Advice on a new GPU....

D

defiant007

2[H]4U
Joined
Feb 27, 2006
Messages
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So for my birthday my brothers have kindly offered to buy me a swish new GPU to stick into my main machine. The options on offer are:

Galaxy GTX580
Galaxy GTX570
Gigabyte GTX580
HIS 6970 2gb
Gigabyte 6970 2 gb

My current rig specs are:

GTX280
[email protected]
Silverstone 850W Strider PSU
Corsair XMS3 4gig DDR3@1600mhz

That machine is paired with a 19" Viewsonic CRT with which I normally game at 1920x1440.

I am currently minded to go with the GTX580 because I generally dislike ATI's driver implementation and so that I can at least keep the GTX280 as a PPU (yeah I know mostly a useless feature).

Now I would love to upgrade my screen to a larger size with a more demanding resolution but I just cannot stand the visual graininess of LCD's, even on high quality ones.

But given the nature of CRT's, I expect that I will have no choice but to up(down)grade at some point in the future.

I guess my question is this, if I have no intention of ever trying to game at insane resolutions above 2560x1600 where 2gig of ram would be of benefit, or otherwise am not interested in an eyefinity setup, is there any compelling reason for me to go for the 6970 over the GTX580?

The other question is will my CPU at its current speed be able to feed a GTX580 with enough data in order to really take advantage of it, or should I also consider upgrading my CPU?

Thanks in advance. :cool:
 
Normally I wouldn't recommend them, but if your brothers are willing to pay the ridiculous price for a GTX580, get one of them. They are faster than the 570 or 6970, albeit not by that much.
 
get the gtx580
sell it
buy a 6950(make it a 6970) or a gtx570
????
profit!
 
The GTX580 is what $500+ ? I would sell that system and use the system money and that $500 to build a sandy rig =P
 
Sky15 said:
GTX 580, can you get a EVGA?
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Unfortunately not, they are sourcing from my one brother's IT business and none of his wholesalers carry evga.

Evga also only offer a 2 year warranty in my region and do not offer their step up program here.
 
EvilViking said:
The GTX580 is what $500+ ? I would sell that system and use the system money and that $500 to build a sandy rig =P
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In Australia there is not much of a market for second hand enthusiast parts....I doubt I could recoup enough money to build a top spec sandy bridge machine w/out having to kick in more money.

Besides, would a sandybridge build provide an appreciable performance improvement over my q9450?
 
defiant007 said:
Unfortunately not, they are sourcing from my one brother's IT business and none of his wholesalers carry evga.

Evga also only offer a 2 year warranty in my region and do not offer their step up program here.
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Gigabyte then.
 
defiant007 said:
In Australia there is not much of a market for second hand enthusiast parts....I doubt I could recoup enough money to build a top spec sandy bridge machine w/out having to kick in more money.

Besides, would a sandybridge build provide an appreciable performance improvement over my q9450?
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Sandy Bridge is a pretty lean yet fierce beast. When OC'ed even gives an i7 980X a run for its money.
 
Sandy Bridge CPUs are considerably faster than a Q9450, up to 70% faster at stock, even more OC vs OC.
I'd take a Gigabyte card over an EVGA any day.
 
samuelmorris said:
Sandy Bridge CPUs are considerably faster than a Q9450, up to 70% faster at stock, even more OC vs OC.
I'd take a Gigabyte card over an EVGA any day.
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Wow food for thought. I understand that the high spec versions are going to have a new socket, might wait for those.
 
samuelmorris said:
Sandy Bridge CPUs are considerably faster than a Q9450, up to 70% faster at stock, even more OC vs OC.
I'd take a Gigabyte card over an EVGA any day.
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70% faster when? lol. In benchmarks? I doubt 70% improvement in speed in regards to day-to-day PC usage. i bring this up cause its kinda of bad information, not cause its wrong but because it gives the wrong idea. Its like saying "yeah the new 2012 corvette is 50% faster!" and people being "OMG!!!" when in reality what you mean is it can go 300MPH top speed instead of 200MPH top speed....but the acceleration hasnt changed much and thats the key. In benchmarking and hardcore video editings yeah im sure there is a 70% speed increase over Q9450, but i doubt there is a big difference in boot time, in program loading, in web surfing, in video game playing (considering PC games now are just ports from 360).

