Ryan, what did I tell you about feeding the BCIPC trolls?
This is why we can't have nice things.
But on a more serious note, nice update. I love reading AT's articles! .)
By the way, was there a reason the original article was posted at exactly 9:00 and the SLI update was posted at 10:00? I looked at a few other articles by you and others and most were not posted exactly on the hour. Just curious, thanks! .)
It's nothing in particular. When I put an article stub in the system it gives the article the time the stub was created, which means when I publish it the system calls it several hours old when it's not. So I rewrite the article's time to match up with the current time or something close to it.
For the GTX 580 article the time listed on it is when the NDA expired and it went up, while for this article it went up a few minutes after the hour so I just put it down on the hour. I could have published this article at any time.
Well you posted this in the original GTX580 review as well. Thought I'd reply once again here.
The GTX480 minimum framerates, as high as they are at the lower resolutions, are likely a measurement error or anomaly. One only needs to look at the GTX470 to compare. There is not a good reason that the GTX480 can outpace the GTX470 by 100% at 1680x1050.
"If you notice, one of the minimum frame rate results posted on this site shows the 480 beating the 580. So much for anomalies."
Well that's yet another reason I think the 480's minimum framerate at 1680x1050 is a bit suspect. The GTX480 can't possibly be faster than the GTX470 AND the GTX580 by such a large amount, right?
But I do agree that it would be good to get more than one source of data for this.
That is part of the pattern shown more obviously by the Unigine benchmark results I posted.
Anandtech needs to post minimum frame rates for Unigine at least to resolve this issue.
As for me being "worried"... I fail to see your point. If you don't think the 480 crushing the 580 in Unigine at lower than 2K res is worth investigating, that's your point of view.
Ok I see you were referring to the SLI results. I looked in the single-GPU review.
Anyway, 2fps out of 55fps is kinda within a margin of error. And even in that Crysis minimum framerate graph, the single GPU GTX580 is faster than the single GPU GTX480. It looks like all the dual-GPU cards are started to get bottlenecked by the CPU/non-GPU parts of the system which is why the results are so clumped together.
As for the Techgage results I am more than a little skeptical. As explained before there is no reason why a GTX480 can beat a GTX470 twofold, let alone GTX580. That super high minimum framerate may very well be a bug. It's the only video card in Techgage's graph that's far away faster than anything else. Doesn't make sense at all.
And I believe you are doing a disservice by being so fixated on this minimum framerate issue without applying basic statistical analysis to the problem.
Yeah, it always bothers me that 5970 crossfired is never included in benchmarks. It's not like it's impossible to crossfire it to even a 5870 just for the sake of result.
I only read the reviews here for entertainment purposes. I enjoy seeing how the reviewers struggle in their reviews to manage the balance between favoring Nvidia over AMD without showing their bias blatantly for everyone to see. However, they seem to be less and less successful at it...
You have managed to find two GTX 590s pretty much at launch date but couldn't get hold of a second 5970 which was released a year ago? Really? Well, on the other hand it's understandable since Anand doesn't take any money from any company that it might just be over their budget, remember, this is a high-end part!
And do you remember that huge article from a while back showing the very poor scalability of mutli-GPU solutions when you get into three- and four-way GPU setups? I'm sure dual 5970s are not included because the performance would be severely unimpressive (not to mention all the screen tearing and the like) for the money you're throwing at it.
That has NOTHING to do witht the fact that they did not run HD 5970 CrossfireX, they "only" have one. I think AT needs to get another ASAP and test it too and stop ignoring AMD's top of the line soultion.
Yeah it's really annoying that hd 5970 x2 is not in the tests. After all, it's still after a whole year out there and it's also still the greatest gaming card.
Com'on Ryan... you couldn't have submitted a request to any of AMD's AIB partners for a second 5970 loaner and held off publishing the SLI results for a few days if needed??
Would you include GTX 460 SLI results? I think many people is still considering that option. Since it beats GTX 480, It should perform similar to a GTX 580?
I've never had to install game-specific drivers to take advantage of SLI in the games I play, and I've had an SLI rig for nearly three years (2x 8800GT). I just update my vid drivers once every few months. It's true that there are often performance tweaks for individual games in a given driver version, but I've never found a game that just doesn't work under SLI with whatever the driver version at hand. When did you last try?
As for Crossfire... my "guest" PC is all-AMD (Athlon II X4 620, 4870, 785 chipset) and is a fine machine. Every time I consider going Crossfire on that rig, I check the various tech sites and game support sites, and see issues with Crossfire being reported far more frequently than SLI. This points to a situation that has existed for a while: AMD makes faster hardware for the money, but nVidia overall does a better job with drivers, particularly in multi-GPU scenarios, and from the game developers I know, seems more interested in working closely with game devs.
Which is why when friends ask me about gaming builds, my usual answer (depending upon the products both vendors have at the time) is "Single vid card, go with AMD, dual vid card, go with nVidia". There have been exceptions: 8800GT in its day was just plain the best, and 460 GTX until very recently was also the best single-GPU solution in its price bracket. The overall trend seems pretty steady with regard to single-GPU vs. multi-GPU, though.
