Hey guys,

So, its the time of year where I can afford a graphics upgrade, woohoo!

I need honest advice with regards to two cards, the Nvidia GTX 580 3GB, which is in my sights, and the Radeon HD5870 1GB which is in my rig.

First of all, what I want it for:

Primarily Skyrim, BF3 and other modern 3D games. Also, I've been using Photoshop for ages and have been really wanting to get around to learning 3D modelling too, but I never do. Anyway, the 3D art is something to take into consideration.

My current rig:

i5 2500k OC to 4.5Ghz (stable)
Radeon HD5870
8GB RAM (2 x 4GB Corsair Vengeance PC3-12800)
Screen Resolution: 1920x1080
Corsair HDX 620watt power supply (in reviews it was found to supply more power than most 800w power supplies which is why I bought it).

How I want to play Skyrim: 1920x1080, 2xSupersample AA (at least), HD texture mods, FXAA Injector mod or other injector mod, Ultra Settings, uGrids 7 or more
How Skyrim currently performs on my rig at those settings: Indoors 45-60FPS, outdoors 24-40FPS (mostly low 30s, often dipping into 20s)

Other things to keep in mind: I dislike CCC

What I really want to know is, will the GTX 580 fulfill my needs? Is there anyone here who can comment having used the card, or even having used both of these cards? Also, is now the wrong time to buy an Nvidia, is the 600 series imminent? Is my powersupply good enough for a GTX 580 3GB?

I understand the Radeon 7970 (i think thats its name, the new one) far out performs the GTX 580, but to be honest, I want out of this CCC.

My main concern is that I have actually heard that the 5870 is faster than some respects than the GTX580... is this true? Is it worth an upgrade, or is the performance I've got pretty much what I'm stuck with

Edit: I have looked around at various sites, I'm not being lazy here, but I want to hear from you guys because its nicer to hear from people with experience of using the cards in the situation I would rather than reading a review.

See for yourself how they compare with games

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/graphics-cards,1.html

I've got a GTX 580 and love it. Generally you can run everything with AA etc. at 8x. I'm not entirely sure about Skyrim, since I haven't played it much on PC, but from what little I played it didn't lag at all. That was with maxed settings, 1920x1080, full screen with nVidia 3D vision turned on.

If you go to hardware compare, it claims the 5870 is considerably faster at texture filtering! Whereas the GTX 580 is marginally faster at AA. Also, in the UK, the price difference between the 7000 series and the 580 is ￡200-￡300 (or almost double).

Seems like overkill to me. I run most games at max or near-max with my GTX 460 and helf the RAM. Excpet Skyrim. Curse you, Skyrim!

Way too expensive for my blood anyway. I see no reason to spend that money uless you just really want to.

Using a 580 GTX with 3GB native resolution is 2560x1600

I would wait for the next release and buy when the price drops on the 580 or if there is a decent performance gain for whatever the 399.99 price point I last read somewhere for the 600

I have had my current card for 3 years or more, its not an investment I take lightly, it takes 3 years to afford an upgrade

The worst thing would be to fork out ￡440 and find no improvement.

I know.

At any rate, I went from a 8800 to a GTX 580 and it's very much worth it.

OK, Deleted and edited a few posts - back to the discussion now guys.

Thanks, this is the kind of thing I was hoping to hear, from someone who had used both.

May I ask what powersupply you have and if you have the 3GB version of the card?


Thanks

Well OP, are you wanting the 580 for future-proof-ness? Seems like way too much money to spend on one card. Have you thought about using XFire or SLI instead?

For him to use crossfire he'd have to buy another ATI card, and he doesn't like CCC. And buying a single powerful new card is better than buying two new cards, I'm pretty sure that some games have issues with multiple GPUs.

I'm actually trying to avoid xfire or sli. Partly because it causes some issues, particularly with Skyrim from what I've read, and partly because I only have a 620w power supply. I *think* higher w power supply is needed for SLI. Although from the reviews I read my powersupply is very good, I'm not willing to risk pushing it farther than it was designed for.

