£400 for a GPU what to buy!

Ezyryder · 21 Feb 2011 at 12:56

To be honest you can get a 580 for much less than £400 - around £360 to be fair but for the resolution and for the increased performance you are going to get at that res 2 x 6950 for just under £400 if you go for todays offer.

413x · 21 Feb 2011 at 13:01

did not realise you could get the gtx for that price.. and you would then not have the possible problems of multi gpu

Ezyryder · 21 Feb 2011 at 13:04

al4x said:
did not realise you could get the gtx for that price.. and you would then not have the possible problems of multi gpu

problem is he is doing eyefinity and at the resolutions he is going to be playing at 2 6950 are a much better solution.

Dark_Angel · 21 Feb 2011 at 13:14

Snakegb, please fix your signature. It's 4 lines max.

Ezyryder · 21 Feb 2011 at 13:30

Dark_Angel said:
Snakegb, please fix your signature. It's 4 lines max.

Just noticed

lazarus52 · 21 Feb 2011 at 15:02

I don't think a 590 would be that interesting for your purposes. HardOCP's recent comparison of 580 SLI vs. 6970 CF showed that at your res there are memory issues with 1.5Gb vram, which is all that a 590 will have (2x1.5Gb).

The card to go for at the res, around the £400 mark, is surely the Palit 3Gb 580. A second one in a year's time would give it a long life, too.

Cr416 · 21 Feb 2011 at 15:34

lazarus52 said:
I don't think a 590 would be that interesting for your purposes. HardOCP's recent comparison of 580 SLI vs. 6970 CF showed that at your res there are memory issues with 1.5Gb vram, which is all that a 590 will have (2x1.5Gb).

The card to go for at the res, around the £400 mark, is surely the Palit 3Gb 580. A second one in a year's time would give it a long life, too.

lol all interesting stuff but I +1 with the above.

Viper911 · 21 Feb 2011 at 15:48

Seeing as OP has mentioned Rift i would reccomend staying well clear of AMD, i have a I7 920 with a coulpled Gigabyte 460 SOC and at 1920x1200 it flies a frend of mine has same card with a Q6600 and he can run 1920x1080 with 3d on, both with settings all maxed, my main PC with 980x and AMD 5970 at the same 1920x1200 max on everything is lucky to get above 10, rift heaverly favours nvidia, not 100% on this but i believe rift is very physx Heavy, i will soon be didtching my 5970 for either the 3gig palit or 590GTX unsure which would be better option with 3d surround in mind. But its likeley to be either 3x580 palits W/C or 1/2 590's W/C depending what fits best.

P.S Both mine and mates 460 are Oc'd to 940/1200

Marvin · 21 Feb 2011 at 16:53

Viper911 said:
Seeing as OP has mentioned Rift i would reccomend staying well clear of AMD, i have a I7 920 with a coulpled Gigabyte 460 SOC and at 1920x1200 it flies a frend of mine has same card with a Q6600 and he can run 1920x1080 with 3d on, both with settings all maxed, my main PC with 980x and AMD 5970 at the same 1920x1200 max on everything is lucky to get above 10, rift heaverly favours nvidia, not 100% on this but i believe rift is very physx Heavy, i will soon be didtching my 5970 for either the 3gig palit or 590GTX unsure which would be better option with 3d surround in mind. But its likeley to be either 3x580 palits W/C or 1/2 590's W/C depending what fits best.

P.S Both mine and mates 460 are Oc'd to 940/1200

Maybe turn unnoticeable PhysX effects off? Ever crossed your mate's mind?

lazarus52 said:
I don't think a 590 would be that interesting for your purposes. HardOCP's recent comparison of 580 SLI vs. 6970 CF showed that at your res there are memory issues with 1.5Gb vram, which is all that a 590 will have (2x1.5Gb).

The card to go for at the res, around the £400 mark, is surely the Palit 3Gb 580. A second one in a year's time would give it a long life, too.

Cr416 said:
lol all interesting stuff but I +1 with the above.

That's going to work fantastically with 3 monitors. :rolleyes:

Viper911 · 21 Feb 2011 at 17:17

not 100% sure u can remove a lot of the phsyx from the game mate, i have to turn the in game gfx slider to medium to hit over 30fps and that turns pretty much every post processing effect off, and still it struggles when mobs are rag dolling mixed with high particle spell effects, and from what a lot of my guild have found to which a lot of them run 5850/5870's some single some cross that the majority of them are running low-medium as anything higher at 1920x1080 in fights is just not playable, by playable i mean over 30fps at all times.

Andric · 21 Feb 2011 at 17:33

Viper911 said:
Seeing as OP has mentioned Rift i would reccomend staying well clear of AMD, i have a I7 920 with a coulpled Gigabyte 460 SOC and at 1920x1200 it flies a frend of mine has same card with a Q6600 and he can run 1920x1080 with 3d on, both with settings all maxed, my main PC with 980x and AMD 5970 at the same 1920x1200 max on everything is lucky to get above 10, rift heaverly favours nvidia, not 100% on this but i believe rift is very physx Heavy, i will soon be didtching my 5970 for either the 3gig palit or 590GTX unsure which would be better option with 3d surround in mind. But its likeley to be either 3x580 palits W/C or 1/2 590's W/C depending what fits best.