"Single vid card, go with AMD, dual vid card, go download a proper brain"
Who drops in another card after 2 years, if there is a new card available that's not only about 100% faster but also brings new features to the table? (E.g. DirectX11, Tesselation, Eyefinity etc.)
Um, i got 2 5850s for less than the price of a single gtx 580, which they consistently outperform. Dual gpu is a legitimate solution in the short term at least.
You're right that it becomes a less sensible option after a fair amount of time, assuming the tech has moved on significantly - however, expect pc gpu tech to stagnate for a while (as evidenced by the very marginal improvements displayed by the 6xxx and 5xx series) at least until the next round of consoles are out.
Right now is a great time to buy a top of the line system.
You DO know that the marginal improvements from 58xx to 68xx stem from the fact that the new top of the line 69xx are yet to be launched?
Yes, GPU tech will stagnate because all they have to master are some 3rd grade console ports that only turn out so few fps because the process of porting them over to the pc is done as quickly and cheaply as possible?
If there was such a thing as a native PC game anymore, you probably would see all those DX11 features put into practice.
Right now it's simply ridiculous. A HD4870 or a GTX580 will play any console-ported crap you throw at it... more performance has become irrelevant as there is no game to request it.
Oh, there is Crysis, right. And it's out since when exactly? I'm really not in the mood to pick up this vegetation benchmark in-disguise and look at it again...
And then there are games that run with 200+ fps instead of 60+ fps. *yawn* Please wake me up, when you reach 500+ fps with your GTX580 SLI so I can walk over to my bed for some real deep sleep...
Thanks, Ian... still happy with my 8800GT SLI setup though. :) It's been nothing but amazing for me. Not looking to upgrade just yet. Let's see what the 560 GTX looks like...
Yep, 8800 GT SLI does run rather well, though as my results show they fall behind for newer games at higher res/detail.
Summaries I've posted elsewhere show that if one is playing older games at lesser resolutions, then using a newer card to replace an older SLI setup (or instead of adding an extra older card) will not give that much of a speed boost, if any (look at the 4890 data vs. 8800GT). For older games, newer cards only help if one also switches to a higher res/detail mode. Newer cards' higher performance is focused on newer features, (eg. SM3, etc.); performance levels for older features are often little changed.
Thanks for the great review of the GTX580 from yesterday!
I know this is a bit off topic regarding GTX but as someone that just received as a gift a GTX480 recently, and has no space in the case to use a 3 slot air cooling solution, I was wondering if it would be possible to fit the new GTX580 cooling solution on a GTX480.
If this would be possible it would be great if you guys could retest the temperatures, noise and power draw for such a modded GTX480.
I see no reason why you would want to keep CIV5 in the benches, since its obviously not reliable to test graphic card speeds. I would like you to add another strategy game in its place, something like Total war series, you know with large scale combat and all that good stuff.
And why isn't there no Starcraft 2 benchmark there, its basically one of two PC only titles and yet you don't include it?
While it's clear from this review, as well as others, that the GTX 580 is a significant improvement over the GTX 480 in power usage, temps and noise I realized that what I've actually taken away from reading it is how totally awesome the Radeon 6870 is. In CrossFireX especially.
I reckon that's not quite what Nvidia had in mind but meh, it seems the absolute extreme-end cards still aren't a winning proposition.
Aside of the odd issue with minimum frame rates, Barts is a notable improvement over Cypress for Crossfire. If I was to paraphrase a quote taken from the 460 launch, this would be Evergreen done "right", at least in terms of multiple graphics card setups - better scaling and better power usage essentially means less waste, and it's not as if Evergreen was hungry to start with. Just a shame that AMD has effectively limited Barts to two cards at once.
As for the 580, very well done, however I think we're going to have to wait for another redesign before power usage is properly tackled.
It would be nice if you could include 5770 CF scores in the future. I have a Sapphire Vapor-x running at 960 / 1350 and it's very quiet and performs ok, and I could get another one for about $140 on Newegg. The 5770 has similar or faster tesselation performance to that of 5870 (due to faster clock speed) and in CF has similar shading / texturing abilities. It would be nice to see how 2 of these at stock speeds compare to the other cards. Overall this is a great article as always!
look how quick he do an sli and the 580 just release yesterday and when the 6870 and 6850 was release there wasnt any xfire the next day but he could also do an over clock 460 sometimes i wonder why amd even send u guys card to review
Well, most simple explanation between these different heat result is that the review part was cherry picked (like they normally are, so that you can get better overclockin results etc.) and the Asus one is normal version, that you can normally expect to get. When the production run gets better, I think that we will see more chips that are more like the early cherry picked one...
I've seen you guys review high-end pre-built gaming systems before. It's not like you had to give the pre built system high praise. 1 page in the review wouldn't have taken away from anything.
That's a slippery slope to start going down. Ultimately, it's up to Anandtech to decide what they can/can't will/won't review, not up to the whims of some chipmaker (despite that there are only 2 chipmakers these days).
Reviewing a pre-built gaming system takes a lot of time and effort to do properly, and anything less degrades the reputation of the review site, even if it's just to jump through hoops with some snooty vendor. "If you're willing to jump through THIS hoop to do what we want here, can we withhold a new card for you on the next launch unless you give us complete editorial powers on that review?"
