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Graphics Card Dilemma

djay

djay

djay

Associate
Joined
29 Oct 2002
Posts
1,752
Could you please offer your advice on my dilemma.

Currently I have CF 5870 1GB XFX cards which to be perfectly honest i'm not overly happy with the performance they provide. Don't get me wrong when they are working fine they are great, however driver issues, stuttering in BF3 is starting to get on my nerves. So.............

I have been offered a 2nd hand Gainward GTX580 1.5GB Card for £270

Or

Do i get the MSI ATI Radeon HD 6970 2048MB Twin Frozr III GDDR5 on 'This week only for £263.99'?

Cheers
 
Cleeecooo said:
If the GAINWARD has warranty, then go for it, but the MSI has a better cooler.

Flip a coin TBH
Click to expand...

The gainward was part of a complete system that was purchased, is only 8 months old and has not been registered. You think gainward would deal with any warranty issues direct? Anyone had any dealings with them?
 
I think he means you can match 580 speeds, and also benefit from the higher VRAM. Not that the VRAM affects it reaching 580 speeds :)

I'd go for the 6970 out of the two since it'll have a full warranty, and the twin frozr cooler is fantastic.
 
djay said:
Could you please offer your advice on my dilemma.

Currently I have CF 5870 1GB XFX cards which to be perfectly honest i'm not overly happy with the performance they provide. Don't get me wrong when they are working fine they are great, however driver issues, stuttering in BF3 is starting to get on my nerves. So.............

I have been offered a 2nd hand Gainward GTX580 1.5GB Card for £270

Or

Do i get the MSI ATI Radeon HD 6970 2048MB Twin Frozr III GDDR5 on 'This week only for £263.99'?

Cheers
Click to expand...

It's a shame that sh***y game has made you feel that way tbh.

I too can't play it on my GTX 295 SLI as it's just bare broken.

I would say just stick to your guns, but I know how annoying it can be when you can't run a game well. I ended up spending £280 taming that game, but the hilarious part is I don't even like it :D

Won't be getting caught out like that again and my SLI ain't going anywhere soon. Everything else works perfectly (well apart from NFS : The runs) so there's no point in getting caught out twice..

Ed. Sorry.. I would get the 6970. At least you know your way around the drivers and it is brand new with a 3 yr. Plus you can always *gob spit* get another one :D
 
ALXAndy said:
It's a shame that sh***y game has made you feel that way tbh.

I too can't play it on my GTX 295 SLI as it's just bare broken.

I would say just stick to your guns, but I know how annoying it can be when you can't run a game well. I ended up spending £280 taming that game, but the hilarious part is I don't even like it :D

Won't be getting caught out like that again and my SLI ain't going anywhere soon. Everything else works perfectly (well apart from NFS : The runs) so there's no point in getting caught out twice..

Ed. Sorry.. I would get the 6970. At least you know your way around the drivers and it is brand new with a 3 yr. Plus you can always *gob spit* get another one :D
Click to expand...

Absolutely love that post !!

I'm in two minds really, so many options really. I mean when the xfire works it works superb I found the best performance came with the 11.10 drivers. I really can't stand the huge dips in frame rate which aren't there when I use a single card.
 
Yeah a friend of mine got an Alienware ALX with CF 5870s in. Something like 30k Vantage.. Madness.

I just wish that manus would go back to what ATI used to do with the RAGE pro cards and put the vram on a bloody seperate board. If they did that my 295s would be sorted.

I dunno man I don't think I would upgrade if I were in your shoes. But then that's easy for me to say as I have four PCs and each one covers pretty much everything.
 
Anyone who tells you the 6970 will perform as well as a 580 in BF3, more vram or not, is talking out of their backside, frankly.

I would definitely get the 580 because it's just the better card, it's only a few months old, and tbh I find that the coolers on the Asus/MSI cards are overkill. Yes, they are fantastic and they will keep your card very cool, but you will reach your maximum overclock before heat starts becoming an issue, even on the Gainward's cooler, especially if BF3 is your main game, because that game will give you stability issues with what would otherwise be rock solid overclocks in every other game/benchmark.
 
djay said:
Could you please offer your advice on my dilemma.

Currently I have CF 5870 1GB XFX cards which to be perfectly honest i'm not overly happy with the performance they provide. Don't get me wrong when they are working fine they are great, however driver issues, stuttering in BF3 is starting to get on my nerves. So.............

I have been offered a 2nd hand Gainward GTX580 1.5GB Card for £270

Or

Do i get the MSI ATI Radeon HD 6970 2048MB Twin Frozr III GDDR5 on 'This week only for £263.99'?

Cheers
Click to expand...


You shouldn't be getting any stuttering. Turn HT off!
 
As said previously, I have a 2500k so no hyperthreading. Apparently new drivers out today along with CAP which helps with stuttering. Will try those and see.
 
kissenger said:
Anyone who tells you the 6970 will perform as well as a 580 in BF3, more vram or not, is talking out of their backside, frankly.

I would definitely get the 580 because it's just the better card, it's only a few months old, and tbh I find that the coolers on the Asus/MSI cards are overkill. Yes, they are fantastic and they will keep your card very cool, but you will reach your maximum overclock before heat starts becoming an issue, even on the Gainward's cooler, especially if BF3 is your main game, because that game will give you stability issues with what would otherwise be rock solid overclocks in every other game/benchmark.
Click to expand...

Interesting thanks for that. Ill keep looking for a 2nd hand 580GTX i think, ditch the xfire cards. Should be able to get a 580GTX for a decent price with all the upgrades to 7970's going on!
 
Still awaiting the right deal to come up. Ideally i think i may as well go for a card with at least 2gb Memory and saw these:

2.5GB Point of View GTX 570 Charged

These retail around the £320 mark and seem to be a nice middle gpu if you like.

Anyone got any experiences with them? I will only be gaming at 1080p for the forseeable future and only mainly on Skyrim and BF3.
 
Then that will be more than enough.

As would a 2gb 6970, which is cheaper.

Look. If a game runs at a fair rate of FPS and doesn't sit in the 20s (remaining in the 30s) then you won't be able to tell any difference, even if it is going "faster".

Smoothness is not brought about by all out speed. As I maintain, I have (well I had, they're being sold in a couple of days) a pair of 295s. They can tear most benchmarks into pieces and bash them into submission. At superclocks they scored over 35000 3dmarks in Vantage. They run Dirt 2 in surround and never go below 60 FPS.

However, when they have problems they have problems. TBH I have noticed no differences using my Lightning in games that the 470 did well at either.

For all I know the 470 at its massive overclock could have been performing better in certain games, but because the 6970 does just as good a job with minimum framerates it's impossible to spot any difference unless I run FRAPS and physically stare at the FPS counter.

2.5gb of vram won't make a 570 go any faster, it will just stop it from having to cache textures to other devices (memory, hard drive ETC).

So therefore, it's still six of one with the 6970 and it costs a lot more.

So it's not a great buy, but if you really want Nvidia then hey, cracking card :)
 
After much deliberation and messing around i finally went for the Asus 580 GTX Direct CUII 1.5GB from OCUK. I won't be gaming at any higher thatn 1080p for the forseeable future and really fancied a change away from ATi.

Hopefully it will be delivered tomorrow. I can always get another second hand further down the line for SLI.

Unfortunately i am my own worst enemy and couldnt wait any longer :)
 
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