'm sure others have felt the same about physx, but I don't.

And in dual card setups, the 6900 cards scale better.

I can understand why you may prefer to go with 570, but having used the fermi and the new ATI cards, I perfer not to.
 
Supersampling AA is a less efficient way of doing Multisampling AA. It performs AA on the entire screen, even those parts that are not visible (something hidden behind a tree, wall, etc.) Multisampling is more sophisticated and gives the same level of image quality, but at a lower performance hit, because MSAA does not perform AA on objects that cannot be seen. You would have a hard time proving that AMD cards have higher image quality than Nvidia. Morphological AA makes text appear blocky and blurs textures.

The part about 6900 series cards scaling better in dual card setups is not true. They perform about the same. Keep in mind, any lower performing card when paired with another will appear to scale better than a pair of higher performing cards due to CPU bottlenecking.
 
You've never seen Supersampling AA, and you are wrong about them being the same quality. Supersampling does effect the whole screen, which includes aliasing issues within the body of an object that is visible. MSAA only applies AA on the outer edges of objects.

Seriously, look up the difference, in some games the difference is huge.
 


I dont agree, it is true. They succeeded in improving crossfire and two 6970s gives u more power boost over one 6970 then two 570s over one 570.
 
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