Ultimately, the separation between the review site and the vendor is extremely important to help ensure unbiased, thorough reviews (something that I've appreciated from Anandtech over the years) complete with "here's a bunch of numbers, but what does this all mean in context" (aka "analysis"). Part of that is not bowing to a vendor's wishes (outside of a standard and acceptable product launch NDA).
Your initial statement is deeply flawed - the 480 beats the 580 IN MINIMUM FRAME RATES, except at 2560x1600.
What I'd like more to know is whether the "blip" in minimum frame rates is a temporary spike/drop, or whether it's endemic. But that's something that the average tells you, too.
I'd like to request that y'all start testing Eyefinity and Vision Surround setups and resolutions for the games that supports them. Granted, there is a vastly difference in how it is supported in hardware, it'd be nice if any hardware capable of this can be tested.
With GTX 580, 5970, and the 68xx series as exceptions, I've ran every other config on that GPU load temp chart, and have lowered temps drastically using a combination of a mobo that allows card spacing, a proper case, decent airflow, TIM replacement, and an Afterburner fan profile. I'm not talking jet engine; there's a tolerable middle ground with any card/system.
As an example, I have GTX 470s right now loading to 70-73c (both cards) in Crysis & Metro 2033, and GTX 480s loading to 78-81c. I don't game on Furmark so it's irrevelant.
It's a shame to see such high numbers knowing that reviewers have done ZERO to find a tolerable medium. I have respect for what they do; but geez, people around the world see this and take it for gospel. You could at least show that temps can be improved..
They must be under new management as of this year because the best deals there these days are on watches and coffee makers LOL. Seriously when Best Buy starts to beat you on components and not just on laptops (BB has been beating newegg on laptop prices for at least 2 years now) something is wrong. Newegg is not the company we have grown to love anymore, and it's sad. I haven't bought anything there (but continue to buy tech items) this year... and this comment made me laugh: When we first saw Newegg post their GTX 580s for sale our jaw dropped as they were all $50-$80 over NVIDIA’s MSRP -AND- However after checking out MWave, Tiger Direct, the EVGA Store, and others, we saw at least 1 card at MSRP at each store... So it's official NEWEGG = FAIL
They run graphics cards sales like the stock market. There's someone inside very skilled and knowledgeable about the industry. They're an 800,000 pound gorilla when it comes to graphics cards.
Looking to upgrade a folding rig, and have been watching the new Nvidia cards with interest, since the 4xx rolled out. I read an early review of the 580, and one thing mentioned was like 380 million circuits (?) were disabled to get the heat down, and gaming perf up. If main concern is folding perf, heat and power consumption be damned, would the full bore, un-gimped 480 be theoretically better for this? Seems that the price currently for either version "superclocked" is somewhat close, so $ isn't really a dealbreaker, just want the best perf. Thoughts?
I think the last page shows that Stream Processors perform the same, whether in a 580 or 480. As Ryan pointed out, Folding and SmallLux performed 6-7% higher, the same increase in SP's that the 580 has. To get an index of performance for any Fermi part, just multiply the number of SP's with the core clock.
The problem is, not only is "oh, we didn't have second 5970", (card that is out for how many month?) a rather strange excuse, but even it still doesn't justify claiming nVidia got a "new record" in dual config.
It very specifically says "Dual-GPU Records". Everyone is fully aware at this point that a 5970 has dual gpus in a single card, so there's no reason to make the distinction.
Assuming we don't drop it entirely the next time we refresh our suite, we'll probably go to all Enthusiast for at least 1 resolution. Up until now, only a couple of cards have been fast enough to run it at anything resembling a playable framerate.
Let's wait and see. If the model numbering is as skewed as with the 68xx series, the 69xx series may not be as fast as you think... though the dual GPU card should perform better thanks to the improved Crossfire performance with the new cards. Again, let's wait and see, however as two 6870s are quicker and less greedy than one 580, and noting that the 5970 uses much less power than two 5870s (granted, it's technically two 5850s but that doesn't explain all the difference), AMD could have a good dual GPU card on the way.
They are unlikely to do so. The 5970 is being phased out of production completely to make way for the 6000 series version that is likely to come soon or to encourage people to instead buy 2x 6870s. Not to mention it's a 700 dollar card.
I don't see what the big deal is. Yes, most likely 2x 5970s will beat 2x 580s.
If that's all you want to hear; there it is. Just picture an added graph bar with higher fps above the 580 sli in your mind. It works just as well.
There's really not much point in trying to prove it at this time as ATI doesn't intend to keep selling them much longer. They have no incentive to push it.
Again for most of the 5970s currently being sold, buying 2 would cost someone $1360 whereas buying 2 580s would be $1000, so it's expected that 5970s should have more total power. Switch this up to 3x or 4x 580s and both price and performance probably go higher for the 580s.
The 6870 CF and 470 SLI are still the BEST bang For the $$$ here when you consider the performance and $$ spent . You get Better performance then either of AMD's or Nvida's TOP cards and at less money then either single card solution. Here's hoping that AMD's New cards drive down prices !! even more ! Competition is great .
Hey Ryan Smith, I've been thinking about the normalized results...
