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Berk Berkly
Apr 9, 2009

by zen death robot

Factory Factory posted:

The GK104 in the 660 Ti is the same chip as in the GeForce 680, though. It'd have to be cut down a LOT to make a meaningful 650 Ti-type card, further than even the OEM 660. I'm not sure TSMC's 28nm process is quite so bad as to actually have a supply of chips that wrecked, which means providing such a card would require cutting down a chip that might have worked just fine in a more expensive SKU (which are selling just fine, thanks). In the Fermi generation, the 580 and 570 were one chip (later joined by the 560 Ti-448), the 560 Ti, 560, and 560 SE (plus a refreshed 460) were another chip, and the 550 Ti was a third chip entirely. There is indeed a gap in the Kepler generation.

Arg, so I guess it IS to much to ask and the 660 OEMs are the bottom of the bin for the GK104s.

Do we actually believe the GK107s are going to be competitive/trade blows with the GTX560? I could see it popping up at $150 and getting niched.

quote:

Retailers and partners that sell directly?

Well, when I rhetorically asked "Who?" it was a 'royal who' in that I meant us the consumers/end-users. :v: Of course the people making bank on us don't like it when their gravy is watered down.

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The Lord Bude
May 23, 2007

ASK ME ABOUT MY SHITTY, BOUGIE INTERIOR DECORATING ADVICE

Factory Factory posted:

EVGA good. Palit big question mark.

That's a shame, the Palit gtx690 is the cheapest I can get here in Australia, it was only $1099. The cheapest EVGA I can get is $1549, which is a bit more than I wanted to pay...

I can get a gainward gtx690 for $1240 or a gigabyte for $1290. How do you guys feel about those? or given the price difference should I buy a Palit anyhow?

Agreed
Dec 30, 2003

The price of meat has just gone up, and your old lady has just gone down

Could you give a brief summary of why you need a 690 in the first place, please?

Two GTX 670s will perform as well if your motherboard is capable of SLI, and cost you rather a lot less.

But I'd also want to know what need you have for two GTX 670s, that's a lot of graphics output, are you using some ridiculously high resolution or multi-monitor setup or 3D or some combination of the preceding that would make going for high end hardware make sense in the first place?

Regardless, really, even if you are using a setup that can put that much to use, avoid the 690 entirely, without worrying about manufacturer, because it is matched in performance for greater part by the much more affordable combination of two GTX 670s.

The Lord Bude
May 23, 2007

ASK ME ABOUT MY SHITTY, BOUGIE INTERIOR DECORATING ADVICE

Agreed posted:

Could you give a brief summary of why you need a 690 in the first place, please?

Two GTX 670s will perform as well if your motherboard is capable of SLI, and cost you rather a lot less.

But I'd also want to know what need you have for two GTX 670s, that's a lot of graphics output, are you using some ridiculously high resolution or multi-monitor setup or 3D or some combination of the preceding that would make going for high end hardware make sense in the first place?

Regardless, really, even if you are using a setup that can put that much to use, avoid the 690 entirely, without worrying about manufacturer, because it is matched in performance for greater part by the much more affordable combination of two GTX 670s.

two 670s would do the trick if I could support SLI, unfortunately multiple Nvidia GPUs are out of the question as I have an AMD motherboard that only supports Crossfire.

When I upgraded to 2560x1440 I found that my 5970 couldn't quite cut it anymore. Every review I've read puts the 680 roughly on par with a 5970, so I need something more. I've contemplated multiple AMD cards, but frankly after a two year fling with team red I feel ready to return to Nvidia's sweet loving embrace. I've had more driver issues and release day woes with my 5970 than I ever had in my Nvida days. Plus, you know, physX and all that.

The only thing I've been waiting on is to see if the release of the 7990 drives the 690 down in price.

InstantInfidel
Jan 9, 2010

BEST :10bux: I EVER SPENT
A cursory google search would suggest that you're still hosed, since a 690 is just SLI in a single PCIe slot.

Anyway, a 680 beats a 5970 by 15% at the thinnest margin and 100% in several AAA titles released this year. You read lovely reviews. Seriously, it gets 60+ FPS at 2560x1600 on every modern game. You will literally see exactly 0 perceptible benefit from spending an extra $500.

edit: hold on, if you have an AMD motherboard then your problems are much, much deeper than a graphics card. You either have a now-dated Phenom or you're running Bulldozer, which is lovely and will probably bottleneck you way before the graphics card.

