HD6950 2GB vs. GTX 570

[gibbs007]

Hi, I just can't decide between these two card: Sapphire HD6950 2GB DIRT3 Editon or Palit GTX 570. I've looked at many benchmarks and in some the 6950 is better. It's also 50€ cheaper, but I've read that AMD drivers are worse than Nvidia's.
So, which one should I choose?

 

[Achilles97]

People have had good luck unlocking that 6950 Dirt3 edition but I've seen recent posts of it not unlocking anymore.

Just yesterday I got a 6970 and did some comparisons with my friend's 570 on my machine with a 2500k @ 4.5ghz. The 570 was the EVGA Overclock edition and I overclocked my 6970 to 950 core. I was a bit surprised that the 570 edged out the 6970 in most benchmarks at 1920x1200, including Crysis2 and BF3.

I'm not sure about the 6950 but I do know that the 570 is very good relative to the 6970...

 

[96Firebird]

What resolution and what games?

Also, what is the rest of your setup?

 

[Ossah]

I have a 6970 and have had no problem with drivers. Had a 4870 before that and again have never had problems.

The current drivers are very stable for me anyway and have been for the last few iterations.

I did have a few weird crashes in Trackmania Canyons but that was due to my system getting to hot. I manually set the 6970s fan to around 40% and the problem disappeared. I have since replaced my mobo/cpu/ram and get no problems now.

Not sure about the difference between 6950 and 570 but when I was buying my 6970 I can remember that it was pretty much a toss up between the 6970 and 570.
I went with the 6970 cause I managed to get it on offer and was over 50 euro cheaper than the 570.

A friend of mine went with the 570 and he loves it.

Personal preference I'd say.

 

[gibbs007]

It would be for my new build: i7 2600K, 8GB, Asrock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3.
My resolution is 1920x1080, and I would like to run BF3 on Ultra at 40+ FPS if that is even possible with GTX 570 or 6950.

I'm leaning toward GTX 570, but I've read somewhere that there's a problem with overclocking them.

 

[Ossah]

I have pretty much the same system but I have the Asrock P68 Extreme4 Gen3 with 16GB ram and the 6970.
I run BF3 on Ultra and am definitely getting over 40fps.
Have never tested but it is definitely above the 40.

 

[NumericalMethods]

The reference GTX570 has relatively cheap power delivery circuitry. Therefore, if you overclock and overvolt a reference design card, there is a risk you can burn out the card's power regulation circuitry. If you buy a non-ref card then some of them have updated circuitry to address this.

Personally if I bought a reference design GTX570 I would only overclock it on its stock voltage. That should be safe enough.

 

[gibbs007]

So, if I go with a GTX 570 would a 650W 80+BRONZE PSU be enough to power all the system?
P.S.: I can get a Zotac GTX 560 Ti 448 Core for 30€ less, but somebody at this forum said that there could be problems with drivers?

 

[RavenSEAL]

People really need to get over this "Uhhhh, AMD drivers suck! nVidia ftw!"

They both have their problems, for what it's worth, nVidia was killing off $800 GTX590s at a point because of badly programmed drivers. So please, get over it and go where the best bang/buck is.

In this case, the HD 6970 is the better choice because of the excessive amount of vRam Battlefield 3 uses @ Ultra settings.

 

[tviceman]

It would be for my new build: i7 2600K, 8GB, Asrock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3.
My resolution is 1920x1080, and I would like to run BF3 on Ultra at 40+ FPS if that is even possible with GTX 570 or 6950.

I'm leaning toward GTX 570, but I've read somewhere that there's a problem with overclocking them.

You can get either card and be happy at the resolution. The hd6950 is significantly cheaper, but the gtx570 is at times noticeably faster. Fast enough to justify the price difference, though? That is up to you.

I have a gtx570 running @850mhz on the core and 2075mhz on the memory. It's the asus direct CUII gtx570. It's by far the largest card I've ever seen with my own eyes, but it does it's job well of keeping the card extremely cool. Fans always stay at or under 30%, and temps have yet to hit 70 degrees while gaming or with Unigine Heaven 2.5 continuous loops.

 

[96Firebird]

People really need to get over this "Uhhhh, AMD drivers suck! nVidia ftw!"

They both have their problems, for what it's worth, nVidia was killing off $800 GTX590s at a point because of badly programmed drivers. So please, get over it and go where the best bang/buck is.

