This is what I don't understand. I've given a balanced point of view in the matter, if you believe I haven't then you should explain why, unless you mean saying 6870 Crossfire is every so slightly faster than 470 SLi means it's not balanced? Additionally, I don't constantly see the bad sides of anything nVidia just because that's what I do. What are these good points you believe you can't sway me in to seeing? If there's a good point, it's a good point regardless of who makes it, but I don't see you suggesting any.
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470 sli or 6870 CF
- Thread starter JAPears
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This is what I don't understand. I've given a balanced point of view in the matter, if you believe I haven't then you should explain why, unless you mean saying 6870 Crossfire is every so slightly faster than 470 SLi means it's not balanced? Additionally, I don't constantly see the bad sides of anything nVidia just because that's what I do. What are these good points you believe you can't sway me in to seeing? If there's a good point, it's a good point regardless of who makes it, but I don't see you suggesting any.
Caporegime
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It seems that the HD6870 1GB in Crossfire is faster in many cases than a GTX470 in SLI and also consumes less power. OTH, a pair of overclocked GTX470 cards in SLI would probably be faster but with significantly higher power consumption.
This would mean that you would need a higher wattage PSU to run a pair of GTX470 cards in SLI especially if they were overclocked and this would mean a more expensive PSU would be needed.
Anyway,it seems that the OP is probably getting the HD6870 as the GTX470 is EOL.
This would mean that you would need a higher wattage PSU to run a pair of GTX470 cards in SLI especially if they were overclocked and this would mean a more expensive PSU would be needed.
Anyway,it seems that the OP is probably getting the HD6870 as the GTX470 is EOL.
Would you agree there is a lot of evidence the 470s can generally be overclocked quite heavily, often to near or around the levels of a 480? If that were the case then there seems to be quite a good chance of them edging the 6870 setup in pure performance.
I think it is fair that you do not want to argue with a person. In fact, I think it is admirable that you do not want to argue with a person, whether that person is biased or not. If you want to argue at all, then you should obviously argue the facts and analyse the facts. Sometimes it is just not worth it to argue with someone, but if that person has given information that is legitimate (which would be most benchmarks from reputable sources unless you can highlight why a particular test is not valid or does not give the full picture) then it is up to the one disagreeing to make provide different information supporting his view.
This is all very meta; but it is something that consistently bugs me about the Graphics Cards subforum here. I am not saying that either you or kylew are offenders of this in this thread, but seeing that it got up to five pages and does not really contain a lot of information as such, but rather a substantial amount of anecdotal evidence and speculation, I think it is fair to say that it has been infested by a lot of people not really concentrating on facts and interpretation but rather on discussing who has the bigger bias or who is the bigger fanboy.
Either way. To provide an observation to the thread; I am quite surprised that the ATI part of this equation is coming out of the comparison so well. Based on my knowledge of the cards individually and my own biases and previous knowledge of older ATI series, I would have thought the 470s would have won hands down on judged on pure performance.
Caporegime
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What I am surprised about is that a pair of HD6870 1GB cards in Crossfire is similar in performance to a pair of HD5870 1GB cards. The HD6870 1GB GPU is only clocked 50MHZ higher than an HD5870 1GB CPU but has 30% less shaders and the HD6870 1GB has lower memory bandwidth than an HD5870 1GB.
I never refuted that at all, the problem with that is it exacerbates the problems with Fermi graphics cards, a lot of heat, noise and power draw which would get pretty high on overclocked 470s, additionally so when you realise the OP uses dual monitors which seems to greatly increase Fermi idle and load temperatures.
The 6870s could also be overclocked, around 10% from what I read but that's on stock voltages (is there a way to alter the voltage of them yet?). So I'm not really sure how well a 6870 overclocks with a higher voltage. But, we were talking about out of the box performance rather than overclocked.
