6970 or 6990 or something else

[ashmanuk67]

When is the expected date of the 6970 and 6990 ?

 

[GJ02]

Mid - end nov

 

[WingZero30]

lol GJ02 what graphics card are you using at the moment?

 

[Flanno]

A big part of what I will get will depend on the quality of the drivers. In 1 rig I have 2 5970 4gig cards and while immensely powerful when they worked, after 10.5 cats had nothing but issues on various games - gsods, displayport problems, crossfire disabling itself for no reason, dx11 drivers getting corrupted. The non reference 5870's I had in other rigs or rigs I built for people, were also problematical. In fact some of them were unusable. Of the 10 that passed through my hands, (2 powercolour, 4 sapphire 2gig, 4 sapphire reference) 5 had to be RMA'd for gsods, all non reference, and this was traced back to problems with the cards firmware and power levels. I had enough of ATI and went back to Nvidia and so far so good.

I'd definitely consider ATI again, but I'd have to be convinced that their driver support is better then what it was especially in crossfire.

 

[GJ02]

lol GJ02 what graphics card are you using at the moment?

8600gs

Why

 

[rolypolyman]

A big part of what I will get will depend on the quality of the drivers. In 1 rig I have 2 5970 4gig cards and while immensely powerful when they worked, after 10.5 cats had nothing but issues on various games - gsods, displayport problems, crossfire disabling itself for no reason, dx11 drivers getting corrupted. The non reference 5870's I had in other rigs or rigs I built for people, were also problematical. In fact some of them were unusable. Of the 10 that passed through my hands, (2 powercolour, 4 sapphire 2gig, 4 sapphire reference) 5 had to be RMA'd for gsods, all non reference, and this was traced back to problems with the cards firmware and power levels. I had enough of ATI and went back to Nvidia and so far so good.

I'd definitely consider ATI again, but I'd have to be convinced that their driver support is better then what it was especially in crossfire.

And yet there are many people on here, myself included, who ran crossfire with no problems whatsoever. Weird in it.

 

[Relentless81]

I am waiting (as most will probably know by now ) for the 6950 to be compared with the nvidia Gigabyte 470 SOC or similar

Very tired of waiting now, I want a new card!!!!

 

[GJ02]

lol GJ02 what graphics card are you using at the moment?

8600gs

Why

 

[Scougar]

We do know that Charlie is lying about the 580 not being as fast as Cayman at least...

How do you know that? No one except Nvidia would possibly have knowledge of the performance levels of a card that is far from release (If it will be released).

 

[Kribby2006]

AMD fanboy that flames/trolls Nvidia, that's how he is sure.

+1, seems this is the normal for this guy from what I have read over the last few months, always adding negative and pointless comments/opinions

 

[Flanno]

And yet there are many people on here, myself included, who ran crossfire with no problems whatsoever. Weird in it.

I ran it no problems for ages too up to catalyst 10.5. I think the problem was ati made a balls of things after 10.5's and this had a very bad impact on non reference cards. From the people I spoke to at Sapphire it sounds like something to do with power states changed in the drivers which wasn't taken account of in the cards non reference firmware. This was the cause of many GSODS.

 

[An Exception]

How do you know that? No one except Nvidia would possibly have knowledge of the performance levels of a card that is far from release (If it will be released).

If they DO release a 580, I can guarantee you it will be faster than the 6970.

 

[An Exception]

I ran it no problems for ages too up to catalyst 10.5. I think the problem was ati made a balls of things after 10.5's and this had a very bad impact on non reference cards. From the people I spoke to at Sapphire it sounds like something to do with power states changed in the drivers which wasn't taken account of in the cards non reference firmware. This was the cause of many GSODS.

Still sounds to me like your cards were inherently faulty, else it would have been a much more widespread issue.
The only time I experienced GSOD was by over clocking memory until it became unstable.

Ps Not sure why you thought 2x 5970's was a good idea tbh.

 

[RavenXXX2]

Widespread enough for ATI to release a hotfix which still did not correct the problem for some, like flanno here.

http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/Grey-screen-and-vertical-line-corruptions.aspx

 

[Scougar]

This quote posted by ejizz:

Originally Posted by RavenXXX2
If they DO release a 580, I can guarantee you it will be faster than the 6970.

lol, am I meant to take Raven's word of a guarantee as concrete?

I like Raven, but some nameless face saying something means nothing.

 

[An Exception]

^^^
It was sarcasm...

 

[Flanno]

Still sounds to me like your cards were inherently faulty, else it would have been a much more widespread issue.
The only time I experienced GSOD was by over clocking memory until it became unstable.

Ps Not sure why you thought 2x 5970's was a good idea tbh.

What ? So 6 out of 10 cards I had were faulty, and my 5970's makes 8. Yeah..good one. Give me a break will ya. Lots of people had GSODS on these forums and Sapphire released firmwares for non reference cards to address this to users who had issues. In fact it was Sapphire employees who filled me about the power states on these cards causing GSODS's. And amazingly the GSODS dissapeared in Crossfire when I rolled back to pre 10.5. Of course scaling on Quadfire took a big hit too.

P.S. I suppose you had 2 5970's then and are talking from experience about them not being a good idea or are you just following the crowd who said quadfire sucked.
Have a read
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18183953&highlight=username_Flanno

 

[An Exception]

Widespread enough for ATI to release a hotfix which still did not correct the problem for some, like flanno here.

http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/Grey-screen-and-vertical-line-corruptions.aspx

Yeh, I know there was a hot fix, and as some cards couldn't be fixed it suggests that it is actually a hardware issue.
My guess is the QC of the ram binning was too lax.

 

[Flanno]

No it was a power management issue in the firmware related to the drivers. At least for non reference cards. None of my reference cards had problems at all, even in crossfire. Even so, I had driver problems like a lot of people on these forums that had nothing to do with GSODS. I went back to Nvidia as a result and to be honest I'm happier. I still run 5870's in another rig but they are reference cards and have no problems on 10.7.

 

[Scougar]

Originally Posted by drunkenmaster


580GTX will suck....snipped

Give it a rest DM, it really is getting old now.

Sorry I'm being rude here Raven, but you are probably worse than dm. You have some sensible stuff, but at least dm attempts to back up what he's saying, where as it mainly seems you are (and this isn't a fanboy jab at you ) you favour Nvidia and that is all. (I do see you saying single cards are good btw.. it isn't unnoticed bud )

We all want the next products from each company to be great, but really.. what hard specs do you have to back up how good a 580 will be? dm could be right, or you could be right, but we ALL just don't know. We can GUESS, but that's it. Getting into arguments about it isn't gonna bring out the truth.

I don't understand why you mainly seem to be blinkered, you used to (when an ATI card owner) that I saw, be pretty level headed with your discussions.

Let's stick to our combined best guesses (even if several paths), and try and take a combined guess at what's gonna happen rather than trying to defend our side of the fence.