In this case, the HD 6970 is the better choice because of the excessive amount of vRam Battlefield 3 uses @ Ultra settings.

No one bashed AMD for their drivers in this thread, the OP said he read that they might have problems... Unlike most new people who post here, he did some research first.

He should be fine with the 1.25GB on the GTX 570 since he is only playing at 1080p with one monitor. The HD6970 wasn't a consideration in this thread, unless you meant the HD6950.

gibbs007, you can consider the GTX 560Ti 448 core, since it also has 1.25GB VRAM. But I wouldn't worry about running out of VRAM at 1080p, so its really up to you. I haven't heard of any driver problems with this card, but it is fairly new...

Oh, and your PSU should be fine for any of them, a quality 650W PSU can power all single-GPU cards.

 

[tweakboy]

I think its a fair game, but nVidia wins because of Phsyx. batman or dirt 3 nvidia wins!!!

 

[RavenSEAL]

No one bashed AMD for their drivers in this thread, the OP said he read that they might have problems... Unlike most new people who post here, he did some research first.

He should be fine with the 1.25GB on the GTX 570 since he is only playing at 1080p with one monitor. The HD6970 wasn't a consideration in this thread, unless you meant the HD6950.

gibbs007, you can consider the GTX 560Ti 448 core, since it also has 1.25GB VRAM. But I wouldn't worry about running out of VRAM at 1080p, so its really up to you. I haven't heard of any driver problems with this card, but it is fairly new...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130593

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814102957

$10 difference for an extra 768MB of RAM and equal/better performance?

Oh, and for reference:

I've read that AMD drivers are worse than Nvidia's.

 

[RavenSEAL]

I think its a fair game, but nVidia wins because of Phsyx. batman or dirt 3 nvidia wins!!!

Disagreed, PhysX is nothing more than a GPU usage draining gimmick. The only game that's far worth its use is Mafia II.

 

[swilli89]

It would be for my new build: i7 2600K, 8GB, Asrock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3.
My resolution is 1920x1080, and I would like to run BF3 on Ultra at 40+ FPS if that is even possible with GTX 570 or 6950.

I'm leaning toward GTX 570, but I've read somewhere that there's a problem with overclocking them.

Don't get that mobo. Horrible memory compatibility. I'm on my 3rd set and STILL have memory related BSOD, bad memtest86 results, instability and I can't boot with any more than 4 gb. I literally hate this motherboard even though its an inanimate object. I had 5 years of perfect stability with my Asus P5W 975x board. I've had more problems with this "asrock" in the past month than the rest of my computer building history, dating back to Athlon thunderbirds, COMBINED.

 

[96Firebird]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130593

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814102957

$10 difference for an extra 768MB of RAM and equal/better performance?

He is quoting euro prices, so I doubt Newegg prices matter to him.

And you went from...

...but I've read that AMD drivers are worse than Nvidia's.

To...

People really need to get over this "Uhhhh, AMD drivers suck! nVidia ftw!"

And swilli89, I have had no problems with my motherboard, weird that you are having problems finding memory that works. Have you tried to RMA? FWIW, I have 2 x 4GB G.Skill Sniper Series low voltage RAM, it runs at 1.25V. Maybe that is the difference...

 

[Arkaign]

Don't get that mobo. Horrible memory compatibility. I'm on my 3rd set and STILL have memory related BSOD, bad memtest86 results, instability and I can't boot with any more than 4 gb. I literally hate this motherboard even though its an inanimate object. I had 5 years of perfect stability with my Asus P5W 975x board. I've had more problems with this "asrock" in the past month than the rest of my computer building history, dating back to Athlon thunderbirds, COMBINED.

Sorry to hear that. I have also had great luck with Asus (Gigabyte as well) over the years.

I'm currently using a 2500k @ 4.5 on an Asus P67 Pro, and it's utterly perfect. No IGP access, but that matters not to me.

 

[lavaheadache]

I think its a fair game, but nVidia wins because of Phsyx. batman or dirt 3 nvidia wins!!!

Didn't you just make a thread saying that Physx is irrelevant because it is near nonexistant in games?


http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2211390

 

[gibbs007]

Don't get that mobo. Horrible memory compatibility. I'm on my 3rd set and STILL have memory related BSOD, bad memtest86 results, instability and I can't boot with any more than 4 gb. I literally hate this motherboard even though its an inanimate object. I had 5 years of perfect stability with my Asus P5W 975x board. I've had more problems with this "asrock" in the past month than the rest of my computer building history, dating back to Athlon thunderbirds, COMBINED.