Since the 580 would be more bandwidth-bottlenecked than the 480 at same clock speeds, the bandwidth of the 580 should also be 6.67% higher than that of the 480, in order to keep it in line with 6.67% more shaders and TMU's.
Then we could subtract exactly 6.67% from the overall performance gains, to compare it directly to GTX 480.
I've added up an average of the normalized gains (excluding Civilization V since it's CPU-bound), and subtracted 6.67% from the average for the grand result of 3%, after subtracting 2% for the bandwidth penalty. The 2% penalty is just an estimation of how much it would have gained with 6.67% more bandwidth (with the memory running at 3942MHz to keep the bandwidth perfectly linear with the core muscle). If 2% penalty is still too much, please also consider the ROP penalty, as there are still only 48 ROP's for full 512sp, compared to 48 ROP's for 480sp, but then the penalty for ROP's should be very slight, given that 48 ROP's are already plentiful and hardly ever reaches 100% usage with 4x AA.
The grand result of 3% is a bit lackluster for doubled FP16 texturing power along with minor z-culling and other architecture optimizations.
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82 Comments
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TonyB - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
But can it play Crysis?Ryan Smith - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
Yes, and with full screen supersample anti-aliasing! ;-)ImSpartacus - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
*Sigh*Ryan, what did I tell you about feeding the BCIPC trolls?
This is why we can't have nice things.
But on a more serious note, nice update. I love reading AT's articles! .)
By the way, was there a reason the original article was posted at exactly 9:00 and the SLI update was posted at 10:00? I looked at a few other articles by you and others and most were not posted exactly on the hour. Just curious, thanks! .)
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
It's nothing in particular. When I put an article stub in the system it gives the article the time the stub was created, which means when I publish it the system calls it several hours old when it's not. So I rewrite the article's time to match up with the current time or something close to it.For the GTX 580 article the time listed on it is when the NDA expired and it went up, while for this article it went up a few minutes after the hour so I just put it down on the hour. I could have published this article at any time.
wavetrex - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
Yea, it f***ing finally can !Minimum frames 50 in full res+AA. Amazing!
Oxford Guy - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
Check out the minimum frame rates in Unigine Heaven at anything lower than 2K res. Worse than 480, even dramatically.Oxford Guy - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
links:http://techgage.com/reviews/nvidia/geforce_gtx_580...
http://techgage.com/reviews/nvidia/geforce_gtx_580...
wtfbbqlol - Thursday, November 11, 2010 - link
Well you posted this in the original GTX580 review as well. Thought I'd reply once again here.The GTX480 minimum framerates, as high as they are at the lower resolutions, are likely a measurement error or anomaly. One only needs to look at the GTX470 to compare. There is not a good reason that the GTX480 can outpace the GTX470 by 100% at 1680x1050.
Oxford Guy - Thursday, November 11, 2010 - link
If you notice, one of the minimum frame rate results posted on this site shows the 480 beating the 580. So much for anomalies.I'd like to see this examined. Anandtech can easily post minimum frame rates for Unigine and others and answer the question...
wtfbbqlol - Thursday, November 11, 2010 - link
"If you notice, one of the minimum frame rate results posted on this site shows the 480 beating the 580. So much for anomalies."Well that's yet another reason I think the 480's minimum framerate at 1680x1050 is a bit suspect. The GTX480 can't possibly be faster than the GTX470 AND the GTX580 by such a large amount, right?
But I do agree that it would be good to get more than one source of data for this.
Oxford Guy - Friday, November 12, 2010 - link
There is already more than once source.Anandtech's article shows the 480 beating the 580 in a minimum frame rate bench. I believe the game is Crysis, but I'm not sure.
So, coupled with the review I posted from techgage -- there are already multiple sources.
We need to see Anandtech show minimum frame rates for Unigine.
wtfbbqlol - Saturday, November 13, 2010 - link
Hmm, don't see it. I scanned the Anandtech GTX580 review for it but couldn't find it.BTW I'm just getting a slight sense that you are more than a little worried about this...
Oxford Guy - Saturday, November 13, 2010 - link
Anandtech only posted minimum frame rates for Crysis. In those posts, though, we see that the 480 SLI beat the 580 SLI at 1920 x 1200.http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph4008/33816...
That is part of the pattern shown more obviously by the Unigine benchmark results I posted.
Anandtech needs to post minimum frame rates for Unigine at least to resolve this issue.
As for me being "worried"... I fail to see your point. If you don't think the 480 crushing the 580 in Unigine at lower than 2K res is worth investigating, that's your point of view.
B3an - Saturday, November 13, 2010 - link
It's less than a 2 FPS difference... who cares?The 6870 and 5850 both beat the 5870 in that chart, which is also faster. Things like this are not that rare. It's nothing. Probably drivers.
wtfbbqlol - Saturday, November 13, 2010 - link
Ok I see you were referring to the SLI results. I looked in the single-GPU review.Anyway, 2fps out of 55fps is kinda within a margin of error. And even in that Crysis minimum framerate graph, the single GPU GTX580 is faster than the single GPU GTX480. It looks like all the dual-GPU cards are started to get bottlenecked by the CPU/non-GPU parts of the system which is why the results are so clumped together.
