Decisions decisions, help someone completely out of touch

[TheBigCheese]

Thanks for the replies guys, I'm in research mode now based on your recommendations...I'll probably be posting daft questions shortly!

Rroff why is the Nvidia 570 poor value? I'm not disputing it with you but I'm not sure why it is?

From the benchmarks I can find it seems to perform very well in a lot of situations...

 

[Rroff]

It performs fairly well but theres a lot of cards ~£100-130 cheaper that aren't that far behind it in performance and with the new AMD cards right around the corner likely to offer far better value for money its not really looking that great.

 

[Marine-RX179]

why is the Nvidia 570 poor value? I'm not disputing it with you but I'm not sure why it is?

May be because at £300, it is 50% more expensive than the GTX470, but it certainly ain't anywhere near 50% faster than it

The truth is if you grab a GTX470 and overclock it to over 800MHz+, it would be faster than a stock speed GTX570. Granted the GTX570 can overclock too, but it certainly don't worth the £100 extra.

Rroff is right about the GTX570 being poor value at £300+...it should be in the £240-£260 range. And now is indeed not the best time to buy a GTX570...if you can wait for the 6950 (which is supposed to be GTX570's rival) release next week, there might be some price slash of both side, and hopefully the price of 6950 and GTX570 should drop to around middle between £200 and £300.

 

[jimmy321]

The truth is if you grab a GTX470 and overclock it to over 800MHz+, it would be faster than a stock speed GTX570. Granted the GTX570 can overclock too, but it certainly don't worth the £100 extra.

This, both of these cards are likely to drop in price in the new year but you want it for christmas!

 

[TheBigCheese]

Thanks for the replies that does make it clearer.

Seems a bit daft waiting for the new year before releasing new cards...I suppose all the suckers like me buy up the old stock for Christmas.

I could be interested in the Nvidia GTX 470 that Marine-RX179 suggested.

With the whopping great cooler on it how easy and stable would it be if it was overclocked to 570 speeds? I've never OC'd anything before so it would have to be blowupable proof!

 

[Marine-RX179]

I could be interested in the Nvidia GTX 470 that Marine-RX179 suggested.

With the whopping great cooler on it how easy and stable would it be if it was overclocked to 570 speeds? I've never OC'd anything before so it would have to be blowupable proof!

Even with the standard GTX570, people have no problem overclock a GTX470 to average 820MHz+...you'd have to be extremely unlucky to land a card with a core so poor that can't overclock to 800MHz (at least I have not yet seen anyone that couldn't overclock their GTX470 to over that). Even at just 700MHz (stock clock is 607MHz), it would be around 5870 speed.

For overclocking graphic card, the most commonly used program is the MSI Afterburner. Unlike overclocking CPU which require playing around in bios and changing lots of settings, overclocking graphic card is software based and it's so simple, all you have to do just grab the bar for the core clock, shader clock, memory clock (or enter the values directly) and press save, and then choose 1 of the 5 avaiable profile slot you wish to use that that's it! But for high overclock, you gonna need to increase voltage to keep the overclock stable, which would require you to unlock voltage settings in MSI Afterburner before you can increase the voltage:
http://event.msi.com/vga/afterburner/gui.htm

As for what voltage/setting to use or start the initial overclock, you can make a thread on this forum and ask other people that own GTX470 for advices. MSI Afterburner also allows you to set your own fanspeed profile settings (for the sake of noise and temp control), which basically you just adjust the line on the "line graph" of what fanspeed at what temp to use i.e. 40% at 30-40C, 40% at 50C, 50% at 60C, 60% at 70C, 70% at 80C etc. For the MSI Twin Frozr II cooler, I believe it should be unaudiable up to 60% speed, and then above that, you would probably start to hear it, but probably the the sound of wind/air moving in a non-intrusive way...it would probably only start to become loud when the fanspeed get to 70% and above...but I doubt the temp would get to that high, so the fanspeed should never reach that level of speed anyway.

Anyway, the 6950 SHOULD be out on 15th Dec, so there's no harm to wait till then before deciding which card to get. But just a reminded that 15th Dec Wed is also the day which OcUK would change their "this week's offer" to other items, so the discount for the MSI GTX470 Twin Frozr II would be gone by that day.

 

[TheBigCheese]

Thanks Marine, that's an excellent post.

Sounds easy enough that I would be happy to give it a go, I've got an Antec 1200 case so no problem with extra heat.

This may sound daft but why are we all waiting for the new cards, what's going to happen?

Are they just top end cards that are coming out or are there new mid range cards as well?

Are price drops expected across the range or just at the top end?


Thanks guys.

 

[subbytna]

new tech will push prices lower for rest of tech

 

[Marine-RX179]

new tech will push prices lower for rest of tech

Yea...like a standard (Inno3D) GTX480 can already be bought for just £235

This may sound daft but why are we all waiting for the new cards, what's going to happen?

Are they just top end cards that are coming out or are there new mid range cards as well?

Basically when 6850/6870 was launched, it started a temporary price war and Nvidia slashed the price of the GTX460/GTX470, whereas AMD/ATI launched at a lower price than current price level (on launch day, 6850 was as low as £133, and 6870 was as low as £170...now their price has gone back up to £150 and £190 level). So I think lots of us are really HOPING that with the launch of 6950/6970 history to repeat itself, finger-crossing AMD/ATI will launch their 6950/6970 at a lower than standard price, and Nvidia to cut the price on their GTX570/GTX580 And if the high-mid cards are at a lower price, the mid-range cards prices might get pushed down as well, as otherwise nobody will buy GTX470/6870 at around £190 if the GTX570/6950 get to as low as £240

 

[RavenXXX2]

Yea...like a standard (Inno3D) GTX480 can already be bought for just £235

Discontinued apparently if it's the one I think you're referring to.

