GTX580 Upgrade Advice

[omber]

System Specifications:

I. Processor/CPU: i5 3570k 3.4 GHz

II. Current Graphics Card: eVGA GTX580 3GB

III. Display Resolution: 1920x1200

IV. Power Supply Unit: Corsair, 850W, 3+ years

V. Case Specifications: Cooler Master Cosmos S, Up to E-ATX, 7 Full Size expansion slots with plenty of space.

Purchase Details:

I. Budget? Prefer less than 1100 CAD

II. Any particular preferences?

Prefer Nvidia. Used to have AMD cards in past but they always ran hot and loud.

III. Do you plan to have any Multi-GPU solutions such as Crossfire or SLI?

No.

IV. Have you previously looked at a product(s) which you feel would fit your needs?

TITAN but it does not appear to be good value.

V. What are your needs for this GPU? Which games(If any)do you intend to play? If you have this information at hand, what are the desired detail levels?

Bioshock Infinite, Planetside 2

VI. Do you plan on overclocking the card you intend to purchase?

No unless recommended.

Additional Notes

1. CPU is currently not overclocked but it has a good cooler (Noctua D14) so it could be (and probably should be).
2. Originally intended to go out and just pick up eVGA GTX TITAN locally however looking at the card the performance it does not scale with the cost (or so it seems).
3. I would like to avoid SLI/Crossfire setups. I used to own GTX 295 and the microstuttering drove me nuts.
4. Currently Planetside 2 has to be run at Medium settings with no AA. I would like to run it at High settings with FXAA I Know PS2 is CPU intensive so the video card alone may not help.
5. Infinite is choppy on Very High and unplayable on Ultra.
6. Not stuck with Nvidia - if someone can make a compelling argument for AMD Im all for it.

 

[aaksheytalwar]

For single cards you can either buy a Titan or 7970 ghz. Get a good 7970 ghz and oc it past 1200mhz. That will be within 20-25% of an oced Titan for half the price.

 

[tarmc]

either 670 or 7950. im using a 670 and am very happy with it.


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[RockinZ28]

I was in the same boat. Titan is just way too expensive imo, especially at the rate hardware depreciates/becomes obsolete. Even though I have enough money to buy dozens of them, just doesn't seem worth it. Was ready to drop $500-600 on a GTX780, but yea...

I just went with a used GTX 580 1.5gb for SLI. Had never tried SLI, was concerned about microstutter, but luckily seems I don't notice it and won't go looking for it. For $200 it was worth a try. I think SLI has improved in this regard since the 200 series?

Very pleased with the results though. Far Cry 3, Tomb Raider, Crysis 3 and Bioshock Infinite all run great at max settings, which were struggling at lower settings on a single 580 at 1080p.

Otherwise probably just grab a AMD 7970 or GTX680 and sell the 580 if you want to avoid multi gpu. And overclock that cpu, now.

 

[aaksheytalwar]

either 670 or 7950. im using a 670 and am very happy with it.


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Wrong answer. If you have the budget for a Titan then those cards make no sense.

 

[omber]

680 looks like the best choice so far. It's more expensive but faster than 7970 GHz even when overclocked. Comments?

 

[peonyu]

680 looks like the best choice so far. It's more expensive but faster than 7970 GHz even when overclocked. Comments?

7970 is faster than a 680, its been that way for close to a year now with the summer driver update in 2012.

 

[aaksheytalwar]

680 looks like the best choice so far. It's more expensive but faster than 7970 GHz even when overclocked. Comments?

Reported you.

 

[fixbsod]

The options I see are (and BTW I am in the same boat as you with a 580 and yearning for just a BIT more)

Geforce 670 -- prolly only Nvidia only option for 1 card
Geforce 580 and SLI it -- SLI obv, but likely best bang for $
Radeon 7970GE

Or you could always wait too!

 

[tarmc]

Quote:

Originally Posted by tarmc

either 670 or 7950. im using a 670 and am very happy with it.


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Wrong answer. If you have the budget for a Titan then those cards make no sense.

no sense spending that much on a titan when 670 sli or 7950 cf perform better for less


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[TakeNoPrisoners]

Personally I wouldn't upgrade unless you can get a Titan. Don't mess with SLI or Crossfire unless you want to play with it a bit. Sure some 7970s can get close to Titan performance when overclocked but the Titan has a lot of headroom to overclock as well and can smoke any 7970 at that point.

 

[omber]

Must be looking in wrong Googles. Can anyone point me to a recent (ie 2013) overclocking test of 680 vs. 7970 GHz?

I was looking at HardOCP's 7970 GHz Edition Overlocking review and the same for GTX 680. Overclocked 680 was 25% faster in BF3 than 7970 (61 vs. 46 average FPS) however these articles are 10 to 12 months old.

 

[p_monks33]

Im surprised the 580 won't run bioshock infinite at 1200p with max settings. I would have though at least 40-50 FPS, if you can hold out a bit more, I think the GTX 780 at less than hopefully 650 dollars will be a great upgrade.