InstantInfidel fucked around with this message at 03:34 on Aug 27, 2012

Wozbo
Jul 5, 2010
690 doesn't require a sli compliant motherboard/ controller as it's on the card if I recall correctly (please doublecheck this).

I'm thinking of going to team green too, but I'm trying as hard as I can to wait for Big Kepler. So tempting to get a 670 though.

InstantInfidel
Jan 9, 2010

BEST :10bux: I EVER SPENT
I dunno, I could only find one result from a forums post of Tom's hardware saying that the card would need SLI support.

However, the SLI Wikipedia entry seems to disagree and claims that the motherboard doesn't need to support SLI because everything is on the chip, which supports what you said and is definitely counter-intuitive :colbert:

The point remains that the poster is trying to light money on fire and would be better served by buying a new motherboard and processor to go with his 680, or by giving it to charity.

The Lord Bude
May 23, 2007

ASK ME ABOUT MY SHITTY, BOUGIE INTERIOR DECORATING ADVICE

InstantInfidel posted:

A cursory google search would suggest that you're still hosed, since a 690 is just SLI in a single PCIe slot.

Anyway, a 680 beats a 5970 by 15% at the thinnest margin and 100% in several AAA titles released this year. You read lovely reviews. Seriously, it gets 60+ FPS at 2560x1600 on every modern game. You will literally see exactly 0 perceptible benefit from spending an extra $500.

edit: hold the gently caress on, if you have an AMD motherboard then your problems are much, much deeper than a graphics card. You either have a now-dated Phenom or you're running Bulldozer, which is lovely and will probably bottleneck you way before the graphics card.

I have a phenom IIx6 1090T, so I should be fine as far as CPU bottlenecking goes. My baseline for acceptable performance from a graphics card is that all games should have minimum fps above 30 at native resolution with every setting at maximum except possibly AA - I'm still not sure that a 680 can do that. I might still look into crossfired 7950s or 7970s, but I'm not sure I want to stay with AMD.

Unrelated Question:

With my 5970, there is a setting that allows me to play old games that only support 4:3 resolutions with the proper aspect ratios - ie having black bars on either side instead of stretch.

I seem to recall I couldn't figure out how to make this happen back when I was running an Nvidia GPU - can someone confirm if It's now possible to do this with Nvidia?

Edit: I hadn't considered buying a new motherboard and processor - I'm not sure it would be cheaper, given Australian Pricing... but I do know it would be a far greater pain in my arse than just swapping out a graphics card.

The Lord Bude fucked around with this message at 03:48 on Aug 27, 2012

TheRationalRedditor
Jul 17, 2000

WHO ABUSED HIM. WHO ABUSED THE BOY.
Yes, of course a single 680 can do that. They are a lot more powerful than the 5970. A 690 is overkill for basically anything unless you're building one of those hilariously dumb 3D gaming XXXperience cubes with like 4 monitors surrounding a replica Jean Luc Picard's captain chair

InstantInfidel
Jan 9, 2010

BEST :10bux: I EVER SPENT
Wait, what? 30 FPS? Your 5970 should be able to do that, according to the benchmarks I linked. Seriously. You *might* have to turn the settings down a single notch, from Extreme to Ultra/Very High, on a select few games that have lovely optimization (I'm looking at you, every Batman game made). The 680 will handle that with no issue, and the 670 would be able to as well, on most games.

Also, again using the same benchmark suite, Anandtech would suggest that in a CPU-limited scenario (one where the GPU is irrelevant), your current processor is, at a minimum, 25% and at a maximum 50% behind an i5-2500k, which itself is about 10% behind a 3570k, the current SH/SC recommendation.

Get a 680, a nice Z77 board, and a 3570k. I really doubt anyone here will recommend otherwise, and if they do, it'd probably be to suggest a 670.

Glen Goobersmooches posted:

Yes, of course a single 680 can do that. They are a lot more powerful than the 5970. A 690 is overkill for basically anything unless you're building one of those hilariously dumb 3D gaming XXXperience cubes with like 4 monitors surrounding a replica Jean Luc Picard's captain chair

See, I thought that too, but according to those benchmarks (I just love benchmarks and would probably do horrible things to get a job at Anandtech) it actually beats a 6970, and is surprisingly close to a 680, especially given that it's 2 generations older.

