470sli v 5870xfire

[GJ02]

what would you choose, and why ?
im not planning on changing btw ( yet )

 

[RavenXXX2]

Choose - 470 SLI / Why - better driver support for SLI, better scaling in SLI, lots of game are in the TWIMTBP program so should mean less problems with new games and nvidia drivers, that's my opinion.

 

[opethdisciple]

When it comes to multi card configurations, Nvidia do it better and smoother than ATI.

Plus the 400 Nvidia series do tesselation better than the 5000 ATI series, so thats a plus as well.

 

[HW91]

470's, cheaper and better performance

 

[marc512]

If i was going sli or crossfire, i always look at the scaling. 470gtx has better scaling therefore it wins.
If there is a card with 100% scaling ( adding a 2nd card gives you double the fps ) it would be the best option. I am not a fanboy, everyone knows the 470gtx has better scaling in sli than 5870 in crossfire. Maybe not in every game but mostly

 

[GJ02]

would it be a daft move to go from xfire to sli with the cards in question ?

 

[kmufc77]

GTX 470 scales better and is cheaper than 5870 xfire

 

[RavenXXX2]

would it be a daft move to go from xfire to sli with the cards in question ?

If you're happy with the xfire performance and have no issues then no don't change, if the opposite is true then SLI could be a revelation for you compared to xfire.

 

[k3vst3r]

SLI 470's outperform xfire 5870's

 

[jigger]

If I got a decent enough bang on the head to convince me dual graphics cards are good, would go with the 5870's as Fermi has some unacceptable issues.

I would probably have to buy new PSU and spend heavily on cooling to come to the point of being happy with temps.

 

[arc@css]

470's. Stronger in SLI than 5870's.

 

[JeffyB]

If i was buying now, i'd have to go with the 5870's as i like using hd audio over hdmi for home cinema. This is something nvidia are adding to the next round of thier high end cards.

 

[Mojo]

As single cards 5870s are faster, but Nvidia have invested more time into developing SLI, and get better scaling as a result, resulting in a slight performance advantage to the 470s. Considering that the GTX470s are 50 quid cheaper apiece, I could not recommend a 5870 Xfire setup as the prices stand

 

[JeffyB]

According to HardwareCanucks 470 sli review, 5870 crossfire is faster and scales better than sli (they used the 5850 for the scaling but a 5870 will scale the same)

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...999-nvidia-geforce-gtx-470-sli-review-16.html

full review

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru.../30999-nvidia-geforce-gtx-470-sli-review.html

 

[Rroff]

Old drivers.

Also doesn't actually tell you squat about the scaling as you can't see actual performance numbers so can't take other factors out of the picture i.e. one setup hitting CPU limits while the other isn't.

 

[JeffyB]

Do you have a link showing newer drivers used on a sli 470 setup and better breakdown of the scaling?

 

[Duff-Man]

Do you have a link showing newer drivers used on a sli 470 setup and better breakdown of the scaling?

470 vs 5870, but enough to give you an idea of multi-GPU performance with more recent driver sets.

http://www.techspot.com/review/289-geforce-gtx-480-sli-versus-radeon-5870-crossfire/

Crossfire provided with an average frame per second improvement of 62%...

Then we have the GeForce GTX 480 SLI cards which cost ~25% more than the Radeon HD 5870 Crossfire graphics cards. However these cards were able to scale considerably better providing an average of 90% more performance

See the article for more details.

 

[JeffyB]

Thanks for the link, shame again that there is no breakdown of the scaling and it only refers to 2560x1600 in 6 specifically picked games. One thing i did notice is the min fps on the 480sli is a lot lower as a % of the average fps than the crossfire 5870 in everything apart from metro.

 

[Duff-Man]

Thanks for the link, shame again that there is no breakdown of the scaling

Each game has scores for single and multi-GPU setups, and even a plot of the framerate variation over the benchmark. What more of a breakdown could you want?!

 

[JeffyB]

I'd like to see scaling over a greater range of resolutions. Anyway i worked out the percentages for the min fps compared to maximum, interesting.

Avp
Ati- 63.6
Nv 57.5

BC2
Ati - 86.9
Nv - 76.3

Crysis Warhead
Ati - 89.2
Nv - 87.0

Jc2
Ati - 84.4
Nv - 76.5

Metro
Ati - 54.5
Nv - 76.5

Stalker
Ati - 76.9
Nv - 70