New Pc Time

[B00rz]

I'm not a fan of ATI cards

[Dimon]

Ah yeh, I guess it's about time for me to go to bed on that note... ;d

[Jupsik]

2nd with dimon, even though the 580 is stupidly cool and seems really good, there seems to be something fishy about it. to start with the scaling in sli is horrible and i mean like 5-10% increase in performance. Its gotten to the sad stage where 2 gtx 460 are better then a gtx 580(its sad and im not kidding). for the 5970 don't get it, its old and its a dual gpu card. as for the amd new series i really really recommend them. the one dim has scales from 70%-95% in crossfire, and the 2 of them are cheaper and faster then the gtx 580 alone, hell in game benchmarks the 6870 crossfire combo is only like 5 - 10 % slower then a pair of 580's sli'd. + the amd 6970 is comming out on the 7th, and its going to be cheaper and a single one of those is = with a pair of 6870 from what the internets say.
To sum it:
Nvidia get 2x 460
amd get either 2x6870 or wait for the 6970.
there are just so so many better combos out there then the 580.
(amd catalyst 10.10 drivers have a separate part for wow alone, so you dont have to worry about the xfire scaling in wow.)

[f1xxx3r]

3rd with Dim.
Been sort of a nvidia fanboy (geforce2, geforce3 (128MB yeah baby), 6600 gt tdh) because all of them worked flawlessly and ati had a reputation for it's drivers.
But since 2 years ago I just buy whatever gives me more performance for $. And ATI won in the last 2 years .


Offtopic: although I have a 1gb dx11 card, COD:BO (dx9, in 2010) likes to keep my gpu loaded @ 30% - 40%, 60FPS (v-sync locked) and my cpu @ 100%. Because it's so greatly optimized for PC I get constant stuttering. And my friend with a 30$ - 40$ video card and quad 9xxx processor runs the game great.

[B00rz]

Ill not be getting 2 gfx cards in SLI so talking about SLI scaling is pointless =P also I've checked the price for 2x 460s and 1x 580 is cheaper and from some of the videos i've seen on you tube i should be stearing away from the 400 series due to the noise it makes when under load especially when it comes to the 460-480 range. The 580 has came out on top with that atm when compared to a 460/480 and 2 of the best ATI cards out atm (cant remember the numbers terrible with ATI naming.

[Jupsik]

the 2 best amd cards are most likely 5870 and 6870 but the 5870 is like 2 years old and the 6870 is a mid range card its the follow up for my current 5770, not the 5870 the 6970 -> follow up for 5870, at least wait for the 6970 to come out it should, if nothing else, lower the price on the gtx 580.
aaalso the horrible time when ati cards run hot as hell is long past, they have fixed the driver problems, as in even games that use nvidia drivers directly run without any micro stutter or fps drops on the amd cards.
atm ive got the 5770 its dx11 card and as long as i dont touch AA it plays everything on max settings silky smooth .
My recomendation get a mid range value for money card like the 6870 (it is quite the overkill on anything lower then 1920*1080) and if somehow you have the need to do benchmarking get an other one of them. as said before there is nothing on the market at the moment that scales that good in crossfire. + most of the new games dont have any problems with crossfire. hell they even fixed it for wow.
skip to about 2:30 or so thats when he starts talking about the card



basically dont get the 580 its not worth it in any way possible, its just a fixed version of the 480

[Dimon]

Am pretty sure the HD 6970 will be weaker then the 580. And tesselation seems to be better with nVidia atm also. So should be more future proof. AMD will most likely still be the best "bang for buck" still. But that's just how it's been the past few years. Tho the 260 and 470 has been strong contenders there aswell. :p

[B00rz]

i did have a nice epic long post about SLI 400 series v ATI Crossfire cards v a Single 580 but my phone decided to be an arse and not post and then crash (who knew my phone had a BSOD =S)

But basically the jist of it was that i was gonna get a 480 originally just to get the DX11 card without looking at any reviews, which im now glad i did last night as i found out that the 480 at full load makes more noise than my car when im reving it in the red compared to the 580 and a similar ATI card which was pretty much on par with the 580.

I then got my curiosity(?) going about some benchmarks on a single 580 v some SLI/Crossfire alternatives and basically it mostly came down to a single 580 out performed most SLI and crossfire cards on 9/10 benchmarks. The benchmark on Just cause 2 that favoured the ATI card in crossfire by a huge margin something like 30fps on the 580 and 90fps on the ATI crossfire but other than the 580 running about 4 degrees hotter than all the other cards tested it came out on top. With the case I have got for the computer i doubt that extra temprature is gonna bother me at all, the case is coming with full fitted fans, the case it self has a fan controller built in the control the speeds and the processor is going to be liquid cooled. (i was actually looking into getting the whole thing liquid cooled as the case supports it but i dont fancy shelling out another £200 for it =P)

The thing about scaling aswell Jupsik is that its the drivers that control it, the latest review i read about Dual 580s was that the scaling was something between 30% and 70% and that was because the drivers favoured a triple SLI setup over a Dual one something that will most likely be fixed within the next couple of months once the drivers are fully developed. But as i said im not bothered about getting SLI/Crossfire Ive never had problems in the past using a single gfx card and with this one being spanking brand new i doubt ill have problems for a while with this one too.

[Jupsik]

I mean the 580 is a very good card but i dont think the 400 pounds they ask for it is justified the bit with the drivers is true aswell. so far what ive read up on the 6970, the tesselation is actually better by like a score of like 0.6 fps or something like that. so both companies give you a card thats future proof. The problem with the 580 is that it has to be more expencive then the 6970 as they had to fit a water cooler on it and that kicks up the price for the card quite a bit. (the stock cooler is using water).

The main reason i wouldn't go for the 580 or the 6970 (even they they say its gonna be at a better value to performance ratio ) is that they both have a huuuuge price premium added to them. and for the current generation of gaming a 6870 or a 470 is more then enough.

the reason im pro the amd cards is that they just launched a new generation of mid range cards to compete with the 400 series nvidia cards, and in terms of performance and future proofing they are performing a lot better.

as in even the guys who have the nvidia platinum membership (ncix in canada) are saying that there is nothing that can even get close to the 6870 in terms of value for money.


Features:
With nvidia your going to need 2 cards if you want to use the surround feature, while with amd you get that with just 1 card. the 3d feature that the 400 series had and the 5000 didnt is now also available for the amd cards.

The only aspect that would make you go for nvidia cards is if your using your graphics card for stuff other then gaming. then the nvidia features have amd beat. Mainly because AMd makes the radeon series of cards cards only for gaming.

Why wait for the 6970?
Well with the 68xx cards amd just improved the 5000 series, the 69xx cards have a nice type of proccesing units on them, so there are people (chinese with the beta stage cards) that claim that the cards are quite a bit faster then the 580, yet there are some that claim it to be slower.
The several benchmarks that have been released have been done with no drivers, and have shown higher scores then the 580.
basically what ever u do u'll save a few 100 pounds by just waiting untill the 7th of detsember for the amd high end cards to be released.

[B00rz]

you keep going on about SLI and dual gfx cards and surround features, im getting a SINGLE gfx card i dont care about crossfire/SLI or even eyefinity features or whether the ati cards are better when there is 2 compared to nvidia, all i know is im getting a pc this week and the best SINGLE gfx card I can get is going to be the 580, I like nvidia cards never had any bother with them apart from my 8800 gtx which burnt out due to my case being too small and not having any proper ventilation (that and i never turned it off fr about 2 years =P) and i can get that 580 for £310 as aposed to the ATI one of the same stats for about £4 more