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What does everyone think of current gpu prices

Spenty said:
Sorry but look here: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/509?vs=518

The games the 570 wins in are nvidia optimized such as civilisation, starcraft and dirt 3.
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Without starting the SNES vs Megadrive argument again.....

They both have their merits. However, it seems AMD's fortunes have changed.

Custom PC (mag I read) has had AMD behind every single last step of the way for a whole year. Yet, last month the 570 and 580 seem to have disappeared and were replaced with...

ED. I have removed the pic as I forgot it has competitor links on. Sorry !

Which came as a shock to me. Quite simply because I have a mag from about six months ago where they were saying that the 570 would actually be an upgrade to the 6970 :D

I can only assume they have played BF3 vigorously and realised that vram is now important? or, that drivers have put the 6970 ahead of the 570 which has shown up how expensive the 580 really is?
 
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panyan said:
but the 6970 is their fastest 6000 series gpu

compare it to nvidias fastest gpu, the 580 gpu, and then you will understand ;)
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You can't compare something that different in price, that's like comparing a porsche boxter and a ferrari 360 because they're 2 companies bottom end models. If you're willing to pay the excess for a few more horsepower's and extras or frames per second in this case then don't complain or discuss prices tbh.
 
Spenty said:
You can't compare something that different in price, that's like comparing a porsche boxter and a ferrari 360 because they're 2 companies bottom end models. If you're willing to pay the excess for a few more horsepower's and extras or frames per second in this case then don't complain or discuss prices tbh.
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Yes but we've established that any sensible human being would be capable of understanding that reasoning.

Sadly when it comes to the fastest PC parts sense often takes a stage exit.
 
Yeah if you have no money worries and you want bragging rights you buy the best and that is why prices will keep rising. I'd say it's around 50/50 for sensible buyers vs I don't give a **** gimme the best buyers.
 
Spenty said:
Yeah if you have no money worries and you want bragging rights you buy the best and that is why prices will keep rising. I'd say it's around 50/50 for sensible buyers vs I don't give a **** gimme the best buyers.
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Not really, far more people are after price/performance.
 
Spenty said:
Yeah if you have no money worries and you want bragging rights you buy the best and that is why prices will keep rising. I'd say it's around 50/50 for sensible buyers vs I don't give a **** gimme the best buyers.
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I think there's really no set limit on GPUs. It's just what people will pay.

Custom PC constantly banged on for months saying how pointless a purchase the 580 was/is.

Again, in the land of sense where people value their hard earned coin they are spot on. At 1080p (where 90+% of the world games at) the 580 can achieve absolutely zilch in real world terms over the 570. Meaning, Nvidia had a pointless card that was very expensive because the 570 could do everything its big brother could.

Which I would imagine is why the 6970 has replaced the 570 and 580 in their recommended PCs. However, try telling that to some people.

There are so many 580 owners out there who will never even come close to using their card for what it was designed for. So they paid a premium just for a large E-willy.

Not that I'm hypocritical, I bought a 7970 to game with at 1080p. Mind you, glad I did now. I ordered a Passive 3d set up last night :D
 
Spenty said:
Sorry but look here: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/509?vs=518

The games the 570 wins in are nvidia optimized such as civilisation, starcraft and dirt 3.
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Sure, call every game NVIDIA has a lead on as "more optimized for NVIDIA" as if that changes or affects the argument. The bottomline is that the 570 is faster on those. The GPU is more powerful due to architectural features -- something that AMD wanted to makeup for with their GCN.
I don't think you have a strong grasp of what "optimized" means. The 570 is better in Civilization because it is more powerful at compute and has a better hardware level implementation of DirectX 11 multithreading features -- a feature which Civ exploits. Any compiled program will favour one architecture over another. This will always be the case even regardless of the intention to optimize for one architecture over the other. This is an inherent property of any computational model. And using architectural features (like Fermi's superior compute performance) to give users an advantage is something one would expect developers to do rather than ignore. So arguing over which game is more optimized for which architecture is irrelevant and ultimately pointless.

The bottomline is the 570 and 6970 trade-blows. The 570 has the advantage with computationally complex problems like AA and tesselation, and geometry in general (hence why I called it the more powerful GPU and not more powerful graphics card, which would be a more ambiguous statement). On the other hand the 6970 has more VRAM and this helps it at higher resolutions. That said the 570 does come in a 2.5GB version, but at £320ish I think it's overpriced.

