470sli v 5870xfire

[JeffyB]

The Nvidia gf100 based cards cannot do DTS-HD and Dolby True HD over hdmi which the Ati 5xxx and gf104 based cards can.

 

[GJ02]

thing is
if i was to sell the asus cards and go for asus 470's, what am i likely to gain or loose ?

 

[JeffyB]

5870's go for about £200-£220 so you'd need to add anything upto £40 to get the 470's. Picked up my 5870 for £190

 

[HW91]

thing is
if i was to sell the asus cards and go for asus 470's, what am i likely to gain or loose ?

you'll lose a few pennies on your power bill, possibly slight hearing loss, maybe gain or lose a few £'s on the 5870's also gain a bit of performance, not completely sure it's worth dropping the 5870's for though

 

[gearo]

Id go 470 sli watercooled

 

[GJ02]

ok thanks for all the comments guys,
im not changing, was never going to, just wanted to establish what you guys thought
the only upgrade that is plausable for me is a 480sli config, and atm thats not possible
have to see whats on offer in the newyear.
not asif my xfires are holding me back in anyway
thanks again for input.

 

[Arcane]

Id go 470 sli watercooled

The choice of champions...

 

[cainer]

Them tests were done with dodgy ATI driver/profiles, since been updated and they easily beat out 460 SLI. 460 SLI is not faster than 5870 xfire.

Where games do not favor nvidia hardware, 460 SLI gets trounced by 5870 xfire.

*goes to msg a don to say somones hacked ravens forum account*

 

[GJ02]

*goes to msg a don to say somones hacked ravens forum account*

no...he has jumped ship again back to ati

 

[ebilcake]

HD5870CF.

GTX470 get kind of noisey/hot when you put two of them together. HD5870's on the other hand don't really have this problem.

I know allot of users say otherwise but I've heard them, so i'd pass on 470 or 480 SLI .

 

[lay-z-boy]

gtx 470 sli

Faster and scales better, also has cuda/physx. (mediacoder cuda edition is a godsend)

Yes they get extremely hot but 5870's next to each other can also feel the heat. Use double/triple spacing, does wonders if your mb supports it.

The 5800's have had a long reign over nvidia. Close to a year. A combination of great to ok scaling, seemingly little improvements in drivers from ati and strong driver development and good hardware from the nv side has allowed them to get back in the good seat.

That said, if you already have a high end ati setup unless you went 480 sli/tri it would be a sidegrade at your expense.

 

[raralis]

5870 cf or if you can wait 2-3 months for 6850 or 6870 cf.

 

[jej_knowles]

My advice would be to wait untill there are more benchmark results from games you most play and much more importantly at the resolution you play at as that makes all the difference !
What would be really bad would be to fork out more money and end up with less performance!

 

[mame]

why does it have to be 2 cards?

 

[Freddie1980]

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.

Strange, the normal argument for Fermi is its minimums are normally a lot better hence give you a smoother experience. So what’s the rule now? If your going with one card get a Fermi because its minimums are higher but if you plan to get a multiple card setup Crossfire is better?

 

[JeffyB]

Fermi minimums are better but as a ratio of the average fps they are lower than that of the 58xx series, meaning that the although the gtx480 is a faster card, proportionally the minimum fps is lower. Was just something i noticed when looking at those benchmarks and was in contrast to the usual line that the 480 had better minimums, which it does but not proportionally.

 

[Nocky24]

Fermi minimums are better but as a ratio of the average fps they are lower than that of the 58xx series, meaning that the although the gtx480 is a faster card, proportionally the minimum fps is lower. Was just something i noticed when looking at those benchmarks and was in contrast to the usual line that the 480 had better minimums, which it does but not proportionally.

I think minimum, average or otherwise the 480 is the faster card in my experience (this is just my opinion though having used both cards). I play a fair bit of Bad Company 2 and noticed the fps would plummit compared to the 480 during an intense scene. The average was quite a bit better during online play as well. Same can be said for far cry 2:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LU0nkwX95E

This is all at the expense of more heat and power consumption though unfortunately Noise actually hasn't been an issue though. My fan was going up to 80%@ 80c yesterday on Mafia 2 (untill I put vsync on to bring it down from 100fps). I can safely say the fan noise was more welcoming than the capacitor squeals I've had on my 4870X2 and 5870, but then I think thats just me and my luck again

 

[oweneades]

470SLI for no other reason than its significantly cheaper (£450 vs £550*).

*Used £275 for each HD5870.

 

[Duff-Man]

Strange, the normal argument for Fermi is its minimums are normally a lot better hence give you a smoother experience. So what’s the rule now? If your going with one card get a Fermi because its minimums are higher but if you plan to get a multiple card setup Crossfire is better?

Absolute minimums are a poor measure of performance anyway - it's too easy for one small part of a scene to be limited by factors other than GPU power, for a fraction of a second. In this case, no GPU will scale minimums as effectively.

That review plots the variation of framerate over the course of the benchmark, so that's the thing to look at. You want to see a fairly consistent framerate. In this, the two cards are fairly similar (although obviously the GTX480s have consistently higher framerates).