As for the Techgage results I am more than a little skeptical. As explained before there is no reason why a GTX480 can beat a GTX470 twofold, let alone GTX580. That super high minimum framerate may very well be a bug. It's the only video card in Techgage's graph that's far away faster than anything else. Doesn't make sense at all.
And I believe you are doing a disservice by being so fixated on this minimum framerate issue without applying basic statistical analysis to the problem.
DigitalFreak - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
OMG ROFLMAO! You posted the same thing in the original 580 review thread and it's still funny as hell! :-/Retard
Oxford Guy - Friday, November 12, 2010 - link
Do you want to post links to the minimum frame rate Unigine Heaven tests you've done?You, know... something productive?
No. Then move along.
jewie27 - Tuesday, April 3, 2012 - link
Wrong question. Can it play Battlefield 3 in 3D Vision Surround?piroroadkill - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
No 5970 CF?tech6 - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
It must be a conspiracy! ;-)Ryan Smith - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
Actually I'd like to. However I only have one 5970.chillmelt - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
Yeah, it always bothers me that 5970 crossfired is never included in benchmarks. It's not like it's impossible to crossfire it to even a 5870 just for the sake of result.the_elvino - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
Why do you only have one 5970?I only read the reviews here for entertainment purposes. I enjoy seeing how the reviewers struggle in their reviews to manage the balance between favoring Nvidia over AMD without showing their bias blatantly for everyone to see. However, they seem to be less and less successful at it...
You have managed to find two GTX 590s pretty much at launch date but couldn't get hold of a second 5970 which was released a year ago? Really? Well, on the other hand it's understandable since Anand doesn't take any money from any company that it might just be over their budget, remember, this is a high-end part!
Minion4Hire - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
And do you remember that huge article from a while back showing the very poor scalability of mutli-GPU solutions when you get into three- and four-way GPU setups? I'm sure dual 5970s are not included because the performance would be severely unimpressive (not to mention all the screen tearing and the like) for the money you're throwing at it.the_elvino - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
In an effort to avoid hurting AMD's feelings because the 5970 Crossfire (so you claim) doesn't scale well, it's not included?No, Ryan states he wanted to include it but doesn't have one, can't you read?
Anyway, 5970 Crossfire seems to be doing fine:
Far Cry 2, 2650x1600:
5970: 54 fps
5970 Crossfire: 98 fps
That's an increase of 81%, so doesn't seem to be as severely unimpressive as you think.
http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-5970-revie...
tphillips63 - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
That has NOTHING to do witht the fact that they did not run HD 5970 CrossfireX, they "only" have one.I think AT needs to get another ASAP and test it too and stop ignoring AMD's top of the line soultion.
strikeback03 - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
I'm going to assume this post is in jest and you are not that much of a tool.IceDread - Thursday, November 11, 2010 - link
Yeah it's really annoying that hd 5970 x2 is not in the tests. After all, it's still after a whole year out there and it's also still the greatest gaming card.Hemi345 - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
Com'on Ryan... you couldn't have submitted a request to any of AMD's AIB partners for a second 5970 loaner and held off publishing the SLI results for a few days if needed??Fair and balanced, my ass.
Servando Silva - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
Would you include GTX 460 SLI results? I think many people is still considering that option. Since it beats GTX 480, It should perform similar to a GTX 580?Thanks for the detailed review Ryan.
slick121 - Thursday, November 11, 2010 - link
Wow so true, this is a slap in the face, off to other sites for a more unbiased review.Gonemad - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
...blow a $1100 hole in your pocket? Yes it can!Can it make you consider purchasing a 1200W power supply as something not THAT preposterous? Yes it can! (well, the 480 pair already did, so...)
Considering a caseless or vapor mod case also not that insane? That too!
I guess waiting until this card reaches the price/performance charts will take a while. On the other hand as far as performance goes...
iwodo - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
One of the thing i never liked SLI or Crossfire like, it needs Drivers support for the specific game to take advantage of 2nd Gfx card.Have we solve this problem yet?
Spazweasel - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
I've never had to install game-specific drivers to take advantage of SLI in the games I play, and I've had an SLI rig for nearly three years (2x 8800GT). I just update my vid drivers once every few months. It's true that there are often performance tweaks for individual games in a given driver version, but I've never found a game that just doesn't work under SLI with whatever the driver version at hand. When did you last try?As for Crossfire... my "guest" PC is all-AMD (Athlon II X4 620, 4870, 785 chipset) and is a fine machine. Every time I consider going Crossfire on that rig, I check the various tech sites and game support sites, and see issues with Crossfire being reported far more frequently than SLI. This points to a situation that has existed for a while: AMD makes faster hardware for the money, but nVidia overall does a better job with drivers, particularly in multi-GPU scenarios, and from the game developers I know, seems more interested in working closely with game devs.
Which is why when friends ask me about gaming builds, my usual answer (depending upon the products both vendors have at the time) is "Single vid card, go with AMD, dual vid card, go with nVidia". There have been exceptions: 8800GT in its day was just plain the best, and 460 GTX until very recently was also the best single-GPU solution in its price bracket. The overall trend seems pretty steady with regard to single-GPU vs. multi-GPU, though.
