RMA'd 6970

[StonedPenguin]

Came to the conclusion my 6970 is faulty, Vrams on its way out.

It is a VTX 6970 from a competitor so theyre collecting it tomorrow and delivering me a GTX580 TWINFROXR2OC.
Is there a big difference between the 6970 and 580 (bar the £120 notes)??


I was hoping to Xfire my 6970, But seeing as from tomorrow I'm going from Red to Green with the 580 coming, I dont think my TX750 PSU can handle SLI 580's and an i5 at ~5GHZ?

 

[Ezyryder]

that seems like a nice upgrade... did you have to pay for anything?

 

[StonedPenguin]

that seems like a nice upgrade... did you have to pay for anything?

Yes I had to pay £370 for the 580, Once my 6970 is established as faulty by them, They will then refund the £250 I paid for it.

 

[Freddie1980]

Well looking at the Anandtech bench page for the two cards it's not a huge upgrade in terms of performance, the games the where the GTX580 seems to really pull ahead a 6970 is already getting 60 FPS+ so I doubt you will see big difference. But since you bought a 3rd party cooler I would like to think its going to run a bit cooler and a lot quieter then your HD6970.

As for SLI GTX580's you have to remember that despite Nvidia claiming the GTX580's TDP is only 250 watts (which puts it on par with the HD6970) when tested the GTX580 pulls 300 watts at load so two in SLI is far to close for comfort for a your PSU. Besides, why bother? A single 580 is more then enough for 1080p and next year Nvidia will have 28nm GPU's out which will give you SLI GTX580's performance on a single card (or around about).

 

[StonedPenguin]

Well looking at the Anandtech bench page for the two cards it's not a huge upgrade in terms of performance, the games the where the GTX580 seems to really pull ahead a 6970 is already getting 60 FPS+ so I doubt you will see big difference. But since you bought a 3rd party cooler I would like to think its going to run a bit cooler and a lot quieter then your HD6970.

As for SLI GTX580's you have to remember that despite Nvidia claiming the GTX580's TDP is only 250 watts (which puts it on par with the HD6970) when tested the GTX580 pulls 300 watts at load so two in SLI is far to close for comfort for a your PSU. Besides, why bother? A single 580 is more then enough for 1080p and next year Nvidia will have 28nm GPU's out which will give you SLI GTX580's performance on a single card (or around about).

Thanks for that info mate, I will probably have the 580 for 2-3 years before upgrading so probably wont bother to SLI as I only game at 1920x1080.

When swapping cards is it as simple as uninstalling ATI drivers, shutdown, Remove 6970, install 580, power on then install nvidia drivers?

Cheers

 

[Cleeecooo]

Thanks for that info mate, I will probably have the 580 for 2-3 years before upgrading so probably wont bother to SLI as I only game at 1920x1080.

When swapping cards is it as simple as uninstalling ATI drivers, shutdown, Remove 6970, install 580, power on then install nvidia drivers?

Cheers

Get driversweeper
Boot into safe mode
Clear all drivers in safe mode
install NV drivers

 

[StonedPenguin]

Get driversweeper
Boot into safe mode
Clear all drivers in safe mode
install NV drivers

Will do, Cheers (Just to clarify, I install the NV drivers after ive finished in safemode and rebooted back to windows? or I do this safemode too?) Thanks.

 

[Cleeecooo]

Will do, Cheers (Just to clarify, I install the NV drivers after ive finished in safemode and rebooted back to windows? or I do this safemode too?) Thanks.

you can do in either. Doesn't make a difference

 

[arc@css]

Uninstall AMD drivers, turn off PC. Swap cards over. Reboot, then download nVidia driver. Restart PC and away you go.

That's the way I do it anyway, though there are other possible steps as previously mentioned.

 

[Freddie1980]

I wouldn't run driver sweeper if you have Windows 7. W7 is quite cable of running two sets of independent drivers at the same time.