Nvidia 580 GTX
So what has everyone been hearing about this new card? Any try it out with COH yet? I'm looking at getting a brand new system this card has been suggested to me to get.
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What I've been hearing is that investors are continuing to panic over Nvidia's corporate actions. None of Nvidia's high-end cards are profitable, and Nvidia still hasn't issued an answer to the now low end market RadeonHD 5770... the segment of the market that moves the most amount of cards, and thus drives the largest profits.
The only reason to buy a GTX 580, and I mean the ONLY reason to buy it, is that you want the Nvidia badge. That's it. There's no other reason to get one.
Thing is, buying one of the GTX 580's on the street will set you back around $500: http://www.pricewatch.com/search?q=GTX+580
AMD's upcoming 6970 will reportedly be launching at a $400 price-point. The big worry for fans of green is that AMD's much cheaper card, on paper, outruns the GTX 580. Now, on-paper and in theory doesn't always translate to real world performance. Case in point, GTS 250. On paper it drastically outpowers RadeonHD 4850. In real games... it doesn't.
Now, given that Nvidia's set the GTX 580 pricing pretty much in Ludicrous-ville, AMD might launch their next highest end card with a higher price and sustain their own inflated pricing like they did with the HD 5000 series cards. It's also expected that AMD won't rush the 6900 series to market. Right now there's no need to kick a product out the door just to get a product out the door. So you'll actually probably have a shot at laying hands on one.
Now, is the GTX 580 as much of a rip-off as the GTX 480 and 470?
Well, in the absence of a direct competitor card from AMD, determining whether or not it's a complete rip-off would be unfair. If you want the absolute amount of maximum rendering power right now, today, then sure, the GTX 580 is your card of choice.
I just have to ask two questions: If you have $500 to begin with to spend on just a graphics card alone...
is your business hiring?
do they need another technician?
CoH takes advantage of SLI. Crossfire, not so much. The cone of silence around AMD Crossfire is deafening. I'll be going back to nVidia once I build a Sandy Bridge system next year if nothing has changed here.
SLI GTX580s would be nice. The AMD promotion here has been a waste for me since I got a 5970 in anticipation of Crossfire and Eyefinity support for this game, neither of which have happened.
Check out this article.
http://www.pcauthority.com.au/News/2...e-gtx-580.aspx
Personally I'd stick with a 480, based on that. There's bound to be some more up-to-date information of course, I just remembered reading this one a lil while back.
I'm also not really sure what the fuss is about multiple-GPU support. I'm running a Radeon HD 5870 and I can max ultra mode (on ALL settings, including my supported max resolution, etc.) on a single client with 40+ FPS constantly. Of course I run windowed so I can do 2 or 3 clients with mid to high UM settings, when needed.
Between the Loyalists and Resistance, I'd be tempted to support Praetorian Hamidon.
One side uses mind police and will "disappear" you and the other uses poison gas and bombs on civilians. Hamidon? He'll just have a tree eat you. Much simpler. If we're all going to be oppressed and/or killed by someone, it might as well be the walking trees. At least they don't speak in annoying code or doublespeak. They just devour you. |
So what has everyone been hearing about this new card? Any try it out with COH yet? I'm looking at getting a brand new system this card has been suggested to me to get.
|
As to the 580. It's nVidia's "refresh" product. Normally with nVidia, you'll see a new product released with a bunch of new technology, architecture, etc. That's what the 470 and 480 were.
Six months to a year down the road, they release their refresh product. They've respun and/or downsized the core, made some optimizations, fixed some nastiness from the original releases and gotten a better handle on the drivers. Performance is better, everyone's happy, etc.
The only thing you need to keep in mind is that the 580 is basically going to be going for a price premium. You can buy whole computers for less than the cost of the 580.
As to the people who're saying "wait till AMD releases their next chip".
That's great, fine and wonderful. And yes, the next iteration of the Radeon line looks to be a doozy.
And a piss-poor, self-defeating argument. If you wait, you'll ALWAYS get something better "down the road".
My advice is "buy the best available to you, in your price range, at the time you're looking to buy. If the timetable for "something better is more than a month, forget about it and buy now.
As for AMD vs nVidia. Pay attention to people's biases here (even mine). Both cards work equally well in the game. Both cards have their own flaws and high points with regards to this game.
Now a word from my bias. Notice there's a couple nice amalgamated threads for issues with ATI/AMD cards. Notice that there really isn't anything similar with nVidia. Also keep in mind the game was originally optimized with nVidia's cards/drivers in mind. Yes, there's been attempts to clean the game up and make it more vendor neutral. But still.
In the end, do your research, make your own decision.
I have to agree completly with je_saist.
