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Decisions... 570 or 6970???
- Thread starter Stelly
- Start date
These are two very good comparable card, and consequently there are quite a few threads like this about already.
What resolution will you game at, and is that likely to change?
Because for very high resolution (2560x1600) the 6970 is faster. At lower resoltions the 570 overtakes the AMD. The margins are small, and both cards are good.
The 570 also gives the option for higher AA (x32).
And also, what PSU do you have, as it looks like the AMD uses a bit less power?
Associate
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Unless you play a lot of hawx or far cry 2 I would go for the 6970.
The £250 570 that keeps getting quoted is only showing as having 2 in stock, and it's possible that the stock levels haven't been updated and the actual figure is closer to 0.
The £250 570 that keeps getting quoted is only showing as having 2 in stock, and it's possible that the stock levels haven't been updated and the actual figure is closer to 0.
Ah, how did I know that was HardwareCanucks...
These are the Power consumption results from different reviews. They all say the 6970 uses less power, except for HardwareCanucks:
AnAnd - Load Power Consumption - Crysis
570 = 361 Watts
6970 = 340 Watts
Hardware Canucks - 1hr 3DMark Batch size test
570 = 337 Watts
6970 = 364 Watts
Guru3d, which calculates the GPU load:
570 = 213
6970 = 207
HardOCP, which calculates total system
570 = 454W
6970 = 428W
BitTech
570 = 330
6970 = 306
Soldato
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Not really. GTX570 is already proven to be capable of overclocking from 732MHz to 900MHz (23% overclock) and would be touching GTX580 speed at these clock, whereas the 6970 max overclock confirmed so far is only from 880MHz to 980MHz (11% overclock). Granted voltage tweak is not available for the card yet, but can anyone guarantee that with voltage tweak that the 6970 would be able to hit 23% overclock, and reaching 1,082MHz?
Comparing speed at stock don't really mean much, as the 6970 comes with ridiculously high default clock, whereas the GTX570 match its speed at nearly 150MHz lower clock. For anyone who game at/or thinking they will game at higher than 1920 res in the future, the 6970 would be a better choice because of the extra memory; for 1920 res or lower, it would be better to go for the GTX570, particularly with because of more reliable and piece of mind driver. I have pre-ordered MSI 5850 Twin FrozeR about 5 days ago, and I've been worrying about not being able to get the damn driver to work properly and the 5850 is not delivering the performance that it should since that day, only just barely short of having nightmare. I really don't see the worth of going 6970 over GTX570 at 1920 res as it practially don't offer better performance and the average price being higher in overall, come free with possible problematic drivers; the only reason I gone with the MSI 5850 Twin FrozeR over a GTX460 1GB is because it is cheaper AND around 10% faster than the GTX460 1GB; the 6970 certainly ain't 10% faster than nor cheaper than the GTX570.
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6970 is a lemon. Its more expensive than its rival the 570gtx which it ties with on performance. This card needs to be £249.99 not a penny more.
Now 6950 under a £200 mark hits the sweet spot. Too bad that pricing was only available for a day.
Now 6950 under a £200 mark hits the sweet spot. Too bad that pricing was only available for a day.
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Looks on average the same price to me. Both come in around £270 for the cheapest.
As for picking between them pick the one with the features that mean the most to you. On your average 1920 res there's not a lot in it.
Stop speaking crap, 6970 is a lemon, LOL.
WTF, if you can't be unbiased STFU please.
6970 is either slightly slower, slightly faster or a quite a bit faster than a 570 depending on which bench/ review site you believe. Its got 2GB of ram and its a touch more money than the crappest brand of its nearest competitor so whatever choice anybody makes they will have a good card for todays mostly undemanding games.
Both 570 and 6970 are good cards for the money, simple as. 6970's drivers aren't finished its clear to see, but AMD's Dave Baumann has stated over at Beyond3d he believes some of the more erratic benches will get better once they get better at optimising the new VLIW4 and double front end architecture.
