New GCU Suggestions

Hey guys and gals,

I migrated from Alienware to Digital Storm two years ago and never looked back. At the time, I dropped an ATI 5870 1x into the system. Well, as technology goes, the card is now at the end of its illustrious run.

Since it is still under warranty, DS is giving me credit towards a new GCU. With so many to choose from and with ATI coming out with their new 6900 series, I was curious to know what the community recommends for performance, heat, and noise. Having something that is relevant for a long time is what I am striving for.

For sake of conversation, I am getting a $150 credit from DS and will be able to invest an additional $600 for the card. I have been looking at the GTX580 series but I have seen reports of overheating issues and decibel levels not being great.

Thanks for the input peeps and I look forward to the suggestions.

I will be sure to post my overall pc specs when I get home from work tonight.

To know what GPU you need we need to know the resolution of your monitor. But with that said in most cases many of us recommend the GTX570 2.5GB over the GTX580 1.5GB because the performance difference between the two is minor.

Also there is no situation where the 570 2.5GB is not enough and the 580 1.5GB can cover it. Any time you are playing at a resolution where the 570 is not enough it will always require that you upgrade to SLI. Simply upgrading to the 580 over the 570 will not provide enough of a boost on it's own.

In addition to know the resolution of your monitor we need to know what games you will be playing at those resolutions. The demands of something like CS:S, TF2, WoW or SWtOR are nothing compared to the demands of games like BF3.

The new ATI 7970 also does not offer enough of a performance increase to make it a viable single card if you are playing at a resolution that the 570 can not handle on it's own. The 7950 is even worse and is down right laughable for a "new" card.

Ok, 1920x1080 is the point were a single GPU can not be enough to play at Max/Ultra settings on some games, so lets try to break down some options. I'll use BF3 as a reference point for all of this.

At 1920x1080 you are going to x2 GTX 570's in order to play BF3 with Max/Ultra settings. This comes from both Digital Storm's own review of BF3 and various benchmarks of different GPUs from guru3d. No single GPU, even the 79770, can play BF3 at 1920x1080 with Max/Ultra settings.

At those settings the 7970 falls short at only 47fps, which is unplayable and it only beats the cheaper GTX580 by 4fps. So if you are going to play games like BF3 on that monitor you are either going to have to go with a SLI set up or play at slightly lower settings.

If you drop the settings down to High, which still looks fantastic, you can play games like BF3 with +60fps on a single GTX570. For the 570 I personally recommend the EVGA GTX570 2.5GB version the DS offers and you will most definitely get use out of that extra VRAM in games like BF3.

The GTX570 2.5GB is the best performance vs price card on the market right now for high end gaming. The 7970 is just too expensive for the single digit frame rate increases it offers.

It depends on if the PC version supports it or not and I am not sure if it does.

With all due respect, the Rep you talked to is wrong.    We have many forum members with sli 570' s, like the ODE3 for example that Max BF3 and Skyrim with no problem...jmaster's previous posts, go up a couple, does a good job of explaining this without me just repeating what he said.      Just a side note....I play Skyrim on ultra settings on my gtx560 with only a little stuttering very randomly.   Skyrim is not as demanding as like BF3, which does need sli 570.

Edited by bprat22 - 20 Feb 2012 at 1:51pm

Hence why I am relaying the information given to me this morning. It was a complete 180 on what everyone was telling me.

I just want to make sure that I am making the right informed decision here.

Originally posted by Desamation Hence why I am relaying the information given to me this morning. It was a complete 180 on what everyone was telling me. I just want to make sure that I am making the right informed decision here.

Definitely!

I was just showing you that test as a way of providing some numbers to back up my statement.