I have looked over the stats, and the architecture changes (what little there are) of the GTX 580. the ONLY thing i can see the 580 having over a 480 is Dx11, and even then, its not much of an improvment. the benchmarks i have seen comparing the GTX400 cards to the radeon 6000 cards for directx 11 have been lacking on nvidia's side. the 500 series apears to just bring them up to what AMD is able to do with directX11.
so basicly, If you looking for a brand name, sure get it.
or, if you want the brand name and just want to spend as much money as possible for rendering that only 3 or 4 pc games todate can handle... sure...
but, if you really want directx 11 support (which is the only step up i see with the 580 over a 480) you'll probally do better off saving $100 and getting the Radeon. (afterall, the overal benchmarks for DX11 lean better toward the Radeons anyway)
Its really getting down to value of performance, IMHO, it would look like the best value is AMDs cards, they are getting just about the same performance for a good savings.
-AG
One odd thing about the 580 is nVidia's drivers cap power use, by down clocking the card and only for the extreme burn in apps FurMark and OCCT saying it's not needed in normal games. These two apps are used by the majority of review sites to determine worse case power requirements for a video card. So nVidia tweaked a driver to "game" a power usage benchmark.
By capping power use the FurMark scores for this card, which does report a card's performance in FPS, a GTX 580 is reported as less powerful than an HD 5850. Heck a factory OC GTX 460 768MB is faster than the "power fudged" GTX 580. AnandTech found another stress testing app (they won't reveal the name to prevent nVidia from adding it to their exception list) shows the card drawing 25 watts less than the GTX 480 under stress but still 75 watts more than the HD 5870.
nVidia did fix some of the power problems the GTX 480 had, for instance simply idling or playing back video, power use is significantly lower on the GTX 580. Of course you don't spend $500 on a video card to play back video or idle at the desktop.
Yes, it is the fastest single GPU video card out there. It's about 1/3rd faster than an HD 5870. It's about 15% faster than the GTX 480. The HD 69xx series is suppose to off of NDA mid December. So if you want to spend more than $250 on a HD 6870 I would also counsel waiting a month and see what AMD has.
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I'm also not really sure what the fuss is about multiple-GPU support. I'm running a Radeon HD 5870 and I can max ultra mode (on ALL settings, including my supported max resolution, etc.) on a single client with 40+ FPS constantly. Of course I run windowed so I can do 2 or 3 clients with mid to high UM settings, when needed.
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*activates Verbose Mode* (Anyone else love that feature of the old XP Command Prompt?)
Not sure what resolution you're running at but I can always suck up the performance of the GPU so SLI/Crossfire is important to me.
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As for my windowed resolution? I'm guessing 1920x1080 since that's the biggest I can run on my main monitor. I did the tests a month or two back when I saw a thread asking about what it takes to max ultra mode (oddly enough I never posted in it).
For the "maxing" I manually adjusted every slider as high as I could... from memory, again I did this a few weeks back but that's the most logical way to approach the definition of "maxium settings".
My FPS varied from 40 upwards in most of the game with spikes of 28 in some places in praetoria..
I'm still not sure how looking at a dozen or so trees in a park with a pond between a few skyscrapers that are higher than the rest of the game's vertical limit could do such a horrendous thing. /sarcasm
Of course.. tests were done running HeroStats, Firefox, etc. I didn't bother closing anything. Then again I never do. Maybe I'll have to run HijackThis just out of curiosity some time soon.....
To be on-topic... what I've heard of the card is mostly the same as what I've seen said here. An apparent revision of the 480 aimed at closing the gap between nVidia and AMD.
I'm brand-neutral for the most part, if it's cheap enough and does the job I'm happy enough. Running a full-amd system right now but looking at upgrading to a Core i7 with a Radeon HD 6000 series. I've never really understood that kind of silly brand-fanaticism. If it falls in my lap, I'll do my best to make sure it gets used (this also means not giving 90 year olds who want to check their email once a month Core i5's....).
Edit: And a note in regard to PumBumbler's post. I too, tend to run my systems hard. I start wondering what's going wrong when my CPU drops below 38% usage.. or the RAM below 60%... et cetera. Usually only wonder what's wrong when the CPU hits 90% (especially if it's only one core.. ahem "plugin-container.exe")...
Between the Loyalists and Resistance, I'd be tempted to support Praetorian Hamidon.
One side uses mind police and will "disappear" you and the other uses poison gas and bombs on civilians. Hamidon? He'll just have a tree eat you. Much simpler. If we're all going to be oppressed and/or killed by someone, it might as well be the walking trees. At least they don't speak in annoying code or doublespeak. They just devour you. |
Some interesting discussions and questions.
I'm getting a new complete new system specced out by a friend at work who's a fellow gamer and computer geek so I don't have to worry about it not working with the system.
As for the price, I have a fairly decent salary (Canadian goverment), and rarely splurge on stuff except when it comes to computer gear.
And yes, I do have bit of a bias for Nvidia since my last few systems have had them and I've never had any trouble with them.
I'm still disappointed that my gtx 480 doesn't smoke coh. It isn't the card though because it smokes all the newer games, it's this game.
I run a: QX9650
4 gb ddr3 ram
windows 7 64 bit
GTX 480
Coh is installed on a 80gb SSD
This system runs better than my old gtx 280, windows xp, 2 gb ram, e8400 and coh on a standard sata drive but I still don't see whats up with this game with it being a performace hog.