We're talking about the pros and cons of each setup. If someone is willing to go with a dual card setup, it's probably worth them knowing how much more they can get via overclocking the cards too.
The heat and noise argument is fair enough. But that doesn't necessarily matter to everyone. If it does matter to the OP, then like i said before, he should go with the 6870 setup.
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On a side note, think it was Rroff (apologies if it wasn't in which case whoever it was please answer) but what are the "supposed" CF issues with Black Ops? As I have owned the game from day one and run 4890CF and have had no issues afaik, the only slight thing I could think is it tried to default gfx settings to low res n detail, but I simply cranked em straight up to max and have had no issues, so anyway please share these CF bugs
It's to do with the shader cluster improvements they made with the 6800s. The 5800s used shader clusters that were "5 way", 1 complex shader with 4 "basic" shaders, but the fourth basic shader was often left unused.
With the 6800s they reduced the shader clusters to 4x way, 1 complex 3 simple. The issue of the 5th shader (4th simple) being unused is no longer there, so they can get the same performance out of what looks like a lot less shaders.
The difference in shader clusters is where you can see why the 5870 is still a bit faster (singles) than a 6870. A 5870 has 320x5 shaders (1600), where as a 6870 has 280x4 shaders (1120). That means the 6870 has about 90% the shader clusters of a 5870, and this is reflected in the performance difference between them.
Raw speed, the 6870 and GTX470 are very close to eachother with the 5870 being around 10% faster than them both, but the reason why 6870 Crossfire matches 5870 crossfire and sometimes beats it is because they've increased the dual GPU scaling with the 6800s compared to the 5800s.
So yeah, there's a short and simple explanation as to why 6870 crossfire is similar in performance to a 5870 despite having 40% less transistors.
I thought it would have mattered more with the OP's requirement of using 2 monitors, which increases the heat output of a Fermi GPU.
Caporegime
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I thought that the HD6850 and HD6870 used the older 5 way shaders. Anyway,the HD6950 and HD6970 should have a decent performance boost over the HD5870 it seems.
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Its not as simple as that, I could post results but as they aren't from identical setups people would just kick up a fuss even tho I understand the results enough to see past that myself. Without spending out of my own pocket I'm not in a position to test both setups under controlled conditions.
Yeah right and I'd never hear the end of it if I did...
"Due to my extreme testing for the last 10 years of nvidia and ATI.
I can conclude that Nvidia 470 SLI is the best ever!
And minimum frame rates are epic and its quiet and power efficient!"
I dont have to post anything. I know all this.
Rroffle²
I can conclude that Nvidia 470 SLI is the best ever!
And minimum frame rates are epic and its quiet and power efficient!"
I dont have to post anything. I know all this.
Rroffle²
ordered the HIS 6870'sthanks a lot guys, didn't mean to create such a stir
No worries
If anyone with fraps + crossfire 68xx is interested in posting frametimes I'll post some details after work, much better than my half arse results.
i have gone from ati5970+5870 to watercooled nvidia 470 and much prefer the later.
i dont like ati drivers @ all and there getting worse.
nvidia more constant and more features and seem better quality.
if u watercool them noise is not a problem. and eyefinity or nvidia surround.
nvidia surround much better no screen flickering on off and looks like its clearer.
i dont like ati drivers @ all and there getting worse.
nvidia more constant and more features and seem better quality.
if u watercool them noise is not a problem. and eyefinity or nvidia surround.
nvidia surround much better no screen flickering on off and looks like its clearer.
cuda physics and 3d without a 3d monitor.
and i can see the quality on picture with nvidia is much clearer than ati.
and surround gaming looks better and i get smoother framerate. running 3x 27 monitors.
im not a nvidia fanboy just sick of ati and all there bad drivers. even in wow ati drivers making my chars log in without showing armour even when im wearing it.
and not just me in guild me and 4 other have same problem. and even frame rates dropping into 10- ctrl alt del log back in game all is good . thats ati for u.
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