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upgrade time?, gtx 670/680/690?

Sgt Tackleberry

Sgt Tackleberry

Sgt Tackleberry

Associate
Joined
28 Oct 2010
Posts
2,446
Location
Colchester
Hello guys and girls,

I am after some advice about an upgrade. The res i play at is 5760 x 1080 with two gtx 580 3gb at stock. I'm starting to see my cards are struggling
at this res with lastest games out like hitman, sleeping dogs. So i am thinking of upgrading to 2 gtx 670 4gb or two gtx 680 4gb, i'm not sure about
AMD cards as i've always been a "green fan boy".

or would it be worth it getting gtx 690? or wait for the 7990?.

So who has upgraded from gtx 580 sli to the lastest cards and did you see a differents?.

The rest of my systems spec is;

i5 2500k @ 4.8ghz
8gb ddr3 1600mhz ram
z68x-ud3p-b3
corsair 1000hx psu

Any help would be great,
thank you.
 
I am an Nvidia fan and have to agree with the above. The 256bit memory bus on the 680/70 is what makes it weak at your res. pains me to say that but honesty is better.
 
Sgt Tackleberry said:
I thought the AMD driver are poo?.

The reason I said about 4gb card as when I am playing hitman, sleeping dogs it goes about 3gb being used.
Click to expand...

They're not as good IMO but they're more than sufficient for use.

Cards use more VRAM when they have more available. All of my 680 results had no VRAM related slowdowns.

The thing is with the AMD cards is that you get the extra VRAM to just take it out of the equation and they're just faster at your resolution.

Also I see that you watercool and apart from a couple of premium models (e.g. the 680 Lightning) the 600 series are voltage locked and as such gain no real benefit from watercooling other than a noise reduction.

The 7000 series from AMD are mainly voltage unlocked bar a couple of models and will allow you to overclock further than on air.
 
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Sgt Tackleberry said:
I thought the AMD driver are poo?.
Click to expand...

9/10 it's Nvidia users that write about how poo they are on tinternet despite not using them.


Sgt Tackleberry said:
The reason I said about 4gb card as when I am playing hitman, sleeping dogs it goes about 3gb being used.
Click to expand...

Hitman will need patched/driver updates as performance is poor at the moment imo.

Can you not just dial back a few settings in SD's and wait for the next round of gpu's in March/April?

Rusty0611 said:
The thing is with the AMD cards is that you get the extra VRAM to just take it out of the equation
Click to expand...

Ah times change, I used to tell you that all the time and you said it never mattered until you swapped your 680's out for 7950's.:p

:)
 
Rusty0611 said:
They're not as good IMO but they're more than sufficient for use.

Cards use more VRAM when they have more available. All of my 680 results had no VRAM related slowdowns.

The thing is with the AMD cards is that you get the extra VRAM to just take it out of the equation and they're just faster at your resolution.

Also I see that you watercool and apart from a couple of premium models (e.g. the 680 Lightning) the 600 series are voltage locked and as such gain no real benefit from watercooling other than a noise reduction.

The 7000 series from AMD are mainly voltage unlocked bar a couple of models and will allow you to overclock further than on air.
Click to expand...

In AC3 and Farcry bench threads i posted the AMD cards are using less Vram while having more available, so it seems that AMD is more efficient with Vram but that's down to the particular games that don't try to cache more than they need as then the game would use more on AMD simply because its there.
 
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tommybhoy said:
Ah times change, I used to tell you that all the time and you said it never mattered until you swapped your 680's out for 7950's.
Click to expand...

Wrong. I never said anything to the contrary. What I argued with was using VRAM as a reason to buy AMD and whether you could utilise the extra VRAM with 1 or 2 GPU's.

I've not seen anything to change my mind having used both at 5760*1080. The only reason for AMDs performance advantage at this resoultion is the 384 bit bus. I didn't get any VRAM related slowdowns at otherwise acceptable FPS on the 680's.

Of course if - in an imaginary situation - the 680's had 2GB and a 384 bit bus then you could and probably would be limited by the physical VRAM amount as opposed to anything else :).
 