The Lord Bude
May 23, 2007

ASK ME ABOUT MY SHITTY, BOUGIE INTERIOR DECORATING ADVICE

Glen Goobersmooches posted:

Yes, of course a single 680 can do that. They are a lot more powerful than the 5970. A 690 is overkill for basically anything unless you're building one of those hilariously dumb 3D gaming XXXperience cubes with like 4 monitors surrounding a replica Jean Luc Picard's captain chair

I would actually be very interested in obtaining a replica Jean Luc Picard chair if such a thing were in fact to exist... my chair is the oldest part of my gaming rig and is starting to wear out.

Multiple monitors on the other hand, I simply don't have room for, I place a higher priority on high end speakers and my desk simply doesn't have room for proper bookshelf speakers and multiple monitors unfortunately.

how much do you think someone would be prepared to pay for a second hand 5970? Is $150 a reasonable asking price do you think?

Agreed
Dec 30, 2003

The price of meat has just gone up, and your old lady has just gone down

First, I'd buy a used 5970 provided it were in good condition and hadn't been overclocked unsafely at $150. If that's your price, sold.

Second, you're probably running up against the relatively slow processor moreso than anything else. Provided that you've got a PCIe (PCI-e? ... PCI-E? ... these are different things, I can't be arsed to remember the correct one, but it's the standard currently in use :v:)... I digress -

As long as you've got the PCI-e 2.0 16x it shouldn't present too much of a bottleneck. I'm thinking you are under the misapprehension that the 6-core processor isn't going to slow you down by virtue of all of those cores, how could it? The answer is, unfortunately, they're late 2007-era in terms of processing speed and are holding your card back.

Edit: Your money is best spent hanging onto the card you've got, its only real issue is that in some very edge case scenarios it will exhibit weird AF issues (tunnel test, or anything like it). They fixed that in the 6000 series and kept the fix in for the 7000 series. Totally yanked nVidia's AF method to do it, too, gotta love it. I would be kind of a dick and taking advantage of you, getting a really good deal on that card if it's in good condition, when in all likelihood it's just sitting behind your CPU as a massive framerate wall and you could go with an affordable Sandy Bridge-based setup or Ivy Bridge-based setup and lift the wall. Save money and unleash the real potential of the card at the same time. You'll still have microstuttering to contend with and Crossfire "exciting adventures" that have kept me from SLI/Crossfire despite an unhealthy obsession with shiny poo poo in my videogames... But you'd be making a smarter choice and getting out from a dead-end path as far as your computer goes. Now is a good time to build, too, RAM prices are dirt cheap and HDDs are coming back to sanity too, you can put together a solid system that wouldn't slow that sucker down. Get ye to the parts picking megathread if you wish to follow this advice.

Agreed fucked around with this message at 04:10 on Aug 27, 2012

craig588
Nov 19, 2005

by Nyc_Tattoo
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/146?vs=551
The Phenom is pretty terribly outclassed, and the Ivy Bridge overclocks incredibly well just as a bonus if you felt like it. Pretty much everyone will recommend the 3570k, but I didn't see it in the drop down. It's only 100mhz slower with 2mb less of cache which is insignificant in normal use.

My personal experience with an overclocked 2500k and a 670 has been running everything maxed out including some level of AA at 2560x1440 with vsync on and consistantly hitting 60 FPS. I don't benchmark anymore (it lead to me buying stuff I never needed, like Extreme Edition CPUs), but I havn't even had to even think about performance, just max everything and play and nothing's choppy. There's a setting in the Nvidia control panel that lets you choose between centered, full screen and scaled maintaining the aspect ratio. I'm on my tablet right now, so I'm sure I don't have the specific setting names right, but it's the gist of them

I'd keep the 5970 and just get an Ivy Bridge setup and see how that does. 5970s seem to be selling for about 300$ right now though.

Edit: Ignore my link, Agreed's is much better for game benchmarks.

Another edit to fix typos I'll blame on my tablet.

craig588 fucked around with this message at 04:28 on Aug 27, 2012

The Lord Bude
May 23, 2007

ASK ME ABOUT MY SHITTY, BOUGIE INTERIOR DECORATING ADVICE

Agreed posted:

First, I'd buy a used 5970 provided it were in good condition and hadn't been overclocked unsafely at $150. If that's your price, sold.

Second, you're probably running up against the relatively slow processor moreso than anything else. Provided that you've got a PCIe (PCI-e? ... PCI-E? ... these are different things, I can't be arsed to remember the correct one, but it's the standard currently in use :v:)... I digress -

As long as you've got the PCI-e 2.0 16x it shouldn't present too much of a bottleneck. I'm thinking you are under the misapprehension that the 6-core processor isn't going to slow you down by virtue of all of those cores, how could it? The answer is, unfortunately, they're late 2007-era in terms of processing speed and are holding your card back.
My motherboard is PCI-e 2.0 x16.
The 5970 has never been overclocked, and was purchased in July 2010. I will be offering it around to my friends before selling it more broadly...I have one friend who has built his PC largely from my hand me downs.

