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6950 or GTX570

Kei

Kei

Kei

Soldato
Joined
24 Oct 2008
Posts
2,752
Location
South Wales
I've been looking at replacing my ageing 3870 as its now getting on a bit and i imagine it will really struggle with anything modern. (GTA IV pushes it) Presently i run at 1280x1024, but will be going to 1920x1080 in the future. (no higher than that) I've been running ATi cards since the radeon VE and i've not had much experience with nvidia cards having had a laptop integrated go 7600 and a Geforce 4 Ti4200. (for a day) However, I am open minded so won't limit myself to AMD.

My system as it stands is:
Phenom X4 955 at 3.8GHz, 4GB ram, corsair TX650 psu, CM690 II case.

These are the two cards i've narrowed it down to. (the 3 slot cooler isn't an issue)
Asus ATI Radeon HD 6950 DirectCU II
Asus GeForce GTX 570 DirectCU II

I know that the 6950 can be oc'd quite far and also has the potential to unlock to a 6970. (with the asus DCII 6970 bios) Considering it as equal to the 6970, is the GTX 570 worth the extra £27 vs the 6950. The GTX 570 really is the top end of my budget so i can't be going above £252. I only ever run single cards so xfire/SLi isn't needed.
 
The Asus 6950 will almost certainly not unlock. Very rare to find cards that will, the dual bios doesn't mean it could unlock, its literally as it says, dual bios. A backup if someone goes wrong.

Unlocking doesn't increase performance that much, the overclocking will do more for you. The GTX 570 is a bit faster in some games, but the performance is fairly even throughout.
 
How does the sapphire card compare to the asus OC wise? I know from the various reviews of the asus that it oc's sufficiently to outperfrom a 6970 even with the missing shaders.
 
Quite like the look of the sapphire card. Reviews seem to suggest its equally as capable of OC'ing as the asus with the added benefit of easier unlocking the extra shaders. Still not too sure how it stacks up against the 570. The results in the various reviews seem to fluctuate all over the place, some saying that a 6950 is faster than a 570 (let alone a 6970) and others saying the 570 is faster than both. (in the same games too) I don't think its worth paying much extra for meagre increases in fps.
 
Well, the GTX570 1.25GB outperform the 6950/6970 2GB in BF3 by a fair margin:


Unlocked 6950 2GB or 6970 2GB might be able to overclock to close to stock GTX580 speed, but GTX570 will overclock BEYOND stock GTX580 speed.

To be honest, I think the price of 6950 2GB and GTX560Ti 2GB has gone a bit overpriced....at £185-£205 was where they used to be, but now their price has gone up £225~£250. In comparison, the GTX570 dropped from £270~£280 down to £250 is a steal IMO.
 
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must be awesome being able to run BF3 in such detail !
but i got a 9650 1gb XFX and i am getting around 60+fps with most settings on ultra, but i find on some maps i struggle :(
 
Marine-RX179 said:
Unlocked 6950 2GB or 6970 2GB might be able to overclock to close to stock GTX580 speed, but GTX570 will overclock BEYOND stock GTX580 speed.
Click to expand...

BF3 Benchies are a bit inconsistent just now imo:

As [H] has the 6970 and 580 performance almost neck and neck:

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and these too:

2ex3iaw.png
ru4or8.png


Marine-RX179 said:
Unlocked 6950 2GB or 6970 2GB might be able to overclock to close to stock GTX580 speed, but GTX570 will overclock BEYOND stock GTX580 speed.
Click to expand...
The unlocked 6950 can perform BEYOND stock GTX580 speed too:

4kxyza.jpg


281voth.jpg


'Overclocked 1536 BIOS Performance Summary
Wow, what can you say? AMD's Radeon HD 6970 market ranges from $340 to $380. NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 580 market ranges from $420 to $600. Our SAPPHIRE TOXIC HD6950 sells for $269.99. After overclocking the 1536 BIOS, it also out performed both of the price superior cards. A much cheaper price and comparable performance, very impressive!'