I bring this up just because the author of this thread seems to be...not as informed or not as read-up on everything. So he sees your post and says wow thats crazy maybe il get SB i7...

A example of what i mean is my current PC had a Intel Pentium E5200 processor in it, and then i upgraded to the Q9550 Core2Quad processor and honestly i have not noticed any day to day speed improvement. Hell even in gaming not much has changed. Im sure if i benchmarked the two, i would see vast differences, or if i was a video editor i would see vast differences, but i like most people even on [H]ard dont video edit at least not professionally where 2 second improvements matter.
 
Moving from my old Athlon 3400+ S754 to my i7 920 was like night and day. Could be the most satisfied I've ever been with an upgrade and its still very competitive 2 years later.
 
NathanP2007 said:
70% faster when? lol. In benchmarks? I doubt 70% improvement in speed in regards to day-to-day PC usage. i bring this up cause its kinda of bad information, not cause its wrong but because it gives the wrong idea. Its like saying "yeah the new 2012 corvette is 50% faster!" and people being "OMG!!!" when in reality what you mean is it can go 300MPH top speed instead of 200MPH top speed....but the acceleration hasnt changed much and thats the key. In benchmarking and hardcore video editings yeah im sure there is a 70% speed increase over Q9450, but i doubt there is a big difference in boot time, in program loading, in web surfing, in video game playing (considering PC games now are just ports from 360).

I bring this up just because the author of this thread seems to be...not as informed or not as read-up on everything. So he sees your post and says wow thats crazy maybe il get SB i7...

A example of what i mean is my current PC had a Intel Pentium E5200 processor in it, and then i upgraded to the Q9550 Core2Quad processor and honestly i have not noticed any day to day speed improvement. Hell even in gaming not much has changed. Im sure if i benchmarked the two, i would see vast differences, or if i was a video editor i would see vast differences, but i like most people even on [H]ard dont video edit at least not professionally where 2 second improvements matter.
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An E5200 to a Q9550 is night and day, even in games. If you're not getting improvements, play something other than minesweeper.

What I said is true, and your comment is every bit as misleading. Acceleration in terms of what?

Boot times won't be 70% faster because they don't rely solely on the CPU for performance. A more appropriate analogy is buying a car that has 340hp instead of 200hp. It should be common sense that if the old car did 130mph, the new one is not going to do 220mph just because of that horsepower increase. The same applies here. You are buying a part that's 70% faster, but you aren't making the whole computer faster.

Should it turn out that a game is so CPU limited that the GPU performance is effectively irrelevant (very rare, but it can happen, or may do in the future), then yes, a 70% faster CPU will give you 70% faster performance.
 
samuelmorris said:
An E5200 to a Q9550 is night and day, even in games. If you're not getting improvements, play something other than minesweeper.

What I said is true, and your comment is every bit as misleading. Acceleration in terms of what?

Boot times won't be 70% faster because they don't rely solely on the CPU for performance. A more appropriate analogy is buying a car that has 340hp instead of 200hp. It should be common sense that if the old car did 130mph, the new one is not going to do 220mph just because of that horsepower increase. The same applies here. You are buying a part that's 70% faster, but you aren't making the whole computer faster.

Should it turn out that a game is so CPU limited that the GPU performance is effectively irrelevant (very rare, but it can happen, or may do in the future), then yes, a 70% faster CPU will give you 70% faster performance.
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Lol minesweeper, haha yeah right. I've got all the normal high end PC games that you can think of and they were pushing full FPS back when i had my E5200, and still are now. And both i have every game on its highest setting and the res i said.