I'm not sure how easily I could sell it on SA though, since most of you guys are in the US and I have no idea how international shipping would work/cost.

Agreed
Dec 30, 2003

The price of meat has just gone up, and your old lady has just gone down

The Lord Bude posted:

My motherboard is PCI-e 2.0 x16.
The 5970 has never been overclocked, and was purchased in July 2010. I will be offering it around to my friends before selling it more broadly...I have one friend who has built his PC largely from my hand me downs.

I'm not sure how easily I could sell it on SA though, since most of you guys are in the US and I have no idea how international shipping would work/cost.

Enough to make it not worth the hassle, honestly, but more importantly, it's pretty likely that you're not seeing the full capabilities of the card because your processor isn't really able, in many games, to keep up with its rendering output speed. You almost certainly won't benefit from spending a grand or more on a new graphics card which will likely show almost no improvement at all, because of the whole CPU bottleneck issue. You can increase the GPU power all you want, but if it's not being held back by the GPU, it's just leaving money on the table unless/until you get the CPU situation sorted.

Read the following and assess your situation accordingly before committing to any expenditures.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/23246

The Lord Bude
May 23, 2007

ASK ME ABOUT MY SHITTY, BOUGIE INTERIOR DECORATING ADVICE

Agreed posted:

Enough to make it not worth the hassle, honestly, but more importantly, it's pretty likely that you're not seeing the full capabilities of the card because your processor isn't really able, in many games, to keep up with its rendering output speed. You almost certainly won't benefit from spending a grand or more on a new graphics card which will likely show almost no improvement at all, because of the whole CPU bottleneck issue. You can increase the GPU power all you want, but if it's not being held back by the GPU, it's just leaving money on the table unless/until you get the CPU situation sorted.

Read the following and assess your situation accordingly before committing to any expenditures.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/23246

I'd be interested to see any other data from other tests beyond that report. They only tested 3 games, all at 1920x1080 rather than 2560x1440. I suspect the difference would be slimmer at the higher resolution. BF3 is easily the most demanding graphically of the 3 games they tested and it in particular showed virtually no difference between CPUs. Skyrim, on the other hand is well known as pretty much the most CPU limited game in recent memory, and should never have been used in that test simply because it is such an anomaly.

I'd like to see more data, and particularly more data from a much wider array of games, before I put too much stock in what they are saying.

If I was going to replace my cpu/mobo/ram - do you think a reinstall of windows would be called for? I replaced my hard drive only a few months ago, so I certainly wouldn't be replacing that.

Agreed
Dec 30, 2003

The price of meat has just gone up, and your old lady has just gone down

The Lord Bude posted:

I'd be interested to see any other data from other tests beyond that report. They only tested 3 games, all at 1920x1080 rather than 2560x1440. I suspect the difference would be slimmer at the higher resolution. BF3 is easily the most demanding graphically of the 3 games they tested and it in particular showed virtually no difference between CPUs. Skyrim, on the other hand is well known as pretty much the most CPU limited game in recent memory, and should never have been used in that test simply because it is such an anomaly.

I'd like to see more data, and particularly more data from a much wider array of games, before I put too much stock in what they are saying.

If I was going to replace my cpu/mobo/ram - do you think a reinstall of windows would be called for? I replaced my hard drive only a few months ago, so I certainly wouldn't be replacing that.

Windows 7 is pretty tolerant of hardware changes, but even so the worst case scenario is you reactivate it, which is usually automatic and at its most difficult and involved, just requires you to call a number and tell them some basic information and it's solved.

As to your willingness to accept the data presented, that's your business, I guess, but I find it to be not the sole determinant, but rather the capstone, combined with a wealth of other information indicating that you're looking at (apples to apples, quad to quad) literally 2007/2008-era performance with a HUGE clock for clock disparity even with Intel's offerings from the time period. Seriously, look at that, 700MHz on the Core2Quad and it either keeps up or barely outpaces it.

Comparing your processor specifically to Sandy Bridge's mid-range enthusiast lineup shows how even with two additional cores, it more or less can't keep up, and on anything that emphasizes fewer threads it gets, just, totally demolished... or compare it to a 3770K, ouch.

