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6950 2gig or 570 gtx
- Thread starter gazzaa
- Start date
Without turning this into a war of ATI vs Nvidia
Generally hardware on ATI is solid in comparison to Nvidia, but in terms of software Nvidia has always outperformed... ever since I owned my first ATI card back in 1998 Nvidia has had better software, I remember using 3rd party drivers at the time because ati couldn't get their **** together. It is still the case especially on linux but things are getting better.
CUDA rocks but I don't know, OpenCL looks to become the standard GPU api (supported by Apple, Linux community, Microsoft, Intel processors, AMD processors / ATI gpus) so not too sure where it leaves Nvidia and CUDA. But knowing Nvidia they will probably have a bridge between cuda and opencl.
Never the less I have used about ~20 ati cards and only 1 nvidia card. I'm slightly biased I guess but I've always got ati. In hindsight I never liked AMD and up until they bought ATI I never owned a single AMD tech, always ran intel.
So here I leave you confused
, get the vram for high resolution games. Vram is also highly desirable when you do GPU based FEM stuff, meshing, heavy modelling etc... , i.e running CUDA on the nvidia cards would benefit from higher vram. But ATI runs OpenCL and that's not as big as nvidia's cuda in mainstream yet
Generally hardware on ATI is solid in comparison to Nvidia, but in terms of software Nvidia has always outperformed... ever since I owned my first ATI card back in 1998 Nvidia has had better software, I remember using 3rd party drivers at the time because ati couldn't get their **** together. It is still the case especially on linux but things are getting better.
CUDA rocks but I don't know, OpenCL looks to become the standard GPU api (supported by Apple, Linux community, Microsoft, Intel processors, AMD processors / ATI gpus) so not too sure where it leaves Nvidia and CUDA. But knowing Nvidia they will probably have a bridge between cuda and opencl.
Never the less I have used about ~20 ati cards and only 1 nvidia card. I'm slightly biased I guess but I've always got ati. In hindsight I never liked AMD and up until they bought ATI I never owned a single AMD tech, always ran intel.
So here I leave you confused
, get the vram for high resolution games. Vram is also highly desirable when you do GPU based FEM stuff, meshing, heavy modelling etc... , i.e running CUDA on the nvidia cards would benefit from higher vram. But ATI runs OpenCL and that's not as big as nvidia's cuda in mainstream yetIt's always luck of the draw if you get any problems with your GPU. I've had more problems with the Nvidia cards I've had than the AMD ones, but then again I've had the unluck to have had problems with both of them 
. The rule of thumb I suppose is that for a single GPU setup the drivers are going to be pretty rock solid anyway, regardless of red or green. It's crossfire/SLI when things start to get a little less stable and require more tinkering to get working properly. If you're going to be using them for accelerating Video editing/professional software, I'd suggest an Nvidia card. CUDA is a very nice bit of kit.
As others have said, I personally would not buy a GTX570 due to the lack of Vram. I know there are arguments raging on this forums about Vram usage, but the fact stands that more and more games being released are using more than 1gb of Vram. For future proofing (sigh, I hate that term) you'd definitely want 1.5-2gb of Vram.
That said, the MSI GTX570 is still available for £233 on OCuk, which is a bargain, as it is faster than the 6950 at stock. However, if the OP is prepared to do some flashing, the XfX 6950 for £210 can be flashed to a 6970.
. The rule of thumb I suppose is that for a single GPU setup the drivers are going to be pretty rock solid anyway, regardless of red or green. It's crossfire/SLI when things start to get a little less stable and require more tinkering to get working properly. If you're going to be using them for accelerating Video editing/professional software, I'd suggest an Nvidia card. CUDA is a very nice bit of kit.As others have said, I personally would not buy a GTX570 due to the lack of Vram. I know there are arguments raging on this forums about Vram usage, but the fact stands that more and more games being released are using more than 1gb of Vram. For future proofing (sigh, I hate that term) you'd definitely want 1.5-2gb of Vram.
That said, the MSI GTX570 is still available for £233 on OCuk, which is a bargain, as it is faster than the 6950 at stock. However, if the OP is prepared to do some flashing, the XfX 6950 for £210 can be flashed to a 6970.
