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GeForce GTX 590 and Radeon HD 6990 Face Off
Vigile writes "Both NVIDIA and AMD have recently released new extreme-high-end graphics cards with dual-GPU configurations and PC Perspective has compared them to each other with some standard SLI/CrossFire comparisons for good measure. The GTX 590 is a pair of 512 shader processor GF110 GPUs which had the potential to be the fastest combination available, but the clock speeds were lowered to such a level that is has trouble keeping up with AMD's Radeon HD 6990. Sound levels were noticeably better on NVIDIA's option though the Radeon card provided better frame rates at the highest resolutions. So, while the $700 video card market just got a pair of new competitors, the best investment for that money might still be two less expensive Radeon or GeForce single-GPU cards."
Not the 5990, which doesn't exist.
Seriously, why do we even have editors?
http://CryoLANparty.com/ A lan I'm staff on!
I'm wondering what to replace my Radeon 3850 with. Is there anything newer that's faster and can run with a passive heatsink? I put an Accelero X1 heatsink on my 3850 and the temperatures are just fine. With all the recent cards though, it seems impossible to go silent with anything but liquid cooling, which would be a lot of work to install.
While comparing video cards is all well and good, I make a formal nerd request that a decibel comparison be included in future reviews, say at idle fan speed, half maximum speed and full speed. Honestly it has gotten ridiculous - high end cards are just too damned loud. (switching to night-club mode) I MEAN WHAT IS THE POINT OF HAVING NICE GRAPHICS IF YOU CAN'T HEAR THE GAME YOU'RE PLAYING
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
What? Doesn't EVERYONE have a 2 kilowatt power supply and vapor phase-change cooling on every available source of heat in the case?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I bought 560Ti and there are still no stable linux drivers for it. As far as I am concerned, I do not care for latest and greatest cards anymore. "Latest" to me now equals "have stable linux drivers".
Innovation is good if it is for the people and not just for the sake of innovation and showing off.
I'd like to hijack the topic a little bit in order to ask a question because i don't have the time to bust out the google-fu and dig in for some serious research right now.
The last time i really looked into the matter was 5-ish years ago, and the conclusion i came to was that radeons had slightly better hardware, but nvidia's drivers were so far superior that this theoretical lead was completely obliterated. Is this still true? (No die-hard brand shilling here please - i'd like to hear from people who at least think they can be impartial.)
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
There is no way anyone can justify calling a $700 graphics card an "investment". Investment in what? Immediate depreciation comes to mind.
Most people would never consider buying a used video card so really if there is any case to be made that this will be a better choice than the next lowest priced card it isn't that the resale value will hold up when you go to again buy the most expensive card next year.
I went to battle M.C. Escher, but drew a blank.
Apparently crossfire scales better than sli and you are currently better off buying a couple of HD5970 as the cost is less than one HD5990/GTX590 and you get better performance.
I am on a 'tight' budget and bought one HD5970. I will upgrade next year by buying another should I get some sort of penis envy.
I built a 6-core cpu system with a HD 6970 graphics card recently and it uses a 750 Watt 80+ gold rated PSU. I'm not really pushing near the limits (cpu 120W max, gpu 250W max), even if I bought one of those monstrous cards I'd probably still be ok though maybe maxing it out. 900-1k Watt is probably still overkill as long as you buy a good PSU, no 2kw PSU needed.
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
one thing you might wanna consider is that ATIs support for stereoscopic 3d gaming using shutter glasses and 120hz monitors is weak to nonexistent, whereas nvidias support is excellent. hell, they have their own shutter glasses. and if your gonna drop $700 on a video card, your probably the sort of person wholl pay a bit extra for a 120hz monitor and shutter glasses for 3d gaming.
AMD and NVDIA have a euphemism for people that spend $500+ on a graphics card. They call these customers "enthusiasts". I'm glad someone out there is willing to spend that kind of money to drive the state of the art and I'm glad it's not me. Just for fun, I googled "silly expensive item" and got this link: http://coolmaterial.com/cool-list/24-ridiculously-expensive-everyday-items/.
Surprisingly, NVIDIA can't catch AMD's dual-GPU card with their new GTX 590: http://hothardware.com/Reviews/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-590-Dual-GF110s-One-PCB/
Even in heavier DX11 titles, the cards are not quite up to par with the Radeon HD 6990: http://hothardware.com/Reviews/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-590-Dual-GF110s-One-PCB/?page=8
That's a desktop, it's not meant to be portable it's for performance oriented tasks that would take much to long otherwise. And those numbers are MAX! The core steps down to idle near 11 Watts (for 6 cores mind you, so under 2W/core) and the gpu on idle powers down to use around 25W. Neither are going in a laptop any time soon. Total idle power is under 100W or about what a lightbulb uses. I don't see how the 'typical power consumption' of a high end desktop being equal to a lightbulb is bad.
My laptop is a desktop replacement model (my 'portable desktop) and is quad core cpu with a older mobility HD 59XX series GPU. It uses around 10W total idle and 40W MAX (as far as I can tell), though MAX can't be achieved without being plugged in. It can do everything the desktop can, just slower. I can tell you though cooling is far far better for the desktop, the laptop at 40W gets extremely warm. It also benches less than half of what my brand new desktop can do.
There is no need to lessen what a desktop can do just to lower power consumption. In fact I have a feeling in the future desktops will exist solely to fit in the high end of performance single person need; with laptops, Pads, and phones filling all the lower niches. Multi-user high performance will go into servers of various types and low performance units will be things like NAS.
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
Back on topic...
There have been a few reports of the drivers shipped with the cards causing them to burn.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=sRo-1VFMcbc
An overclocked i7 990X , quad SLI , Liquid Cooling
How would you NOT need a 1kW+ PSU?
ATI really needs to fix its drivers. This has been a problem for over a decade. Ridiculous performances is NOT important. Reliable drivers will always be. The difference in my case was 10fps with flakey bombouts (ATI) vs. 45 fps completely solid performance (nVidia).
The author of that article has no clue how to do a comparison. The graphs are all skewed, none of them start at zero so the differences are blown of of proportion. The magnification also varies from graph to graph.
I would rather play at 1920 x 1200/60 FPS vsync'd in DX11 with heavy AA and Aniso then the DX9 720p jaggy mess that most console games are forced to run at. P.S. I own all 3 modern consoles too.
Good-bye