Two core comparisons - the top end Phenom II X2 vs. the bottom of the rung Sandy Bridge i3-2100. 300MHz disparity in favor of the Phenom II X2. This should help effectively demonstrate that the cores themselves are slow as poo poo and having more of them doesn't help.

Doesn't even get into overclocking, where the Sandy Bridge/Ivy Bridge processors really start to shine. You still don't think you might be holding back a graphics card that is, in most cases, able to keep up relatively well with a GTX 670?

Agreed fucked around with this message at 05:03 on Aug 27, 2012

InstantInfidel
Jan 9, 2010

BEST :10bux: I EVER SPENT

The Lord Bude posted:

I'd be interested to see any other data from other tests beyond that report. They only tested 3 games, all at 1920x1080 rather than 2560x1440. I suspect the difference would be slimmer at the higher resolution. BF3 is easily the most demanding graphically of the 3 games they tested and it in particular showed virtually no difference between CPUs. Skyrim, on the other hand is well known as pretty much the most CPU limited game in recent memory, and should never have been used in that test simply because it is such an anomaly.

I'd like to see more data, and particularly more data from a much wider array of games, before I put too much stock in what they are saying.

If I was going to replace my cpu/mobo/ram - do you think a reinstall of windows would be called for? I replaced my hard drive only a few months ago, so I certainly wouldn't be replacing that.

Battlefield on Ultra is less demanding than Skyrim, and both run at better than 60 FPS on 2560x1600 with the highest preset. Also, Skyrim isn't even especially rigorous on a CPU. In the report Agreed linked, they even test it- using 4-year old dual core CPUs, it still manages to break 50 FPS in a GPU-unlimited situation. Performance scales very accurately with resolution- a setup won't have a 25% margin between 2 games and then magically reduce that margin by 10% when you double the resolution. It'll still be around 25%, assuming you haven't hit some insurmountable wall (like using HD4000 on a 1440p monitor, which would produce outliers).

Seriously. Spend that same $1000 and get a 2500k, and a Z77 mobo. If you buy a 690 as-is, then you're going to be lighting all of your money on fire, since your CPU is kicking you in the balls while your monitor laughs.

edit: Agreed always makes better posts than i can :(

The Lord Bude
May 23, 2007

ASK ME ABOUT MY SHITTY, BOUGIE INTERIOR DECORATING ADVICE

Agreed posted:

Windows 7 is pretty tolerant of hardware changes, but even so the worst case scenario is you reactivate it, which is usually automatic and at its most difficult and involved, just requires you to call a number and tell them some basic information and it's solved.

As to your willingness to accept the data presented, that's your business, I guess, but I find it to be not the sole determinant, but rather the capstone, combined with a wealth of other information indicating that you're looking at literally 2007/2008-era performance with a notable clock for clock disparity even with Intel's offerings from the time period. Comparing it to Sandy Bridge's mid-range enthusiast lineup shows how even with two additional cores, it more or less can't keep up, and on anything that emphasizes fewer threads it gets, just, totally demolished... or compare it to a 3770K, ouch.

Two core comparisons - the top end Phenom II X2 vs. the bottom of the rung Sandy Bridge i3-2100. 300MHz disparity in favor of the Phenom II X2. This should help effectively demonstrate that the cores themselves are slow as poo poo and having more of them doesn't help.

Doesn't even get into overclocking, where the Sandy Bridge/Ivy Bridge processors really start to shine. You still don't think you might be holding back a graphics card that is, in most cases, able to keep up relatively well with a GTX 670?

I'm very happy to accept that there is a significant performance difference between CPUs, I'm just not convinced that that will translate into a significant performance difference in most games, skyrim notwithstanding.

edit: I am now strongly considering buying a 680 instead of a 690, but I probably won't be replacing anything else just yet. (Except maybe my gamepad, don't ever buy a razer onza...just sayin.)

The Lord Bude fucked around with this message at 05:07 on Aug 27, 2012

craig588
Nov 19, 2005

by Nyc_Tattoo
Put it simply: Upgrading your videocard before you upgrade your CPU is a waste of money. Yeah a 690 will be faster, but upgrading your CPU will provide you with larger gains for less money.

I like to reformat after switching motherboards and videocards, but it's probably not strictly necessary. It's good for the piece of mind knowing for sure that there's nothing left over from a previous driver installation, but there are tools that can take care of that well enough.

Low resolutions highlight CPU limits better, but it's not like they go away when you step up.