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Final8y said:
In AC3 and Farcry bench threads i posted the AMD cards are using less Vram while having more available, so it seems that AMD is more efficient with Vram but that's down to the particular games that don't try to cache more than they need as then the game would use more on AMD simply because its there.
Click to expand...

Strange as it's the other way round on all other games. Perhaps better optimied as they're Gaming Evolved titles.

Wouldn't be surprised for the normal trend to continue after driver enhancements by nVidia.
 
@Rusty, that was just one disagreement, there were plenty other threads at the time I mentioned it could be a possibility of it being a combination of vram and the memory bus.

:)




You need to switch off aero to stop BF3 from crashing at high res gaming, it's clear to see that the Nvidia driver team have been bending over backwards to accommodate the 256MB/2GB limit on the 6 series.

It's a shame tbh, as when if the next round aren't choked with a 256 memory bus, I fear 67/80 users will have no choice but have a forced upgrade in order to play the next round of demanding titles with the candy on, due to support being put on the back burner as the new gen gets priority driver treatment-it happened with the 56/70's it will happen again.:(
 
I am not going there again but play on Ultra settings with 2*680 Lightnings in Hitman Absolution and play just fine with no VRAM issues. This is at 5760*1080. At the moment, 2*680s will smash 2*7970s up in this game as AMD have not optimised this sponsored by AMD game yet.

It will get fixed though and the 7950s will generally give better performance than 680s at huge resolutions.
 
tommybhoy said:
@rusty, that was just one disagreement, there were plenty other threads at the time I mentioned it could be a possibility of it being a combination of vram and the memory bus.
Click to expand...

You said it was to do with the VRAM amount - the performance gap is nothing to do with the physical amount of VRAM.

The memory bus is the limiting factor. Without any kind of AA the cards are still pretty close at 5760*1080 but as soon as any kind of MSAA is applied the different is large.

You're correct that I had to turn Aero off but I can't imagine anyone is going to enjoy the experience with SLI 680's and full Ultra settings on BF3 64MP anyway. The same can be said of 2*4GB 680's (whyscotty confirmed). The FPS is too low due to the memory bandwidth limitation. The performance drops were when I was running at 1900MB and 2000MB (note: never crashed due to running out). It doesn't make a difference how much memory you are using.

So I stand by my point to which I originally responded - your remark that I've somehow changed my mind now I've swapped is incorrect. It actually reinforced my long held view that the physical amount of VRAM just doesn't come into it on this generation of cards and is unlikely to in the future unless games go the way of keeping the strain on the GPU constant but dumping more textures into the VRAM.
 
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Rusty0611 said:
You said it was to do with the VRAM amount - the performance gap is nothing to do with the physical amount of VRAM.
Click to expand...

tommybhoy said:
@rusty, that was just one disagreement, there were plenty other threads at the time I mentioned it could be a possibility of it being a combination of vram and the memory bus.
Click to expand...

Again, it was from other threads at the time that I mentioned it could be a combination of vram and memory bus, hence my mentioning about it in the first place.

The rest of my post under the smiley, was a general statement on my opinion about the 6 series and what the future brings for it's users.
:)
 
And again I'm disagreeing with you that it's nothing to do with the VRAM having actually tested both 2GB 680's and 3GB 7950's along with speaking to whyscotty who tested both 2GB and 4GB set up's from the nVidia side of things.

I'm confused as to why you're saying it was one disagreement and then invoking the same disagreement as an example of a different disagreement when they're the same thing/linked??

It doesn't matter anyway to be honest. I'm going to continue to base my opinions with collaboration with my fellow multi-monitor testers :p.
 
Rusty0611 said:
I'm confused as to why you're saying it was one disagreement and then invoking the same disagreement as an example of a different disagreement when they're the same thing/linked??
Click to expand...

The vram disagreement we had was strictly vram, nothing was mentioned in that thread about the memory bus, in other threads when I stated that it could be a combination of vram/memory bus, you disagreed at the time and said it didn't matter, that's what I'm talking about and what I originally pointed out in this thread.

Rusty0611 said:
It doesn't matter anyway to be honest.
Click to expand...
:cool: :)
 
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