Spenty said:
You can't compare something that different in price, that's like comparing a porsche boxter and a ferrari 360 because they're 2 companies bottom end models. If you're willing to pay the excess for a few more horsepower's and extras or frames per second in this case then don't complain or discuss prices tbh.
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Again, that's a pointless and irrelevant metric. Microchips are not porsches and Ferarris. The 570 GPU and 580 GPU are in the same league. In fact their essentially the same chip with a single shader cluster disabled -- the decision to split those into two different products is predicated by factors discovered during post-silicon validation and other areas of the EDA process. Within the generation, the bottomline is the GTX 580 is flat out faster than AMD's fastest card: the 6970. Pricing is a whole different concern and is driven by market forces. And the 580 was priced as it is simply because there is always a premium to pay for the super high-end. A spot that the 7970 occupies now. One could expect 580 to drop in price, but I think it's more likely it will ride it out and go EOL.
 
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Davefran said:
In that case why arn't you comparing the 6990 to the 590 lol
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We can talk about it but it's only fair to compare dual GPU cards as a separate class. Particularly as many people prefer single-GPUs.

As for the 590 and the 6990, the two are broadly equivalent. Those who claim the 6990 are faster haven't seen any recent benchmarks.

If anything, Guru3D's 7970 review shows the 590 beating the 6990 more often than not.
http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-radeon-hd-7970-review/23

In general, the 590 wins at 1080p and lower while the 6990 slightly edges it at 1440p and 1600p.

And unsurprisingly, the Mars II beats everything. Which, sadly, is the card the 590 should've and could've been.
 
xsistor said:
We can talk about it but it's only fair to compare dual GPU cards as a separate class. Particularly as many people prefer single-GPUs.

As for the 590 and the 6990, the two are broadly equivalent. Those who claim the 6990 are faster haven't seen any recent benchmarks.

If anything, Guru3D's 7970 review shows the 590 beating the 6990 more often than not.
http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-radeon-hd-7970-review/23

In general, the 590 wins at 1080p and lower while the 6990 slightly edges it at 1440p and 1600p.

And unsurprisingly, the Mars II beats everything. Which, sadly, is the card the 590 should've and could've been.
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Generally, they use data they've gathered previously for other GPU's.
I'm sure after launch a driver revision actually lowered the core speeds of the GTX590?
Also, your link at the top shows a 6870x2 almost matching a GTX590, I'm not sure what your point is.

It's swings and round abouts which wins out of the 6990 and 590. But I'd say the 6990 had the edge.
 
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I think as far as PC components go they have always been the most overpriced thing. Pricing them higher than buying an XBOX and a PS3 brand new is obviously only for the hardcore gamer fans. But then, I guess if you priotise your expenditure on that then you might be happy to pay that. I think my limit at the moment (and if I really really had to) I would spend about £150 on a card tops. I'm happy to stay a year or two behind the modern tech though.
 
Martini1991 said:
Generally, they use data they've gathered previously for other GPU's.
I'm sure after launch a driver revision actually lowered the core speeds of the GTX590?
Also, your link at the top shows a 6870x2 almost matching a GTX590, I'm not sure what your point is.

It's swings and round abouts which wins out of the 6990 and 590. But I'd say the 6990 had the edge.
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Drivers don't lower core speeds. You'd need a firmware change for that. Drivers after launch did bring big gains to several games, such as Dragon Age, etc. I don't see what the point of that statement is at any rate.

My link was for the full review and not the particular page you landed on. The 590 wins more often than not in that review. As most reviews show IF anything the two are equally matched with the 6990 being slightly better for higher resolutions and the 590 at standard and lower resolutions, due to the higher VRAM of the 6990.
So saying the 6990 has the edge is only true if you take higher res. It comes down to the user and the res they play at, and the games you play, of course.

edit:
Generally, they use data they've gathered previously for other GPU's.
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Yes, that's true. It only makes it harder for a proper 590 vs 6990 comparison as the 6990 had been out for a while when the 590 arrived and in the beginning it was plagued with problems until they fixed it with driver updates. Most reviews tend to compare the 590 performance on older drivers, which was lower for several games.
 
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Cleeecooo said:
Not really :p

The mars just rapes everything up the bum :p

That's how t should be! Stupid prices for stupid power :D
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:p Perhaps "beats everything" is not quite as accurate as the bum-rape metaphor for what the Mars II does to other cards.

But yeah the Mars II is priced so high more because it is the fastest and it's limited-edition than any other reason, I think. The 590 was £600-£700 when it launched, which really is overpriced and in those numbers (not limited edition) they really could've given us Mars II performance for that price tag. :(
 
As much as I like pc gaming if the next gen consoles turn out cheaper than the current high end gpu's I might have to turn to the dark side !
 
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