Decisions... 570 or 6970???

nicnik · 22 Dec 2010 at 12:34

all about temps and noise out of the 2.
isn't the gtx 570 2x 6 pin?

liamcrane · 22 Dec 2010 at 12:37

lol im such a dim wit at times i completely forgot about it being a mulit gpu until i saw the prices of em £400+!! Are there actually many multi core gpu cards coming onto the market? is this going to be the way forward in years to come do you think?

I guess it must need a fair bit of power to power these bad boys. I see exactly wat u mean with regards to micro stutter, most games run smooth around the 30fps mark, i believe this is what modern consoles run at. Im trying to find a way to limit my games to around 35-40 fps cos my 5850 is pretty good at running most things at 60fps but in a lot of games you get the sudden annoying drop which is sooo frustrating, i just want a smooth gameplay experience

Triggaaar · 22 Dec 2010 at 13:17

Mithent said:
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.

Good post. It can be difficult to find well reasoned decisions like this.

liamcrane said:
lol im such a dim wit at times i completely forgot about it being a mulit gpu until i saw the prices of em £400+!! Are there actually many multi core gpu cards coming onto the market? is this going to be the way forward in years to come do you think?

Lol, you shouldn't have told us your mistake. No, AMD will release a dual GPU based on the 6xxx series (the 6990) and Nvidia may release a dual card too, but no more than 1 each. They'll be expensive, fast, and only take up 1 slot.

liamcrane · 22 Dec 2010 at 13:22

Im an honest man

Rezident · 22 Dec 2010 at 13:40

GoogalyMoogaly said:
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.

The reviews I read said the 6970s have vapour chamber coolers as standard.

MichaelM · 22 Dec 2010 at 13:48

HIS 6970 is £10 cheaper than the 570 here with more stock and I think HIS is a better company then Palit or KFA2.

Scon · 22 Dec 2010 at 13:49

MichaelM said:
I think HIS is a better company then Palit or KFA2.

Based on?

GoogalyMoogaly · 22 Dec 2010 at 13:53

Rezident said:
The reviews I read said the 6970s have vapour chamber coolers as standard.

Yes, but apparently they're not fantastic (or as good as Nvidias from what I can gather). I'm wondering if some non-reference ones may be better.

MichaelM · 22 Dec 2010 at 13:55

burrell said:
Based on?

KFA2 apparently stands for Kick ******* A** and are basically just BFG which went out of business.
Palit recalled their 580's for not having the heatsinks installed correctly.

HIS had massive stock at launch (which is a good sign of not being a small company) and come with good accessories compared to a pricer company like Sapphire which is my favorite. Also Gibbo said they where the best buy for 6900's.

flopper · 22 Dec 2010 at 13:57

Both good cards.
in practice you likely wont notice any difference.

sand_dune · 22 Dec 2010 at 15:30

The pleasure of having 2 gig of video ram takes 6970 in the lead.

Skyrocket · 22 Dec 2010 at 15:49

MichaelM said:
KFA2 apparently stands for Kick ******* A** and are basically just BFG which went out of business.
Palit recalled their 580's for not having the heatsinks installed correctly.

HIS had massive stock at launch (which is a good sign of not being a small company) and come with good accessories compared to a pricer company like Sapphire which is my favorite. Also Gibbo said they where the best buy for 6900's.

Its amazing how ppl deduce so much just from company names..... :eek:

I would take a £250 570gtx with company name DONKEY POO (with 2 years warranty) over any 6970 for £280....

If they were £250 each 6970 all day.....

jigger · 22 Dec 2010 at 15:56

Skyrocket said:
Its amazing how ppl deduce so much just from company names.....

I would take a £250 570gtx with company name DONKEY POO (with 2 years warranty) over any 6970 for £280....

If they were £250 each 6970 all day.....

But the £250 (£265 without the coupon ) GTX570 is out of stock with no ETA....

ashmanuk67 · 22 Dec 2010 at 15:59

Skyrocket said:
Its amazing how ppl deduce so much just from company names.....

I would take a £250 570gtx with company name DONKEY POO (with 2 years warranty) over any 6970 for £280....

If they were £250 each 6970 all day.....

WOW why do you have to come across so blunt :eek:

i know you are a very knowledgeable person on this graphics forum

I love my 6970 coming from a 4870 Xfire thers always better out there and i have only stayed with AMD because its just what i am used to drivers etc...

I wish people would be nicer about things on here well just a tiny bit of respect anyway.....

Marine-RX179 · 22 Dec 2010 at 16:01

jigger said:
But the £250 (£265 without the coupon ) GTX570 is out of stock with no ETA....

Putting Nvidia card aside, I really think the 6970 should be priced at £240-£260 rather than the current price of £280-£330.

This is because prior to launch, almost everyone were expecting the 6950 to match GTX570 performance, but priced at £240-£260. But it turns out it is the 6970 that hit that expected performance, not the 6950...so at the very least they should sell the 6970 at that price range (and 6950 at £200 rather than £210~£240).

jigger · 22 Dec 2010 at 16:10

Marine-RX179 said:
Putting Nvidia card aside, I really think the 6970 should be priced at £240-£260 rather than the current price of £280-£330.

This is because prior to launch, almost everyone were expecting the 6950 to match GTX570 performance, but priced at £240-£260. But it turns out it is the 6970 that hit that expected performance, not the 6950...so at the very least they should sell the 6970 at around £250.

Everyone also thought the HD6970 card would cost £450 not £280, but if the HD6950 was £300 then the GTX570 would be £400. Then the HD6950 would suddenly become good value ?

easyrider · 22 Dec 2010 at 16:14

Its all relative.

A 2GB card that drives 6 screens and scales superbly matching the 570 in many games for 220 is good pricing if you ask me.

Marine-RX179 · 22 Dec 2010 at 16:55

jigger said:
Everyone also thought the HD6970 card would cost £450 not £280, but if the HD6950 was £300 then the GTX570 would be £400. Then the HD6950 would suddenly become good value ?

I have no idea where you pull those figures from, but the realistic expectation prior to the launch for 6970 back then was for it to match or slightly slower than the GTX580, but price at £340~£360 vs GTX580 at £400.

MichaelM · 22 Dec 2010 at 16:58

Skyrocket said:
Its amazing how ppl deduce so much just from company names.....

I would take a £250 570gtx with company name DONKEY POO (with 2 years warranty) over any 6970 for £280....

If they were £250 each 6970 all day.....

Well they are the two joint cheapest 570 manufacturers on OCuK which are in stock so they are the ones compared to the HIS or OCuK 6970's.
Forgive me for not being 12 years old and thinking the one with the most curse words must be the best, especially if they have been bankrupt or have done a recent recall on their products. They use curses and are cheapest, they are rebels and cool!!!1!

People are always complaining about quality of RMA with company's even if they offer the same length of warranty as a higher quality company it can still be an inferior package.

Also he asked for the reasoning for my opinion as he quoted me saying "I think" instead of "this is the fact and everyone else is an idiot" like you seem to think every time you write a PMS post over someone saying AMD is a valid option.

Ingleberry · 22 Dec 2010 at 17:15

The choice is down to one question in my view, how many monitors do you run or plan to run?

If your going by benchmarks both brands seem to be on par and doubt ATI drivers will yeild much of a performance boost either.

But if your planning to go Bulldozer platform then ATI card makes sense over Nvidia because the whole new platform WILL utilise both igpu and graphics cards together to further boost performance. Intel has not advertised such plans for Sandybridge that platform is going a different direction to reach similar performance.