The 6970 has 2GB of ram, an extra 0.7GB of ram over the 570 and that needs power, probably 30-40 extra watts of power looking at the clockspeeds so there's your main reason as to why card consumption is up a touch if you were going to waffle on about that.
Similar at the moment, 570 is faster in some games, 6970 is faster in others, suppose it depends on which games you play. I ordered the 6970 because it looks faster at 19 x 12 in games like Crysis and the games I'll be playing over Christmas.
Well, it seems due to how even the cards seem to be, it all comes down to a matter of which company you prefer. The 6970 is going to show the 570 up in crossfire, which amd seem to have made a tremendous improvement on. And the 570 is quieter than the 6970 at load. Yeah the price point on both cards is also fairly even, give or take a tenner.
Soldato
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I'm trying to decide between the same 2 cards and trying to decide if going crossfire/sli is worth it (or if it just sounds good).
I thought I was going to go for the 6970, but after reading a review on another site I saw the 570 seemed to outperform it more than the HardwareCanucks results show. I also heard that the cooler isn't fantastic at cooling and is noisy. Which to be honest was the opposite of what I was expecting. So then I was leaning towards the 570. However I can't help but wonder how much the 6970 performance may increase after a couple more driver releases.
As for the cooler, I'm wondering if it's worth waiting for the cards with non-reference coolers.
I thought I was going to go for the 6970, but after reading a review on another site I saw the 570 seemed to outperform it more than the HardwareCanucks results show. I also heard that the cooler isn't fantastic at cooling and is noisy. Which to be honest was the opposite of what I was expecting. So then I was leaning towards the 570. However I can't help but wonder how much the 6970 performance may increase after a couple more driver releases.
As for the cooler, I'm wondering if it's worth waiting for the cards with non-reference coolers.
I was puzzling over this when the 6970 was released, and ended up going for one of these £250 GTX 570s. I run at 1920x1200 and things might have been different if at higher resolutions or if I was going to use CrossFire/SLI. On the one hand, the 2GB RAM on the AMD card looks good, but the GTX 570 has stronger tessellation, so they trade advantages longevity-wise.
Overall it came down to the GTX 570 being slightly cheaper and possibly quieter, having the small benefits of PhysX and CUDA, and a vague preference for Nvidia GPUs from admittedly subjective and largely irrelevant past experience (my current 8800 GTS 512MB has been perfect and a great performer for three years, while my previous desktop card, a 9800 Pro, overheated a lot). I suppose I feel that Nvidia's architectures are balanced better, while AMD's cards since the 2900 XT have a lot of theoretical grunt but struggle to put that to good use.
I've seen at least three reviews in which the overall score of the two cards are within 1% though, so there really is very little in it and minor preferences or price differences are all that separate them unless you have any particular needs like particularly high resolutions or GPU computing.
Overall it came down to the GTX 570 being slightly cheaper and possibly quieter, having the small benefits of PhysX and CUDA, and a vague preference for Nvidia GPUs from admittedly subjective and largely irrelevant past experience (my current 8800 GTS 512MB has been perfect and a great performer for three years, while my previous desktop card, a 9800 Pro, overheated a lot). I suppose I feel that Nvidia's architectures are balanced better, while AMD's cards since the 2900 XT have a lot of theoretical grunt but struggle to put that to good use.
I've seen at least three reviews in which the overall score of the two cards are within 1% though, so there really is very little in it and minor preferences or price differences are all that separate them unless you have any particular needs like particularly high resolutions or GPU computing.
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wow after looking at big waynes comparasion charts he posted earlier in the thread i didnt realize just how good the 5970 card is!!! I have a 5850 at the mo i only game at 1600x900 but may well invest in one of those bad boys!
OCUK dont seem to stock them tho
OCUK dont seem to stock them tho
Soldato
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You are forgetting that 5970 is a multi-GPU card though. While 25-30fps on single GPU card would be reasonably smooth, the same frame rate on the 5970 would be jerk feast because of micro-stutter. It would need on average at least 10fps higher to deliver compariable smoothness to single GPU card.