Widescreen Gaming Forum

My dual 8800 GTX died after five years, which is why I've been away from the site for so long. Everything was fine until one day the drivers started not responding, and upon reboot I had yellow lines all across my display. Okay, so I took out the faulty one and ran with just one and all was fine. Then one night I decided to play Oblivion with the new shader mod, and the same thing starts happening! Now both cards are useless. I just hope it's not a power issue and I won't kill anything I put in it... For reference I have an 850W PSU with four individual +12V rails with a combined output of 110 amps.

Now I'm trying to decide on what to replace them with. My budget is $400 US, and I was looking at either a nVidia GeForce GTX 570 or a AMD Radeon HD 6970. Now before you all reply telling me to get the AMD, first listen to this. I run games at 1920x1080. Now at that resolution I don't think I would have to worry about hitting a VRAM wall, but it seems that newer games coming out in DirectX 11 are increasingly becoming more VRAM hogs. I read some reviews around on [H]ardOCP, but they're usually running the 6970 at 2560x1600 and the 570 at 1920x1200. I would really like to see more comparisons of these two cards at 1920x1200 or 1920x1080 before making any kind of decision. Also, I don't plan on upgrading to triple screens anytime in the near future.

The best comparison I found on the [H] was their review of the MSI HD 6970 Lightning (which is currently $359.99 at NewEgg after rebate). Here, most of the performance numbers were nearly identical: the GTX 570 usually having higher highs and lower lows and the HD 6970 having better averages. What I really like about the MSI card is how cool it runs. One caveat I have always had with ATi/AMD cards is their drivers. I have always had a better experience with nVidia drivers in the past, and most of what I read nowadays says that the driver situation hasn't changed much. MSI also apparently makes a Lightning version of the GTX 570, but I can't find it anywhere. There is the Twin Frozr III edition, which is currently $369.99 at NewEgg.

So what to do? nVidia has some features unique to the brand that I really like (CUDA, PhysX, FXAA [but I'm sure AMD will have their own version soon enough]), while the AMD seems to provide more performance bang for the buck.

EDIT: Just found EVGA makes a 2.5GB GTX 570 for $394.99... That tosses a nail in the road. They don't charge tax for online purchases in Florida yet, do they? :P

For reference I have an 850W PSU with four individual +12V rails with a combined output of 110 amps.

Just because your PSU has the above spec's does not necasarily make it a good one. Can you provide us with the full spec list of everything in your machine, including case, so that we can make a suggestion for you? Also, is anything overclocked? Have you had any other issues with the rig that you know of; i.e. BSOD's, lock-ups, etc?

The PSU is a good one: Thermaltake Toughpower 850W. I did a lot of research to find a good PSU because I knew from the get-go I was going to build a SLI system. When I say a power issue I mean if there is a capacitor or relay that is failing within the unit. I built the system at the end of 2006, so it's five years old now and I'm not putting that possibility out of mind. However I have not had any other hardware issues. My CPU overheated because the heatsink came loose, but up until my video cards died the system was performing perfectly after reseating the heatsink and applying new thermal paste.

Case and CPU is in my profile. There is plenty of room in my case. The 8800 GTX was around 11"-12" long I believe, while the 6970 is about the same length and the GTX 570 is shorter.

Other hardware:

ASUS P5N32E-SLI mobo (nForce 680i)
LG Blu-ray Super-combo Rewritable drive (BD-ROM, HDDVD, DVD, CD, etc.)
HP Lightscribe DVD-RW combo drive
Seagate 320GB 7200 RPM SATA II hard drive
Patriot Gamer Series 4096MB PC6400 DDR2 Desktop Memory - 800MHz, 2x2048MB, 5-5-5-12
Creative Sounblaster X-Fi XtremeGamer

Full system load with both cards when they were working, while idling, was 190W-210W. Under full load (running Metro 2033, for example) power usage was around 550W-600W. Nominal load while running any other game was around 550W. The [H] reviews I have read put both cards I'm considering around 420W-460W under full load. My older CPU would put that usage slightly higher, but nothing extreme.

I'm leaning toward the AMD HD 6970, but the free Arkham City with GeForce cards right now is certainly attractive. If I could get Battlefield 3 purchasing a single AMD card, it would be no contest, but you have to buy a Crossfire pair.

Been long enough so I'll add a reply.

Went ahead and ordered the EVGA GeForce GTX 570 HD 2560MB. I've read around and found people reporting several newer games hitting 2GB of VRAM usage at 1920x1200. I decided to go with nVidia because of my good experience with them in the past.

Thanks for nothing! just kidding, love you guys :P

I think you will be happy with that!

_________________
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Indeed! Just got it yesterday and installed it, and wow am I blown away. Ran Metro 2033 with everything turned up except AA (AAA) and Enhanced DOF without breaking a sweat (can turn DOF on, but FPS average drops from 60 Vsync to around 30'ish). Temps peaked at 58 Celsius and it idles around 40. I see that my CPU is a bottleneck now, but an entirely new system isn't in the budget right now.

Glad I went for the 2.5GB because VRAM usage is right around 1.5-2GB in most things I've tested so far (with AA and stuff turned up).

On a side note, I think I fried my sound card because I plugged the receiver into my PC while the receiver was still on :( But I do have one I can rip out of an older computer to stick in to get my surround sound back. In the meantime working with stereo monitor speakers through the HDMI on my video card LOL.