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470 sli or 6870 CF

JAPears

JAPears

JAPears

Associate
Joined
22 Oct 2010
Posts
182
Title says it all really, they are around the same price.
I run a dual monitor setup with 2 1080p monitors.
Use my pc for design work primarily, using the adobe creative suit.
as for gaming, i play mainly WoW and SC2, though i would like to dabble into some other games which are more demanding, including black ops, crysis etc :)
thanks
jimmy
 
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470 sli will run hot and need a beefy PSU, 6870 xfire will run cool and will not need as beefy PSU, I recommend 6870 Xfire.
 
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Ok, well, i have a cooler master 850W psu, that wouldnt handle the 470's? this will all be going into a silverstone ft02 case aswell, which is pretty impressive when it comes down to cooling
 
If you have the PSU and aren't afraid of the heat then get GTX470 SLI - when overclocked they leave the 6870s in the dust - my pair at 800MHz aren't far behind GTX580 SLI - you will get more consistant performance with SLI, more timely game support and usually less multi GPU related issues than crossfire.
 
If your mainly playing WoW and SC2 I'd look at a single fast card really as both these games are more CPU dependant than GPU.
 
470 sli. Better tesselation performance, cude, physx and other goodies worth the outlay for the 470s. They do run hot and a little loud mind...


Andy
 
Andrew Moore said:
470 sli. Better tesselation performance, cude, physx and other goodies worth the outlay for the 470s. They do run hot and a little loud mind...


Andy
Click to expand...

6870 xfire Better performance than GTX 580 for less, Bitstream HD master audio...Run eyefinity on over 6 monitors and other goodies worth the outlay for the 6870's. They do run cool and silent mind...;):cool:
 
Depends what design tools you use, photoshop now has some CUDA plugins which massively accelerate certain filters, etc. but AFAIK its only a limited number of plugins and not used widely within the app, similiar story for some other apps in the adobe suit and other creative software. CUDA is not without benefits there but its not essential or widely used within those apps but it is useful where it is.

Very little stuff makes use of PhysX yet so unless your playing Mafia 2 or Batman AA a lot its not really a big deal as far as the end user is concerned, tho I'm still hoping hardware physics gets used to better potential in future games as it does have a lot to offer and is infact essential for some advances in gaming.
 
The 470 offers slightly better performance at stock speeds and much better perfomance when overclocked. 6870's have pretty poor OC headroom due to high default clock speeds.

The 6870's require ~25% less power to operate at idle and load. If you game for two hours per day, this will save you ~£10-£15 per year.

Personally, I think the 470 is the better buy. Sure they run hotter but this does not restrict performance or overclocking. An overclocked 470 can exceed 480 performance which the 6870 will not get close to. Physx and CUDA are arguably slightly more useful than eyefinity and bitstreamed audio. Who uses 6 monitors at home anyway?
 
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