InstantInfidel
Jan 9, 2010

BEST :10bux: I EVER SPENT

The Lord Bude posted:

I'm very happy to accept that there is a significant performance difference between CPUs, I'm just not convinced that that will translate into a significant performance difference in most games, skyrim notwithstanding.

Jesus, you've got at least 3 people telling you that it will and you still don't believe us?

Look, let's be blunt: your processor is a relic piece of poo poo at this point. it's your bottleneck, not the GPU. If you want to spend $1000 and not see any improvement at all, then go do it and stop trolling the thread.

edit: and don't go buy a goddamn 680 until you upgrade your CPU and see the difference. I suggested that before I realized you were using an AMD processor. Upgrade your CPU and motherboard, and only then should you consider buying a 680.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
Well, in many games, you're right, it won't make a difference. They just aren't that CPU reliant. The point of the article Agreed linked was to look a little further into some of the cases where it does, and how exactly it does even when the average framerate isn't very revealing.

Then, of course, there are games where it matters a great deal even without distinguishing between mean frame time and 99th percentile frame time.





Agreed
Dec 30, 2003

The price of meat has just gone up, and your old lady has just gone down

The Lord Bude posted:

I'm very happy to accept that there is a significant performance difference between CPUs, I'm just not convinced that that will translate into a significant performance difference in most games, skyrim notwithstanding.

edit: I am now strongly considering buying a 680 instead of a 690, but I probably won't be replacing anything else just yet. (Except maybe my gamepad, don't ever buy a razer onza...just sayin.)

1. Evidence to the contrary? Now that I've gone to the trouble of drawing on quite a bit of info to make my point and you're rejecting it out of hand, I'd like you to produce some solid evidence that the dramatic performance disparities that we both agree are present somehow aren't affecting gaming performance, please. Edit: Factory Factory might appreciate this too, since he's also provided examples of what we're talking about. Your CPU will be the bottleneck going forward, it just doesn't have performance comparable to its contemporary competition, let alone now, generations later. Pairing a high-end graphics card with a CPU that won't let it do its thing is a waste of money. But, producing evidence to that fact seems like it's a waste of time, if you're going to dismiss by just hand-waving it away as "yeah, the CPU is way worse than modern ones, but so what?"

2. Don't get a 680, a 670 performs within 10% of it and it can keep that 10% throughout both cards' overclocking capabilities. This is the least performance gap between top-end and second-tier since the 6-series GeForces had the 6800 GT that was just an underclocked 6800 Ultra (for either artificial scarcity reasons, or because the chip didn't make the cut). You could usually flash it to a 6800 Ultra without any issues. Today, BIOS flashing the 670 to reenable the cut SMX is not necessary (we have robust overclocking tools instead) or possible as far as I know.. but the performance difference at their respective price points is comparable. You can make a sucker move and buy the GTX 680 just because it has an extra number and every possible SMX enabled, or you can buy the GTX 670, save a hundred bucks or more, lose one SMX and nothing else, then overclock it slightly to make up the difference - or more aggressively to outpace a stock 680.

Agreed fucked around with this message at 05:24 on Aug 27, 2012

TheRationalRedditor
Jul 17, 2000

WHO ABUSED HIM. WHO ABUSED THE BOY.
^On that note, I'm super pleased with my 670's OC performance so far. This skyhigh clockin' RAM is great, and thanks to the windforce dingus I have yet to see it climb above 66C on a hot day without the fans ever exceeding 45%. Agreed is speaking truth...to value~

InstantInfidel posted:

See, I thought that too, but according to those benchmarks (I just love benchmarks and would probably do horrible things to get a job at Anandtech) it actually beats a 6970, and is surprisingly close to a 680, especially given that it's 2 generations older.
Yeah but ultimately it still comes up short, I mean we're talking a 680 here. I'm speaking in terms of absolute graphics muscle, but I would not for a second deny that the 5970 wasn't a ridiculous powerhouse of its generation.

TheRationalRedditor fucked around with this message at 05:31 on Aug 27, 2012

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
Well, you have to remember that it's a dual-GPU CrossFire-on-a-card. It's two 5870s. No kidding it holds up sorta well against new single-GPU cards in terms of frames, but it's also sucking down more power, complicating your life with drivers and application profiles, and threatening micro-stutter for the privilege.

The Lord Bude
May 23, 2007

ASK ME ABOUT MY SHITTY, BOUGIE INTERIOR DECORATING ADVICE
I think I might wait till my PC hits the 3 year mark in July next year and upgrade everything at once... I was planning to upgrade the graphics card now and then stretch it out another couple of years, but I think I'll wait. By next July single GPU cards should have reached the point where they can well and truly blow my 5970 out of the water.

