Nvidia or ATI questions

[umboma]

Hey all,

I'm starting to look at new gpu's I've been invida for a long time but as i'm running a 3 screen setup i like the idea of ATI's where I can run 3 screens on one card at the mo I'm running 470 GTX in SLI.

But why are the ATI cards so cheap to the Nvidia offering, I take it the Radeon HD 6950 is the best gpu in ATI's range starting from £184 going up to £239

So is that the equal to Nvidia's Geforce GTX 590 at a price of £649 and going up..

So confused.

 

[Steves1982]

The 6990 is ATI's top card.

 

[hlxbravo]

Yeh I pondered over this too, especially when you compare them like for like with their core and memory clocks, the ATi's spec on an equivalent Nvidia card, the price doubles for the Nvidia. Thing is the sensible guy inside tells me its not all about these figures, as when looking at gaming benchmarks, the extra 200 quid for the NVIDIa equivalent, obliterates what appears on paper, ATI card.

 

[harmony]

For triple screen you want more than 1.5GB vram per GPU.

Best bang for buck = 6950 2GB x 2 CF
A more advanced setup = 6990 + 6970 TRI-CF
Ultimate (and expensive) solution = GTX580 3GB x 3 TRI-SLI

GTX590 is a horrible choice because it has insufficient vram.

You could also wait for the upcoming 28nm cards but latest rumors suggested that neither NVIDIA nor AMD would start selling the 28nm flagships in 2011.

 

[Steves1982]

£380-£400 for 2 x 6950's is they way I would go (and have).

As said above best bang for buck. Not that far behind GTX 580 SLI and £350-£400 cheaper with more Vram.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/299?vs=308

 

[Rroff]

Not quite sure what the point is of going from a 470 SLI setup (which will run 3 screens even if not from one card) to a single 6950 would be unless try to save on power usage/reduce heat/noise - your going to take a big drop in performance going for one card and going 6950 CF will pretty much put you back at square one the only real change being a bit of extra VRAM.