 

[jenneth]

I'm sort of on the same boat as well. I have an 560Ti and I've been thinking about getting either a 670 or a 7970. I'm strongly leaning toward getting either of those cards (thereby skipping the 780) and upgrade to a Maxwell next year.

 

[RussianSensation]

Must be looking in wrong Googles. Can anyone point me to a recent (ie 2013) overclocking test of 680 vs. 7970 GHz?

I was looking at HardOCP's 7970 GHz Edition Overlocking review and the same for GTX 680. Overclocked 680 was 25% faster in BF3 than 7970 (61 vs. 46 average FPS) however these articles are 10 to 12 months old.

That's before AMD added 25-30% more performance in BF3. HD7970GE is faster than 680 in BF3 now. Here is BF3 tested on both cards on December 19, 2012 on video side by side.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_Titan/9.html

If you are looking at old reviews, you are just wasting your time. You should be looking at reviews dating from at least November. There is not much point in comparing HD7970 OC vs. GTX680 OC because all you need to do is compare a stock HD7970GE vs. a GTX680. Since GTX680 doesn't overclock better than 7970 and neither does it scale better, if the 7970GE outperforms a GTX680 in a particular game, it'll outperform it overclocked too and vice versa is true for the 680.

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...70-3gb-matrix-platinum-edition-review-20.html

You can also just look at reviews of the Titan as it'll have HD7970GE vs. 680 in them:

http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/grafikkarten/2013/test-nvidia-geforce-gtx-titan/7/

or

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/graphics/display/nvidia-geforce-gtx-titan_11.html#sect0

HD7970GE is the faster graphics card today on average.

But again it depends on the game. Planetside 2 also seems to run faster on NV.
http://gamegpu.ru/images/stories/Test_GPU/MMO/PlanetSide 2/ps2 1920.png

In your case, if you don't want to go spend $ on the Titan, the 680 seems like the better card since it performs better in the 2 games you listed, specifically in Planetside 2 where your 580 is struggling. But you honestly picked the worst time to upgrade to the 680. The card has barely dropped in price despite being out on the market for more than a year. It costs $450-470 CDN for a good version, which is just $30-50 less than around April 2012. I wouldn't spend $450+ right now on a 1 year old 680/7970GE. Alternatively, you can grab the Titan and pay close attention to the launch of 20nm Volcanic Islands/Maxwell. If you time it right and sell the Titan 1 month before those cards launch, you might only lose $200-300 on the Titan and have performance 2x faster than your 580 for about a year as 20nm GPUs aren't expected to launch until 2H of 2014.

 

[omber]

Okay but that is assuming I want to sell my old cards for some return value (usually just give them away to the needy). Do you think I could get high FPS out of Titan for two years?

 

[aaksheytalwar]

Two years no way. It barely manages to max out the intensive games at 1080p right now. By the turn of the year there will be many games where you will need to use 0 AA even at 1080.

 

[imaheadcase]

Just get a SLI 580 setup, works perfect in games you mentioned you play. Never had frame drips in Planetside 2 with my SLI 580s. Honestly its the best upgrade option you got right now.

 

[omber]

580 GTX SLI: I did consider it but finding a second 580 is hard at best (mine is 3GB).

Honestly the 7970GE idea is looking better and better.

 

[RussianSensation]

580 GTX SLI: I did consider it but finding a second 580 is hard at best (mine is 3GB).

Honestly the 7970GE idea is looking better and better.

You live in Canada where electricity costs are dirt cheap. 2x HD7970s @ 1150mhz are making $400 in bitcoins a month based on 1350 Mhash/sec rate. That means in 2-3 months those cards will be completely paid off. Even if Cross-fire doesn't work some of the time, a single HD7970GE is still an upgrade from your 580. Then when 20nm GPUs launch, you can dump the 7970s and get yourself something for $650 with performance faster than the Titan. This way you get Bioshock Infinite for free, and cards that make you $ when you are not gaming. People have been ignoring bitcoin mining for 12 months since the discussion of GTX680 vs. 7970 came out. Since then I've made enough $ from my 7970s to give me at least 10 free GPU upgrades. How is that for bang for the buck? GTX680 or the Titan cannot do this.

 

[Zanovar]

I would hold on to the card tbh,maybe grab a second if dirt cheap.wait for next round imo.

 

[aarontpx]

With a budget like that and you aren't really digging the whole Titan or gtx 690 road I'd probably pick up a 7950/670 and overclock it until Nvidia releases the gtx 7 series. In my opinion the 7950/670 are the best value for the money, ESPECIALLY when overclocked. You will slay all current games at that resolution.

 

[FalseChristian]

SLI works very well now and there is very little microstuttering. On my 2 GTX 460 1GB SLI setup I'm averaging an 80% gain over 1 GPU. I couldn't be happier.