Source:[H]

Unlocking results for the Toxics:

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18335052"]Did Your Toxic Make The Grade --> 6970[/COLOR]

On a side note, the 570 won't perform at it's best as it's going into an AMD system too, Nvidia cards perform better in Intel systems due to the Intels higher clockspeeds:

hth1yp.png


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Source: PCformat July 2011

My last point to make is that seeing that you are so used to AMD cards, the crossover to Nvidia Control Panel can be off puting (and vice versa of course;))
 
Point taken about Nvidia card not performing as good as it should be on a AMD system, but benchmark result wise, I think most people wouldn't rely on reviews done by hardocp, as they often have weird ways of doing their bench for comparisons. They do most of their bench on 2560 res (no 1920 res result for single-player mission comparison for BF3 in this case)...and when they do do the so-called "apple-to-apple" comparison for 1920 res, they use game titles that scale badly with Nvidia cards, or like the time that did they did CPU scaling comparing between the i7 2600K and Bulldozer FX8150 for BF3 Beta, they passed the Bulldozer FX8150 off as faster than the i7 2600K, despite everyone knows that multiplayer bench is VERY inconsistence.

As for tom's result, those results are without any AA applied. If BF3 is anything like BFBC2, when AA is applied the AMD cards could take a much steeper dive than the Nvidia's cards. Take the following BFBC2 bench for example...the 6970 2GB is a bit faster than the GTX570 1.25GB when it is at 1920 res 0xAA, but when 4XAA is applied, the 6970 2GB's frame rate dropped like hell, whereas the GTX570 1.25GB's frame rate doesn't drop anywhere as sharply and hold up ok:
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2011/02/11/amd-radeon-hd-6950-1gb-review/7
1920x1200, 0xAA, 16xAF
6970 2GB minimum 55fps, average 69fps
GTX570 1.25GB minimum 53fps, average 69fps

1920x1200, 4xAA, 16xAF
6970 2GB minimum 34fps, average 50fps (min -21fps/average -19fps)
GTX570 1.25GB minimum 43fps, average 58fps (min -10fps/average -11fps)
 
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It's more to do with the type of AA that's applied for some reason MSAA takes a huge chunk of performance on both AMD and Nvidia cards but its worse on AMD hence why it's been advised to use FXAA (SP?) instead in BF3.

The problem for both these cards is that value for money goes isn't that great. For example a 6950 at £220 isn't that much then a £135 6870 and a GTX570 is poorer value then both a 6950 and a GTX560Ti. The choice to made here is do you want out right performance or the card that offers the better value? For the money though I would rather have a punt on two of these.
 
Macphisto said:
For a few extra £'s you can get http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-038-HS
and ive been reading that it can be oc'd to this

Overclocked + GPU Volts 1.2
Core Clock: 975MHz
Shader Clock: 975MHz
Memory Clock: 6300MHz
Click to expand...

£50 more than the toxic(well £42 once the 'this week only' offer on the toxic ends wednesday morning)? in terms of permance there will only be a handful of fps between the oced 6970 and unlocked/oced toxic(mainlt due to the weaker memory on the toxic which can't be oced as far from what I've read). I'd rather use the money on game/s or towards other bits of the pc.
 
Freddie1980 said:
The problem for both these cards is that value for money goes isn't that great. For example a 6950 at £220 isn't that much then a £135 6870 and a GTX570 is poorer value then both a 6950 and a GTX560Ti. The choice to made here is do you want out right performance or the card that offers the better value? For the money though I would rather have a punt on two of these.
Click to expand...
If talking about value for money, then the 6950 2GB is not exactly that great either with the recent price rised from the average £200 to £220~£230, when considering GTX560Ti can be have for £160, which is £60 cheaper. The 6950 2GB's extra VRAM will allow it to performance a bit better than the GTX560Ti 1GB in some games, but is it really £60 worth of extra performance? That's for individuals to decide.

To be honest, the best value cards has to be the 6870 1GB at £130 and GTX560Ti 1GB at £160...anything above that need a big jump in price for little improvement.
 
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Having a second look at the op, considering he's kept that 3870 for about 3 years, I would go for any of the cheaper 2GB 6950/560's, both are very overclockable and at their performance point without a doubt offer much better value over the 570/6970's.

If the op keeps his eyes open, there are cheap 2GB 560/6950's to be had round about £180(Iv'e seen 6950 twin frozr II's delivered for that recently), there is a twin frozr III available today @£209 if you have a look around.
 
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