Finally - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
"Single vid card, go with AMD, dual vid card, go download a proper brain"Who drops in another card after 2 years, if there is a new card available that's not only about 100% faster but also brings new features to the table? (E.g. DirectX11, Tesselation, Eyefinity etc.)
Sufo - Thursday, November 11, 2010 - link
Um, i got 2 5850s for less than the price of a single gtx 580, which they consistently outperform. Dual gpu is a legitimate solution in the short term at least.You're right that it becomes a less sensible option after a fair amount of time, assuming the tech has moved on significantly - however, expect pc gpu tech to stagnate for a while (as evidenced by the very marginal improvements displayed by the 6xxx and 5xx series) at least until the next round of consoles are out.
Right now is a great time to buy a top of the line system.
Finally - Thursday, November 11, 2010 - link
You DO know that the marginal improvements from 58xx to 68xx stem from the fact that the new top of the line 69xx are yet to be launched?Yes, GPU tech will stagnate because all they have to master are some 3rd grade console ports that only turn out so few fps because the process of porting them over to the pc is done as quickly and cheaply as possible?
If there was such a thing as a native PC game anymore, you probably would see all those DX11 features put into practice.
Right now it's simply ridiculous. A HD4870 or a GTX580 will play any console-ported crap you throw at it... more performance has become irrelevant as there is no game to request it.
Oh, there is Crysis, right.
And it's out since when exactly?
I'm really not in the mood to pick up this vegetation benchmark in-disguise and look at it again...
And then there are games that run with 200+ fps instead of 60+ fps. *yawn* Please wake me up, when you reach 500+ fps with your GTX580 SLI so I can walk over to my bed for some real deep sleep...
mapesdhs - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
Spazweasel, please see my site for useful info, comparing 8800GT SLI vs.
4890 CF vs. GTX 460 SLI:
http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/pctests.html
http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/stalkercopbench.txt
and these new pages under construction:
http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/uniginebench.txt
http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/x3tcbench.txt
Hope this helps! :)
Ian.
Spazweasel - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
Thanks, Ian... still happy with my 8800GT SLI setup though. :) It's been nothing but amazing for me. Not looking to upgrade just yet. Let's see what the 560 GTX looks like...mapesdhs - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
Yep, 8800 GT SLI does run rather well, though as my results show
they fall behind for newer games at higher res/detail.
Summaries I've posted elsewhere show that if one is playing older
games at lesser resolutions, then using a newer card to replace
an older SLI setup (or instead of adding an extra older card) will
not give that much of a speed boost, if any (look at the 4890 data
vs. 8800GT). For older games, newer cards only help if one also
switches to a higher res/detail mode. Newer cards' higher performance
is focused on newer features, (eg. SM3, etc.); performance levels
for older features are often little changed.
Ian.
maverick7614 - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
Hi guys,Thanks for the great review of the GTX580 from yesterday!
I know this is a bit off topic regarding GTX but as someone that just received as a gift a GTX480 recently, and has no space in the case to use a 3 slot air cooling solution, I was wondering if it would be possible to fit the new GTX580 cooling solution on a GTX480.
If this would be possible it would be great if you guys could retest the temperatures, noise and power draw for such a modded GTX480.
Regards,
Alex
slickr - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
I see no reason why you would want to keep CIV5 in the benches, since its obviously not reliable to test graphic card speeds.I would like you to add another strategy game in its place, something like Total war series, you know with large scale combat and all that good stuff.
And why isn't there no Starcraft 2 benchmark there, its basically one of two PC only titles and yet you don't include it?
smookyolo - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
I say they benchmark Age of Empires.The first one.
8D
Exodite - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
While it's clear from this review, as well as others, that the GTX 580 is a significant improvement over the GTX 480 in power usage, temps and noise I realized that what I've actually taken away from reading it is how totally awesome the Radeon 6870 is. In CrossFireX especially.I reckon that's not quite what Nvidia had in mind but meh, it seems the absolute extreme-end cards still aren't a winning proposition.
silverblue - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
Aside of the odd issue with minimum frame rates, Barts is a notable improvement over Cypress for Crossfire. If I was to paraphrase a quote taken from the 460 launch, this would be Evergreen done "right", at least in terms of multiple graphics card setups - better scaling and better power usage essentially means less waste, and it's not as if Evergreen was hungry to start with. Just a shame that AMD has effectively limited Barts to two cards at once.As for the 580, very well done, however I think we're going to have to wait for another redesign before power usage is properly tackled.
spiked_mistborn - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
It would be nice if you could include 5770 CF scores in the future. I have a Sapphire Vapor-x running at 960 / 1350 and it's very quiet and performs ok, and I could get another one for about $140 on Newegg. The 5770 has similar or faster tesselation performance to that of 5870 (due to faster clock speed) and in CF has similar shading / texturing abilities. It would be nice to see how 2 of these at stock speeds compare to the other cards. Overall this is a great article as always!Folterknecht - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
2x 5770 ~ 1x 5870Neomis - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
What are the pc specs on this test system? it would be nice to know what processor/Clock limited some of these tests...shaggart5446 - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
look how quick he do an sli and the 580 just release yesterday and when the 6870 and 6850 was release there wasnt any xfire the next day but he could also do an over clock 460 sometimes i wonder why amd even send u guys card to reviewhaukionkannel - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
Well, most simple explanation between these different heat result is that the review part was cherry picked (like they normally are, so that you can get better overclockin results etc.) and the Asus one is normal version, that you can normally expect to get.When the production run gets better, I think that we will see more chips that are more like the early cherry picked one...