It'll be interesting to see If I can detect the newfound lack of microstutter... I've never not had a dual GPU card.

TheRationalRedditor
Jul 17, 2000

WHO ABUSED HIM. WHO ABUSED THE BOY.

Factory Factory posted:

Well, you have to remember that it's a dual-GPU CrossFire-on-a-card. It's two 5870s. No kidding it holds up sorta well against new single-GPU cards in terms of frames, but it's also sucking down more power, complicating your life with drivers and application profiles, and threatening micro-stutter for the privilege.
I did not remember that! Oops!

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
Nobody cares, but remember how a few posts ago I mentioned that AMD was discontinuing the Firestream series of server-optimized HPC cards?

Never mind. FirePro S9000 and S7000, passive-cooled and tightly-TDP-controlled Tahiti and Pitcairn GPUs for HPC servers. Firestream by a different name, and a direct competitor to Nvidia Tesla cards in a number of use cases. The S9000 is for compute (as it has ECC RAM), and the S7000 is for render farms or RemoteFX rendering and suchlike.

Agreed
Dec 30, 2003

The price of meat has just gone up, and your old lady has just gone down

Factory Factory posted:

Nobody cares, but remember how a few posts ago I mentioned that AMD was discontinuing the Firestream series of server-optimized HPC cards?

Never mind. FirePro S9000 and S7000, passive-cooled and tightly-TDP-controlled Tahiti and Pitcairn GPUs for HPC servers. Firestream by a different name, and a direct competitor to Nvidia Tesla cards in a number of use cases. The S9000 is for compute (as it has ECC RAM), and the S7000 is for render farms or RemoteFX rendering and suchlike.

Tangentially related, but I am going to be extremely interested to see how this generation's Quadro/Tesla cards fare against ATI's workstation lineup. 7 billion is a very large number but it carries a very large price tag, I could see certain applications better suited for ATI's "well you get 12 billion if you buy three :haw:" approach, but nVidia carries a really strong advantage in certain sectors with CUDA (which really does keep getting better and better as far as its maturity as an API goes and which, when it isn't doing PhysX silly-time in videogames, is capable of some really neat stuff from the ground up).

ATI may be just a little too highly parallel in their execution pathway for GPGPU to do some tasks, there is something to be said for a bunch of little moderately more sophisticated singular processors. Especially when they're well-supported by nVidia's API and substantial development support. If you're cracking passwords or bitcoin mining, sure, go with ATI (you bad person, you), but... Hell, I don't know. We'll see how it pans out. They just don't have a lot of mature GPGPU implementations to draw real data from for the sake of comparison, but one thing that's clear is that when a given well-funded GPGPU task is being put together, they're gonna either buy fewer nVidia units or quite a lot of ATI ones, and work around that. Not exactly idiots we're talking about here, I guess they could really make either work, depending on who is willing to give the better deal, at a certain level financially anyway.

Noticed a lot of buzz about nVidia getting government and military contracts, as well as a lot of sonar applications in the private sector too. I haven't seen ATI market their GPGPU nearly as well, which is unfortunate as it is powerful, if a bit raw?

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
In terms of GPGPU, GCN is AMD's Fermi - the first architecture that really can make a good show of things. And they've got an uphill battle against CUDA lock-in, as well.

For the moment, I think AMD has the advantage in performance per watt on the S9000 and overall density on the S7000. For Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, basically one 7870 per PCIe slot is pretty hot poo poo, because that's a lot of desktops rendered in not a lot of boxes. Nvidia's expected competitor card is quad GK107 in two slots, which isn't very competitive in terms of performance per physical space.

HalloKitty
Sep 30, 2005

Adjust the bass and let the Alpine blast

The Lord Bude posted:

I have a phenom IIx6 1090T, so I should be fine as far as CPU bottlenecking goes.

No. Any AMD CPU bottlenecks the crap out of any available high end GPU. Many benchmarks are available. Doesn't matter how much you clock it, it's the sad truth. Especially a 690, drat..

With a 5970 right now, there's nowhere meaningful for you to go without replacing the CPU, in my opinion..

The Lord Bude
May 23, 2007

ASK ME ABOUT MY SHITTY, BOUGIE INTERIOR DECORATING ADVICE

HalloKitty posted:

No. Any AMD CPU bottlenecks the crap out of any available high end GPU. Many benchmarks are available. Doesn't matter how much you clock it, it's the sad truth. Especially a 690, drat..