Bootimes was more of a example. Overall a newbie or even decently informed person on here when told "this cpu will be 70% faster than your old one!" might take from that, that they will see marked improvements overall. Yet in reality the places you will see most improvement most likely is benchmarks and OCing and VERY intensive processor programs which i doubt the newbie would own.

In terms of a Q9450 vs SB i7 when you are getting as extreme a GPU as he is able to get, im betting the mark-able improvement he will notice in gaming is if he was to add a second monitor or majorly increase the res he will be playing at. But it seems hes not wanting to do that, he just wants a larger screen with a bit higher resolution.
But his case is a rare one , getting a $500 GPU. If he wanted multiple monitors or a insane res, having a SB i7 is ideal, but considering hes not going from something like a dual core to SB i7, hes going from a good quad core to SB i7, i question if the improvement he would see is worth the cost of a new mobo, the SB i7 cpu, new ddr3 ram etc.
 
When full fps is 10fps, then yeah.
You can't BS people that an E5200 is enough to run every current game on max without severe lag, as it simply isn't true. Even Core i7s drop down in to the 40s in starcraft 2 if you turn the detail up.
 
samuelmorris said:
When full fps is 10fps, then yeah.
You can't BS people that an E5200 is enough to run every current game on max without severe lag, as it simply isn't true. Even Core i7s drop down in to the 40s in starcraft 2 if you turn the detail up.
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Well it played with no lag at 1680x1050 all settings to highest on games like crysis, Medal of Honor (newest), OF:Dragon Rising, Dragon Age, World in Conflict. Im not saying hey go out and buy a E5200 with a GTS250 and ur set for the next 5 years! Im just saying personally those very average gaming hardware components played those games very well.
 
If you're willing to live with 20-25fps then that's fine, but not everyone's the same way.
Try doing the same with starcraft 2 and bad company 2 on that CPU.
 
samuelmorris said:
If you're willing to live with 20-25fps then that's fine, but not everyone's the same way.
Try doing the same with starcraft 2 and bad company 2 on that CPU.
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Very true, however in the realm of PC games, those are 2 very rare unusual games. Starcraft 2 took 9 years to come out with and there really isnt anything like it...and BC:2 is unique for how CPU intensive it is, and how it really loves quad cores. Thats like 5% of PC games now, the direction PC gaming is going is 95% are ports from Xbox 360.

Maybe it is 25FPS idk, but when i play it is silky smooth to my eyes. I dont see any LAG or nething. The only game's FPS i know for sure is COD4 at full settings, and that i played with full 60FPS and no drops. Not saying thats proof of anything, just giving you all the facts of my old PC.
 
COD4's pretty old, and it wasn't even that demanding when it came out, especially not when you consider Crysis is just as old. A large number of modern games are turning up figures like 80-150fps max on Core i7s, so scaling down to the E5200 you're looking at 40-60 at best in most of them. Fine most of the time, but anything beyond the average will lag.
I also own an E5200 and it plays lightweight games fine, but the performance definitely isn't there in the CPU-bound titles out there.
 
samuelmorris said:
COD4's pretty old, and it wasn't even that demanding when it came out, especially not when you consider Crysis is just as old. A large number of modern games are turning up figures like 80-150fps max on Core i7s, so scaling down to the E5200 you're looking at 40-60 at best in most of them. Fine most of the time, but anything beyond the average will lag.
I also own an E5200 and it plays lightweight games fine, but the performance definitely isn't there in the CPU-bound titles out there.
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Completely agree. I more so look to the fact that what is "in" for game creators is to port 360 games to PC..now if games were growing fast just like CPU/GPU tech is, i would definitely think about things differently. Such as my CPU (Q9550) should be the minimum you have, and owning the latest and greatest (like a i7, 1st or 2nd gen) is the smartest move unless your gaming at 1024x768 or 1680x1050 and you like medium level settings.
 
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