tigersty1e - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
I've seen you guys review high-end pre-built gaming systems before. It's not like you had to give the pre built system high praise. 1 page in the review wouldn't have taken away from anything.piroroadkill - Thursday, November 11, 2010 - link
Come on, people moan at AnandTech for all kinds of reasons. It's best to keep it clean and get a retail sample from elsewhere.erple2 - Friday, November 12, 2010 - link
That's a slippery slope to start going down. Ultimately, it's up to Anandtech to decide what they can/can't will/won't review, not up to the whims of some chipmaker (despite that there are only 2 chipmakers these days).Reviewing a pre-built gaming system takes a lot of time and effort to do properly, and anything less degrades the reputation of the review site, even if it's just to jump through hoops with some snooty vendor. "If you're willing to jump through THIS hoop to do what we want here, can we withhold a new card for you on the next launch unless you give us complete editorial powers on that review?"
Ultimately, the separation between the review site and the vendor is extremely important to help ensure unbiased, thorough reviews (something that I've appreciated from Anandtech over the years) complete with "here's a bunch of numbers, but what does this all mean in context" (aka "analysis"). Part of that is not bowing to a vendor's wishes (outside of a standard and acceptable product launch NDA).
LSWilson - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
You guys get to play with the best toys, I could not be more jealous. Keep up the good work.Oxford Guy - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
In Unigine Heaven, the 480 beats the 580, except at 2560x1600. The difference is very dramatic at 1680x1050 and considerable at 1920x1080.http://techgage.com/reviews/nvidia/geforce_gtx_580...
http://techgage.com/reviews/nvidia/geforce_gtx_580...
http://techgage.com/reviews/nvidia/geforce_gtx_580...
Why is that?
I would like to see this matter addressed, as minimum frame rates can make a big difference in perceived performance.
Frankly, I'd like to see an article called "Minimum frame rate shootout" that would compare all the mid-range through high-end cards.
erple2 - Friday, November 12, 2010 - link
Your initial statement is deeply flawed - the 480 beats the 580 IN MINIMUM FRAME RATES, except at 2560x1600.What I'd like more to know is whether the "blip" in minimum frame rates is a temporary spike/drop, or whether it's endemic. But that's something that the average tells you, too.
Oxford Guy - Friday, November 12, 2010 - link
Take a look at the subject line, smart guy.Oxford Guy - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
I believe the poster was referring to the Asus card. Take into account that Asus did a 10 Mhz "overclock" which itself is rather cheesy.keitaro - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
I'd like to request that y'all start testing Eyefinity and Vision Surround setups and resolutions for the games that supports them. Granted, there is a vastly difference in how it is supported in hardware, it'd be nice if any hardware capable of this can be tested.Hauk - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
With GTX 580, 5970, and the 68xx series as exceptions, I've ran every other config on that GPU load temp chart, and have lowered temps drastically using a combination of a mobo that allows card spacing, a proper case, decent airflow, TIM replacement, and an Afterburner fan profile. I'm not talking jet engine; there's a tolerable middle ground with any card/system.As an example, I have GTX 470s right now loading to 70-73c (both cards) in Crysis & Metro 2033, and GTX 480s loading to 78-81c. I don't game on Furmark so it's irrevelant.
It's a shame to see such high numbers knowing that reviewers have done ZERO to find a tolerable medium. I have respect for what they do; but geez, people around the world see this and take it for gospel. You could at least show that temps can be improved..
anactoraaron - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
They must be under new management as of this year because the best deals there these days are on watches and coffee makers LOL. Seriously when Best Buy starts to beat you on components and not just on laptops (BB has been beating newegg on laptop prices for at least 2 years now) something is wrong. Newegg is not the company we have grown to love anymore, and it's sad. I haven't bought anything there (but continue to buy tech items) this year... and this comment made me laugh:When we first saw Newegg post their GTX 580s for sale our jaw dropped as they were all $50-$80 over NVIDIA’s MSRP
-AND-
However after checking out MWave, Tiger Direct, the EVGA Store, and others, we saw at least 1 card at MSRP at each store...