P.S Both mine and mates 460 are Oc'd to 940/1200

think somethign else is up there - I have a single 6970 @1920x1200 playing rift been getting between 40-80 fps on alpha and beta consistently. Worst in big public raid scenarios (rift invasions are hell on any setup) crawled down to below 20 but I am at ultra setting & basic aa. Rift likes good cpu and memory.

MeMeMeMe · 21 Feb 2011 at 18:12

SkodaMart said:
ATi cards perform fantastically well until DX11 and tessellation are considered then suddenly all is quiet

You obviously didn't look at the review quoted, which shows 6970 CF beating 580 SLI, never mind 480, in the tesselation/DX11 heavy unigine test.

exotic444 · 21 Feb 2011 at 18:14

wait for the GTX 590 I would recommend. Not point investing £400 into old tech. Going to be a beast of a card anyways.

Viper911 · 21 Feb 2011 at 18:56

Well i can defenetly say ive got a good CPU and memorey, [email protected] and 6 gig corsair dominator, maybe its something with the 5 series specificaly then, but theres about 6 of us on ati cards at the moment going to rift and none of us are on ultra as it flops below 30 far to often to be playable, id still go nvidia if playin rift though, if i can smash the fps i get from a 460 over my 5970 at 1000/1400 to me the choice would be to stick with nvidia, though if what you say is true then maybe the 6 series is worth a shot, but as OP wants to use nvidia id still reccomend a 580 with his £400.

Marvin · 21 Feb 2011 at 19:13

Viper911 said:
Well i can defenetly say ive got a good CPU and memorey, [email protected] and 6 gig corsair dominator, maybe its something with the 5 series specificaly then, but theres about 6 of us on ati cards at the moment going to rift and none of us are on ultra as it flops below 30 far to often to be playable, id still go nvidia if playin rift though, if i can smash the fps i get from a 460 over my 5970 at 1000/1400 to me the choice would be to stick with nvidia, though if what you say is true then maybe the 6 series is worth a shot, but as OP wants to use nvidia id still reccomend a 580 with his £400.

He can't get a GTX580. Does no-one read the OP and dives straight in without reading any requirements? A GTX580 can only support 2 monitors, the OP clearly states he's using 3. Hence why any current single card Nvidia solution is out the window, at least until the GTX590 is here, but it won't be in budget.

Viper911 · 21 Feb 2011 at 19:28

OP has already mentioned in a follow up post that he use's Matrix triple head whch would allow himt to use just 1 port, or am i missing something, if thats the case it dont matter what card he gets if he can hook all monitors up to 1 port useing the Matrix triple head.

SkodaMart · 21 Feb 2011 at 19:42

MeMeMeMe said:
You obviously didn't look at the review quoted, which shows 6970 CF beating 580 SLI, never mind 480, in the tesselation/DX11 heavy unigine test.

Yes the 6970 CF performs well in the above test, until Metro 2033.
They perform better than I have seen reviewed elsewhere.

2 x 6950s are not guaranteed to unlock to 6970s and the 6970s are £250 each on OCUK: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-148-OK&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1752

If you can unlock 2 x 6950s that would indeed look like the best punch for the £ at the moment. (at OPs massive resolution)

kylew · 21 Feb 2011 at 20:10

SkodaMart said:
Yes the 6970 CF performs well in the above test, until Metro 2033.
They perform better than I have seen reviewed elsewhere.

2 x 6950s are not guaranteed to unlock to 6970s and the 6970s are £250 each on OCUK: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-148-OK&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1752

If you can unlock 2 x 6950s that would indeed look like the best punch for the £ at the moment. (at OPs massive resolution)

All 6950s unlock, it's those who were using 6970 bioses that were having issues, otherwise they it's close to 100% success rate.

tbh · 21 Feb 2011 at 20:40

Ardbeg said:
FYI I'm not, I go with either brand. Both brands have served me well over the years. It's just I fail to see how spending 50% more for less performance is common sense?

See this guy has his priorities sorted!

If you're going to be a fanboy of something then it may as well be of the distillery that makes the finest Scotch whisky on the whole of Islay (and therefore by extension the World) rather than a company that makes consumer grade electronics; the formers products have a heart and soul that entirely justifies the customers feelings of loyalty, whereas why people elicit such strong emotions from mere video cards is (to me at least) a complete mystery.

jigger · 21 Feb 2011 at 21:17

Its very unlikely we will ever see a GTX590 as Fermi is just to far off the design spec. At best it will be a GTX480 style paper launch.

You really only have two Nvidia options, a pair of GTX480's (be warned they are poor cards - read the GTX480 thread for details) or a single GTX580.