Originally it was said that a gtx 285/295 should run ultra mode with little problems but I'm sure not running at 60 fps or higher at all times. Especially when 20 or more players are near me.
I think I'll wait and hope for a optimization patch of the coh before I invest anymore dollars in computer hardware.
Friends don't let friends buy an ncsoft controlled project.
I'm still disappointed that my gtx 480 doesn't smoke coh. It isn't the card though because it smokes all the newer games, it's this game.
I run a: QX9650 4 gb ddr3 ram windows 7 64 bit GTX 480 Coh is installed on a 80gb SSD This system runs better than my old gtx 280, windows xp, 2 gb ram, e8400 and coh on a standard sata drive but I still don't see whats up with this game with it being a performace hog. Originally it was said that a gtx 285/295 should run ultra mode with little problems but I'm sure not running at 60 fps or higher at all times. Especially when 20 or more players are near me. I think I'll wait and hope for a optimization patch of the coh before I invest anymore dollars in computer hardware. |
Between the Loyalists and Resistance, I'd be tempted to support Praetorian Hamidon.
One side uses mind police and will "disappear" you and the other uses poison gas and bombs on civilians. Hamidon? He'll just have a tree eat you. Much simpler. If we're all going to be oppressed and/or killed by someone, it might as well be the walking trees. At least they don't speak in annoying code or doublespeak. They just devour you. |
Surely at least partially forgivable considering the game was released over 6 years ago and has since had a companion game released, then merged into it (CoV) and even recently had an upgraded "modern graphics" mode stuck onto the side of it. About the only way for the game to compare in terms of performance per parts is for them to reprogram it (nearly entirely) from scratch with the current incarnation as a goal. Who knows, maybe we'll get only 1 new issue in 2011 and it'll be just that.. a complete rework of the game so it runs as efficiently as more modern stuff. Currently though it's pretty cool that it runs as well as it does, and does what it does, considering its age and the complexity of the modifications it has gone through.
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I think that the older systems that have northbridge memory controllers (ie. the non-core i3/i5/i7) tend to suffer more as the settings get turned up in Ultra Mode.
I found a google cache link about graphfps and how it can show if you're CPU or GPU limited here. Probably can help you tune your settings for optimal results. Just remember to try various zones, Grandville is probably still the most intensive zone to run through.
so basicly, If you looking for a brand name, sure get it. or, if you want the brand name and just want to spend as much money as possible for rendering that only 3 or 4 pc games todate can handle... sure... |
A pity it doesn't work with OpenGL games like City of Heroes. <sigh>
wel one other way to go is get 2 cards, I got a gtx 470 for 266.00 and recently i saw them on sale for 219.00,buy 2 and go sli. i went from a gtx 285 to a gtx 470 and its has been great.withthe 5 series coming out and christmas,expect a bunch of clearance deals on the 4 series.
one place to check is slickdeals.com as sometimes they are a 1 day only deal.
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short version, I'd wait for RadeonHD 6900 series.
What I've been hearing is that investors are continuing to panic over Nvidia's corporate actions. None of Nvidia's high-end cards are profitable, and Nvidia still hasn't issued an answer to the now low end market RadeonHD 5770... the segment of the market that moves the most amount of cards, and thus drives the largest profits. The only reason to buy a GTX 580, and I mean the ONLY reason to buy it, is that you want the Nvidia badge. That's it. There's no other reason to get one. Thing is, buying one of the GTX 580's on the street will set you back around $500: http://www.pricewatch.com/search?q=GTX+580 AMD's upcoming 6970 will reportedly be launching at a $400 price-point. The big worry for fans of green is that AMD's much cheaper card, on paper, outruns the GTX 580. Now, on-paper and in theory doesn't always translate to real world performance. Case in point, GTS 250. On paper it drastically outpowers RadeonHD 4850. In real games... it doesn't. Now, given that Nvidia's set the GTX 580 pricing pretty much in Ludicrous-ville, AMD might launch their next highest end card with a higher price and sustain their own inflated pricing like they did with the HD 5000 series cards. It's also expected that AMD won't rush the 6900 series to market. Right now there's no need to kick a product out the door just to get a product out the door. So you'll actually probably have a shot at laying hands on one. Now, is the GTX 580 as much of a rip-off as the GTX 480 and 470? Well, in the absence of a direct competitor card from AMD, determining whether or not it's a complete rip-off would be unfair. If you want the absolute amount of maximum rendering power right now, today, then sure, the GTX 580 is your card of choice. I just have to ask two questions: If you have $500 to begin with to spend on just a graphics card alone... is your business hiring? do they need another technician? |
and yah I spend far to much money on computer parts lol - I have crossfired 5870's sli'ed 470's and a 580 in my main rig - (that is three computers not all that in one computer lol)...but hey I can game in any room in the house!
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-400-_-Product
209 after rebate.
So what has everyone been hearing about this new card? Any try it out with COH yet? I'm looking at getting a brand new system this card has been suggested to me to get.