I did my research about Extreme3 Gen3 (on Newegg, this forum, in my country) and most people love it. So I'm gonna stay with it.
I've choosen Palit GTX 570 Sonic Platinum. It's the cheapest version and according to Overclockersclub.com just a bit slower than gtx 580 when overclocked.
Thanks for the help:awe:

 

[96Firebird]

You'll be happy with it, let us know how you like it when you get everything set up!

 

[gibbs007]

Hi, me again. I was about to buy the gtx 570, but then I saw this video LINK , where it's says that Sapphire HD6950 Dirt3 Edition comes with a little button, that "transforms" the 6950 into 6970 withouth flashing the bios.
("People, this card comes with the 6950 and 6970 bios.If you change the switch position and then look in the gpu-z you will see the shaders unlocked. you don't have to flash anything, just change the switch and encrease the clocks manually.")
Is that true?

 

[Achilles97]

People have had good luck unlocking that 6950 Dirt3 edition but I've seen recent posts of it not unlocking anymore.

Just yesterday I got a 6970 and did some comparisons with my friend's 570 on my machine with a 2500k @ 4.5ghz. The 570 was the EVGA Overclock edition and I overclocked my 6970 to 950 core. I was a bit surprised that the 570 edged out the 6970 in most benchmarks at 1920x1200, including Crysis2 and BF3.

I'm not sure about the 6950 but I do know that the 570 is very good relative to the 6970...

After further testing in BF3, the 570 only slightly pulls ahead of the 6970 when msaa is enabled, otherwise the 6970 is ahead by a decent margin. So, an overclocked 6950 would probably perform quite nicely.

 

[Alienwho]

Hi, me again. I was about to buy the gtx 570, but then I saw this video LINK , where it's says that Sapphire HD6950 Dirt3 Edition comes with a little button, that "transforms" the 6950 into 6970 withouth flashing the bios.
("People, this card comes with the 6950 and 6970 bios.If you change the switch position and then look in the gpu-z you will see the shaders unlocked. you don't have to flash anything, just change the switch and encrease the clocks manually.")
Is that true?

Yes. I just got this card last month. Flipped the switch, overclocked it using stock voltage and bam I have a screaming sweet card. I LOVE this card. I run it at 1080p and it runs battlefield 3 at ultra (minus msaa) and skyrim smooth as butter when paired with an i7. Just get it, you will not regret it.

Also, the card stays cool. Idle's at 40C and seems to top out at about 53C for me in BF3 and it is dead quiet. I can't even hear it. My old 4870 would start screaming like a mad man the second I booted up any game.

 

[skipsneeky2]

People really need to get over this "Uhhhh, AMD drivers suck! nVidia ftw!"

They both have their problems, for what it's worth, nVidia was killing off $800 GTX590s at a point because of badly programmed drivers. So please, get over it and go where the best bang/buck is.

In this case, the HD 6970 is the better choice because of the excessive amount of vRam Battlefield 3 uses @ Ultra settings.

I agree with this post i just upgraded from a radeon 6750 i never had a single issue with their drivers .

Radeon was loaded with the latest drivers at the time with a near 6770 oc....not a ounce of stability problems...as for nvidia i got a couple driver crash's with BF3 but i think the 6950 is the smarter choice.

Or save the coin for the 6970:biggrin:

 

[RussianSensation]

Under most circumstances I'd recommend the 6950 @ 6970 speeds. However, if BF3 is going to be the main game for which you are getting the system, GTX560 Ti 448 or GTX570 in overclocked states are faster than an HD6970. Even without any overclocking, both of those cards are faster.

Once those cards are overclocked (i.e., near GTX580), the 6970 has no chance at all to catch them in BF3.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2011/11/29/zotac-geforce-gtx-560-ti-448-cores-review/6

and

YMMV, but outside of few cards like HD5850, AMD cards are generally lousy overclockers compared to NV's cards. HD6970 and HD5870 are poor overclockers to begin with. Neither of the 570 or 6970 cards are going to be fast enough to max out BF3 in multiplayer at 1080P to begin with, so perhaps it's a moot point. And if you disable 4x MSAA, the AMD card is going to be pretty much as good while saving you $.