Soldato
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Hmmm
Iv been looking at the 570 my self.
I currently have a 5870.
I would like a change and the 570 looks very appealing.
What I will say however is that I wouldnt make the leap just yet to an Nvidia card as none of them have 2Gb of vram...
does it make a difference, over all no, as its still about the grunt of the card rather then the vram.
However for some games which are not grunt intensive but rather memory intensive (Shogun 2 and DA 2) then 2Gb of ram is useful.
Its a tough call.... I dont understand why Nvidia havent put 2Gb of ram on their cards......
I would say hold of for now on a purchase.
If you need to buy now..... if physx doenst bother you then get the 6950... if you do want the luxury of physx and buy in to the idea that Nvidia have better drivers... (I have no opinion here - may just be a product of Nvidia marketing more than anything else) then get the 570.
The better of the two, vram as side is the 570.
Iv been looking at the 570 my self.
I currently have a 5870.
I would like a change and the 570 looks very appealing.
What I will say however is that I wouldnt make the leap just yet to an Nvidia card as none of them have 2Gb of vram...
does it make a difference, over all no, as its still about the grunt of the card rather then the vram.
However for some games which are not grunt intensive but rather memory intensive (Shogun 2 and DA 2) then 2Gb of ram is useful.
Its a tough call.... I dont understand why Nvidia havent put 2Gb of ram on their cards......
I would say hold of for now on a purchase.
If you need to buy now..... if physx doenst bother you then get the 6950... if you do want the luxury of physx and buy in to the idea that Nvidia have better drivers... (I have no opinion here - may just be a product of Nvidia marketing more than anything else) then get the 570.
The better of the two, vram as side is the 570.
I wouldn't base your purchasing decision on Physx. While it is an incredibly good physics library (and better than Havok, just look at the fluid dynamics demos they have), game developers never really use it for anything because if they did potential customers with AMD cards wouldn't be able to use it. As of now, all you get is some slightly more realistically flapping flags and some more realistic glass shattering, which isn't worth it.
What would clinch the deal for me is CUDA. Nvidia bought out Mental Images, so for smoother Mray in 3ds Max Nvidia cards are always faster. That said, OpenCL is catching up, and both Nvidia and AMD support it. CUDA is still the industry preference though I think.
In the scientific computation community, CUDA is still used almost universally. OpenCL is a potentially a lot more flexible and is certainly supported but at present CUDA is a lot easier to get started with; for a lot of it you can simply replace a few calls in your C or FORTRAN code with calls to the equivalent function in the CUDA-accelerated library. Accelerating your code with OpenCL is not nearly as straightforward at present.
When you're looking to use GPUs in a professional context, then it's all about productivity and ease of use. If you have (say) a £300k 18 month project to handle, then getting started quickly is far more important than the few thousand pounds extra you may potentially spend on hardware.
I'm sure OpenCL will gather momentum in time, but it really needs some kind of kickstart to get going at the moment.
So that give you a week to save the extra for a GTX 580
In this review below there really is no clear winner between ATI HD 6970 & Nvidia GTX 570 there about the same
http://www.techspot.com/review/348-amd-radeon-6970/page5.html
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So that give you a week to save the extra for a GTX 580
Yeah, I wish... Actually, that would be overkill for me. I've been out of the gaming pc scene for years but would like to get back into it so I'm going to get a rig of around 1,200GBP (monitor and speakers included). Anything more I can't really justify. I'm torn between the GTX570 and the 6950 though. At this point I'm leaning towards the 6950 as the 2GB Vram just sounds good
Not sure if the new cards can still be upgraded to 6970 performance, time to do some more homework!But a 2.5GB 570 sounds betterAt this point I'm leaning towards the 6950 as the 2GB Vram just sounds good
That is the card I wanted, I've previously used a reference Gigabyte GTX 570 at GTX 580 speeds, before I had a play with a 6950 for 7 months.chaparral said:But a 2.5GB 570 sounds better
I got a GTX 580 for only £20 dearer than that EVGA 570 and with a better cooler so I'm more than happy, 1.5GB ram will be enough I hope at 1920x1200 ?
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1.5GB ram will be enough I hope at 1920x1200 ?
1.2gb though eh?