With a 5970 right now, there's nowhere meaningful for you to go without replacing the CPU, in my opinion..

A full makeover is outside my budget, so I'll wait till July. My computer will be 3 years old then, so I can go back to my original plan of replacing my PC entirely every 3 years.

I do want to try and overclock my cpu to see if it makes any difference in benchmarks though. I've downloaded uniengine heaven, and I'll get cracking in the morning. I've never overclocked a cpu before, so I'll need to do some reading up first.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
A full makeover is outside your budget?! You were just about to dump $1549 on a single video card! Even at Australian prices, you can get a whole new set of core components that blows your current system out of the water plus a GeForce 670 with cash to spare. Then, if you still aren't satisfied with it, you can get another GeForce 670 in your new SLI-capable motherboard, and you still have not spent much more than the GeForce 690 costs.

Dogen
May 5, 2002

Bury my body down by the highwayside, so that my old evil spirit can get a Greyhound bus and ride

Factory Factory posted:

A full makeover is outside your budget?! You were just about to dump $1549 on a single video card! Even at Australian prices, you can get a whole new set of core components that blows your current system out of the water plus a GeForce 670 with cash to spare. Then, if you still aren't satisfied with it, you can get another GeForce 670 in your new SLI-capable motherboard, and you still have not spent much more than the GeForce 690 costs.

Seconding this, if you were thinking about buying a 690, you have more than enough money to redo the rest of your system.

Cavauro
Jan 9, 2008

The Lord Bude posted:

A full makeover is outside my budget, so I'll wait till July. My computer will be 3 years old then, so I can go back to my original plan of replacing my PC entirely every 3 years.

I do want to try and overclock my cpu to see if it makes any difference in benchmarks though. I've downloaded uniengine heaven, and I'll get cracking in the morning. I've never overclocked a cpu before, so I'll need to do some reading up first.

If we were to say that you had a momentary lapse in sanity about the GPU thing and you might be okay with waiting nearly a full year, you'll be able to grab an LGA 1150 motherboard by the time you build a new system and it will make you feel pretty bad for ever owning that AMD processor. Ivy Bridge would too but :shrug:

Boten Anna
Feb 22, 2010

I have a GTX 670 and am not want for anything, but I "only" have one 2560x1440 display to drive. Like seriously the only wall I've hit is streaming The Secret World at that resolution with the graphics on high, and even then it just makes the game run at a playable but noticeably lower framerate. I just don't know what one would need beyond that unless they wanted to do one of those surround monitor setups but loving christ on a stick I can't even look at my entire 2560 monitor at once.

Martello
Apr 29, 2012

by XyloJW
I have 2 GTX 670s hooked up to a 22-inch Samsung Syncmaster and a 30-inch Dell UltraSharp. It's pretty loving awesome, and I don't mind that I can't look at both screens at once.



:smug:

The Lord Bude
May 23, 2007

ASK ME ABOUT MY SHITTY, BOUGIE INTERIOR DECORATING ADVICE

Factory Factory posted:

A full makeover is outside your budget?! You were just about to dump $1549 on a single video card! Even at Australian prices, you can get a whole new set of core components that blows your current system out of the water plus a GeForce 670 with cash to spare. Then, if you still aren't satisfied with it, you can get another GeForce 670 in your new SLI-capable motherboard, and you still have not spent much more than the GeForce 690 costs.

I was never going to spend $1549. I was waiting for a 690 to hit $1k. I'd need about $1600 to replace cpu-mobo-cooler-ram-gpu all at once. Either way though, I'm still going to wait till next year.

InstantInfidel
Jan 9, 2010

BEST :10bux: I EVER SPENT

The Lord Bude posted:

I was never going to spend $1549. I was waiting for a 690 to hit $1k. I'd need about $1600 to replace cpu-mobo-cooler-ram-gpu all at once. Either way though, I'm still going to wait till next year.

What? The i5 is $220, a good Z77 is $175, RAM is $30 (and you probably wouldn't need to replace it), a good PSU is $80, and a nice, new case is $100, tops. That comes out to just around $605; you might not need to replace your case if you're happy with what you have (but you *need* to replace your PSU if it's 4+ years old). Your current GPU might meet your expectations, but even if it doesn't, the 670 is $400 and that still puts you at just over $1000, and it'll handle 1600p just fine.

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Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
And before you say "But Australia!" I priced it out on Mwave and it's still ballpark.

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