So it's official
NEWEGG = FAIL
Hauk - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
They run graphics cards sales like the stock market. There's someone inside very skilled and knowledgeable about the industry. They're an 800,000 pound gorilla when it comes to graphics cards.AnnonymousCoward - Thursday, November 11, 2010 - link
I use newegg for the reviews, and Google Shopping to buy.alha - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
Looking to upgrade a folding rig, and have been watching the new Nvidia cards with interest, since the 4xx rolled out. I read an early review of the 580, and one thing mentioned was like 380 million circuits (?) were disabled to get the heat down, and gaming perf up. If main concern is folding perf, heat and power consumption be damned, would the full bore, un-gimped 480 be theoretically better for this? Seems that the price currently for either version "superclocked" is somewhat close, so $ isn't really a dealbreaker, just want the best perf. Thoughts?AnnonymousCoward - Thursday, November 11, 2010 - link
I think the last page shows that Stream Processors perform the same, whether in a 580 or 480. As Ryan pointed out, Folding and SmallLux performed 6-7% higher, the same increase in SP's that the 580 has. To get an index of performance for any Fermi part, just multiply the number of SP's with the core clock.IceDread - Thursday, November 11, 2010 - link
Why are there no 5970 in crossfire in the tests?piroroadkill - Thursday, November 11, 2010 - link
Yeah, I already commented on that much earlier. It's said they didn't have a second 5970.medi01 - Friday, November 12, 2010 - link
The problem is, not only is "oh, we didn't have second 5970", (card that is out for how many month?) a rather strange excuse, but even it still doesn't justify claiming nVidia got a "new record" in dual config.Haydyn323 - Friday, November 12, 2010 - link
They said "dual gpu" config. A 5970 has 2 gpus in it already. Thus one single 5970 vs 580 SLI is comparing 2 gpus to 2 gpus.Crossfire 5970 would be quad gpu vs 2x 580 gpus in SLI.
piroroadkill - Friday, November 12, 2010 - link
This is about price points, not the technical details.medi01 - Friday, November 12, 2010 - link
They've implied dual card nevertheless.Haydyn323 - Friday, November 12, 2010 - link
It very specifically says "Dual-GPU Records". Everyone is fully aware at this point that a 5970 has dual gpus in a single card, so there's no reason to make the distinction.soonerkevin - Thursday, November 11, 2010 - link
Can we get Crysis Warhead benchmarks using the Enthusiast setting? It's odd that you use the highest setting for all the other games but not Crysis.Ryan Smith - Thursday, November 11, 2010 - link
Assuming we don't drop it entirely the next time we refresh our suite, we'll probably go to all Enthusiast for at least 1 resolution. Up until now, only a couple of cards have been fast enough to run it at anything resembling a playable framerate.Soldier1969 - Thursday, November 11, 2010 - link
2560 x 1600 res and a AMD 6970 FTW.silverblue - Friday, November 12, 2010 - link
Let's wait and see. If the model numbering is as skewed as with the 68xx series, the 69xx series may not be as fast as you think... though the dual GPU card should perform better thanks to the improved Crossfire performance with the new cards. Again, let's wait and see, however as two 6870s are quicker and less greedy than one 580, and noting that the 5970 uses much less power than two 5870s (granted, it's technically two 5850s but that doesn't explain all the difference), AMD could have a good dual GPU card on the way.medi01 - Friday, November 12, 2010 - link
If you ran out of budget could you please ask AMD to send you second 5970 card please?Haydyn323 - Friday, November 12, 2010 - link
They are unlikely to do so. The 5970 is being phased out of production completely to make way for the 6000 series version that is likely to come soon or to encourage people to instead buy 2x 6870s. Not to mention it's a 700 dollar card.medi01 - Friday, November 12, 2010 - link
Oh, and suddenly it is such a big problem for review site to find several hundred bucks for a card, eh?Haydyn323 - Friday, November 12, 2010 - link
I don't see what the big deal is. Yes, most likely 2x 5970s will beat 2x 580s.If that's all you want to hear; there it is. Just picture an added graph bar with higher fps above the 580 sli in your mind. It works just as well.
There's really not much point in trying to prove it at this time as ATI doesn't intend to keep selling them much longer. They have no incentive to push it.
Again for most of the 5970s currently being sold, buying 2 would cost someone $1360 whereas buying 2 580s would be $1000, so it's expected that 5970s should have more total power. Switch this up to 3x or 4x 580s and both price and performance probably go higher for the 580s.
Nate0007 - Friday, November 12, 2010 - link
The 6870 CF and 470 SLI are still the BEST bang For the $$$ here when you consider the performance and $$ spent .You get Better performance then either of AMD's or Nvida's TOP cards and at less money then either single card solution.
Here's hoping that AMD's New cards drive down prices !! even more !
Competition is great .
BoFox - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
Hey Ryan Smith, I've been thinking about the normalized results...Since the 580 would be more bandwidth-bottlenecked than the 480 at same clock speeds, the bandwidth of the 580 should also be 6.67% higher than that of the 480, in order to keep it in line with 6.67% more shaders and TMU's.
Then we could subtract exactly 6.67% from the overall performance gains, to compare it directly to GTX 480.
I've added up an average of the normalized gains (excluding Civilization V since it's CPU-bound), and subtracted 6.67% from the average for the grand result of 3%, after subtracting 2% for the bandwidth penalty. The 2% penalty is just an estimation of how much it would have gained with 6.67% more bandwidth (with the memory running at 3942MHz to keep the bandwidth perfectly linear with the core muscle). If 2% penalty is still too much, please also consider the ROP penalty, as there are still only 48 ROP's for full 512sp, compared to 48 ROP's for 480sp, but then the penalty for ROP's should be very slight, given that 48 ROP's are already plentiful and hardly ever reaches 100% usage with 4x AA.
The grand result of 3% is a bit lackluster for doubled FP16 texturing power along with minor z-culling and other architecture optimizations.