 

[Marine-RX179]

Discontinued apparently if it's the one I think you're referring to.

Not surprised, as I saw only 1 left a few hours ago. But I was only refering to the point that subbytna was making

 

[powelly]

i've said this in a lot of posts allready and i will say it again a 5870 is the way foward right now price/performance is amazing and it will last quite a while

 

[setter]

Even with the standard GTX570, people have no problem overclock a GTX470 to average 820MHz+...you'd have to be extremely unlucky to land a card with a core so poor that can't overclock to 800MHz (at least I have not yet seen anyone that couldn't overclock their GTX470 to over that). Even at just 700MHz (stock clock is 607MHz), it would be around 5870 speed.

For overclocking graphic card, the most commonly used program is the MSI Afterburner. Unlike overclocking CPU which require playing around in bios and changing lots of settings, overclocking graphic card is software based and it's so simple, all you have to do just grab the bar for the core clock, shader clock, memory clock (or enter the values directly) and press save, and then choose 1 of the 5 avaiable profile slot you wish to use that that's it! But for high overclock, you gonna need to increase voltage to keep the overclock stable, which would require you to unlock voltage settings in MSI Afterburner before you can increase the voltage:
http://event.msi.com/vga/afterburner/gui.htm

As for what voltage/setting to use or start the initial overclock, you can make a thread on this forum and ask other people that own GTX470 for advices. MSI Afterburner also allows you to set your own fanspeed profile settings (for the sake of noise and temp control), which basically you just adjust the line on the "line graph" of what fanspeed at what temp to use i.e. 40% at 30-40C, 40% at 50C, 50% at 60C, 60% at 70C, 70% at 80C etc. For the MSI Twin Frozr II cooler, I believe it should be unaudiable up to 60% speed, and then above that, you would probably start to hear it, but probably the the sound of wind/air moving in a non-intrusive way...it would probably only start to become loud when the fanspeed get to 70% and above...but I doubt the temp would get to that high, so the fanspeed should never reach that level of speed anyway.

Anyway, the 6950 SHOULD be out on 15th Dec, so there's no harm to wait till then before deciding which card to get. But just a reminded that 15th Dec Wed is also the day which OcUK would change their "this week's offer" to other items, so the discount for the MSI GTX470 Twin Frozr II would be gone by that day.

When i got my first 470, i only clocked it to 751mhz, stock volts, added a second and ran both at this speed, started clocking them a bit higher this week, (3d mark 2011 to blame), 800/1600/1700 on 1.085v, still have to test those clocks in games though, but at 751/1502/1674 both ran cool and handled the likes of moh and bfbc2 on max details at 1920x1200.

 

[the1gooner]

Slightly off topic, but Black OPs is not too graphic demanding, but it is however a huge CPU hog that don't perform to well with ANY dual-core CPU, but love the extra cores (ideally you should have a Quad for that game)..

Well I am playing it just fine at the moment with a Core i3 540.

Running at 3.4Ghz it is more than matching the Core i5 750 I have just sold.

 

[setter]

It plays different for a lot of people, with the spec in sig, (gpu's at 470/1502/1684) it stutters a lot, gpu use is only at 40% high settings with aa and af maxed, 1920x1200, i can play moh with max setings, 32 x aa and it runs a lot smoother.

 

[Rroff]

Black Ops is fubar... with the normal nVidia drivers I get insane stutter in any firefight and on certain parts of the maps. With Quadro 265.90 inf modded for GeForce theres no stutter but get big fps drops in those places where I had stutter before - its a lot more playable than the stutter tho. This affects both AMD/ATI and nVidia based hardware the same its not directly related to drivers, etc.

 

[setter]

Tried those drivers as well Rroff, tbh ive given up on Black op's, had high hopes for it as i wasnt that impressed with MW2, ive gone back to BFBC2, much more enjoyable game, runs very well on high settings and looks a lot better. Even the latest MOH is better, and tbh it's not great, although the sound in it is extremely good, using an asus Xonar DX with goldring ns1000's, best sound ive heard in a game in quite a while.

 

[Marine-RX179]

Well I am playing it just fine at the moment with a Core i3 540.

Running at 3.4Ghz it is more than matching the Core i5 750 I have just sold.

Actually you have no idea what you're missing. Sure you would still get playable frame rate, but I can guarantee you are you not getting all the performance that the 6870 has to offer with your Core i3 in Black OPs. If you don't believe me, you could try checking your GPU usage in game and see if it use anywhere close to 100% during gaming.

 

[Nocky24]

Actually you have no idea what you're missing. Sure you would still get playable frame rate, but I can guarantee you are you not getting all the performance that the 6870 has to offer with your Core i3 in Black OPs. If you don't believe me, you could try checking your GPU usage in game and see if it use anywhere close to 100% during gaming.

I can't imagine it's a noticeable bottleneck though. Black Ops is a poor game to test it on though, as I believe it still suffers from gpu usage issues even on heavily clocked high end cpus? Best thing to do would be to run a few benchmarks and compare it against equivalent gpus with better cpus

EDIT: :O my smiley lost its santa hat?!

 

[AgedIdiot]

If you wish to buy now then I would go for either the 5870 (Bang for buck is excellent!) or the Msi 470 Twin Frozr.

Would also avoid any standard cooled 470/480's - they generally get too noisy when pushed.