The GPU Market competition heats up... literally

cherryghost

So, AMD and Nvidia are locking horns this month, who will come out the victors?


AMD has just launched their 6850 and 6870 series, aimed to replace the mid range 5xxx series cards. Nvidia are countering that, by releasing their GTX580, supposedly 15% faster than their current GTX480, and is due for release next week.

AMDs 6970 is coming this year, we can almost guarantee that it'll run hot :P Nvidia has just confirmed a GTX580 X2 is in the works, to be ready for early Decemeber, and that'll run hot too. Both cards will most likely be expensive too.

So, whos buying the cards and who's going to win this generation this time round?

Solitaire

I don't care, I've got a HD6850 in the post and that's all I need for a long time to come! :P

ronkmonster

No, my 5970 will do for a few years yet.
The numbering scheme isn't the greatest though. The 6870 is replacing a 5 series mid range card when the 5870 was high end.

cherryghost

I've heard rumours Nvidias GTX460 is getting a 560 rebranding... oh dear

Overheal

Wasnt the 460 a rebranding?

distraction

Solitaire wrote: »

I don't care, I've got a HD6850 in the post and that's all I need for a long time to come! :P

hey Solitaire, just wondering where u ordered from?

Solitaire

hardwareversand.de. Great site if you're buying a whole system or most of one, not so much for picking up single parts due to the €30 flat shipping.

distraction

thanks! was looking to get one or two ssd's will have a look through

lmimmfn

Solitaire wrote: »

I don't care, I've got a HD6850 in the post and that's all I need for a long time to come! :P

:eek: Solitaire with a mega gfx card? WTF? :P

As for the competition between Nvidia and ATI, with ATI releasing the 68X0 series and Nvidia countering with the 580 cards. Hmm, well the 68X0 series is southern islands, northern islands( i.e. 69X0 series ) is supposed to launch this month too. Now those cards are the ones to watch. I reckon price wise they will keep ATI on top of new high end gfx card sales, but we wont know for a few weeks.

The 580 sounds like it was the original planned Fermi card although it has a lot of the Telsa specific stuff removed

Icyseanfitz

from what ive read the 580 is meant to be about 15% faster than a 480 which to me is pretty meh seeing as its probably going to cost upwards of 500 euro, im really looking forward to see what the 6970 has going on hopefully it will be priced well and have good performance (hoping around 5970 levels) if none of these cards are big leaps ahead il just buy a second gtx 460 as they are dead cheap now

Solitaire

Given the raw 1337ness of SLI scaling at the moment multi-card is actually worth the hassle for once :eek::p Two pre-OCd GTX460 1GB for €290 can fairly annihilate a GTX470 or HD5870! :P

Icyseanfitz

actually last time i heard two 460's beat a 480 :eek: also the hd 6850's 6870's are immensely good at crossfire scaling even better than the 460's apparently although i havnt heard anything about them being any good at overclocking, if the high end cards only jump forward in baby steps this time il go with another 460 as they are a good card, also how do ye think 2 1 gig 460's would handle 3 monitors?

Solitaire

HD6850 is okay for OCing but the lack of overvolting hurts it, especially as the memory in particular is undervolted at stock AFAIK (they use undervolted 5GHz modules, not 4GHz ones!). HD6870 is highly stressed and has eff-all OC headroom without overvolting

The OC pedigree of the GTX460 is another story, and one coupled with happier overvolting (just so long as you can handle the substantial heat output and power draw!). Two well-OCd GTX460 1GB could feasibly stretch beyond 6MP, possibly to 8MP or more, so three 1080p panels could work well in most current games so long as they're SLI-friendly. Titles that balk at multi-GPU will find themselves being driven by one card that at stock really maxes out at 4megapixels and even with a healthy OC will have trouble driving more than 5MP at a time.

Sgt Pepper 64

Review is here
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2010/10/22/ati-radeon-hd-6850-review/1

And explains the strange naming scheme!

Apparently, no different from GTX450.
Depends if you prefer Eyefinity or PhysX

Hopefully the GTX450 will drop in price

lmimmfn

Ive invested in eyefinity now so im sticking with ATI for the time being, im looking forward to seeing what Cayman delivers, although according to El Fud its delayed a tad - http://fudzilla.com/graphics/item/20755-cayman-might-not-make-it-for-22nd-nov-launch

Icyseanfitz

ya disappointed in the delay seems they they cant decide on a stock cooler