I'm sort of set on the 3GB VRAM, my current card uses over 950MB of VRAM in Skyrim without any mods installed. To get 3GB VRAM in SLI I would need two 3GB cards, because the memory is mirrored not added, so XFire of my 5870 with another 5870 still = 1GB VRAM, one 580 = 3GB VRAM.

It does have issues, but I'm just laying out another option.

3GB frame buffer for a single monitor is a bit overkill I think.

With the recent release of the Radeon HD 7000 series and the imminent release of the GeForce 600 series I'd expect graphics card prices to be dropping pretty soon. As soon as the GeForce 600's drop I'll bet the GTX 580 will go down in price by at least $100 USD. It's up to you, though. The GTX 580 is fast.

Right now I'm still using a Radeon 5870 in my main desktop and I'm fine with it for now. I'm going to wait until the Ivy Bridge CPUs and nVidia's next generation of cards show up and then re-evaluate the situation. The current generation of high-end hardware is about to fall off the cutting edge. In a few months you'll probably be able to get more for your money.

when it comes to physical and Video, RAM..... you can never have enough...

3gb has real advantages... frankly i'm a little disappointed there isn't single gpu vards out with 4gb Vram yet. Skyrim can easily make heavy use of 2gb+ @ 1080p.... i hit the 3gb limit when running 3240x1920..... come 2160p resolutions very soon with the tvs starting to hit the consumer markets..... that 1gb is about right for most situations for 1080p is going to be 1/4 of what's needed for something 4x the definition.

Here is a screenshot of my VRAM usage on my 5870 in Skyrim. You can see it is maxed out, the huge leap is basically when I started the game.

[IMG]http://i44.tinypic.com/2rf3jhz.jpg[/IMG]

Depending on what you're using the PC for, you can definitely have too much RAM. Not in a bad way, but in a "what's the point?" way...

It's probably supposed to use all of the VRAM, to make the game run smoother.

Not really true. You hit a point at which the GPU is maxed out and more video RAM would do no good at all. It really depends on how much data the GPU can process. Graphics card manufacturers typically sell midrange - low-end enthusiast cards with more video RAM than they need toward the middle-end of the GPU's life cycle to squeeze more money out of the market. In almost all cases the performance gain doesn't justify the price increase over the reference VRAM configuration. I'm not saying that having plenty of VRAM isn't good, but once the GPU (or even the PCI-E bus) becomes the bottleneck it's pointless to add more. That doesn't stop the card manufacturers, though.

Unless you find a 580 for less than $400 it would not be a wise purchase with the 7950 released today and the nVidia GK104 card due shortly. I expect the 580 and 570 to get price reductions in the next month in response to the 7950 pricing and to make way for the GTX 660/760.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-7950-overclock-crossfire-benchmark,3123.html

Okay, I may wait until the next-gen Nvidias arrive. Problem is I can't find a release date or rumoured release date. With that in mind I figured we be looking at 6 months+.

I disagree. I have a GTX 580 1.5 GB and I run into the 1.5 enough that it annoys me. I have two monitors, however I only run 3d on the main one @ 1920x1200.

I'd say that getting 3gb will help future proof the card quite a bit. It will also help run Skyrim now.

This is a good point. I remember back in the day of PCI cards, I swapped my GPU for the same GPU with more RAM. Now I had enough VRAM to turn on more graphic effects, but the GPU couldn't handle any more graphic effects. At all.

I was a newbie at the time, so I didn't know any better. I can't help walking away from that experience thinking that this particular company doesn't know what they are doing either.

Same thing with GPUs that aren't set to increase fan speed until they get to a temperature in which they are already overheated! I'm sure others here know what I'm talking about.

Incompetence.

Maybe only a month or two. For me it's a case of there will always be cards that are cheaper than what I paid and there will always be cards that are more expensive than what I can afford. I would rather get the most out of computer now than wait 6 months but I'm not very patient so that's me.

That being said, got myself the GTX 560 two days ago and although it's not top of the range it has more than enough power for Skyrim. I run the game on Ultra with nothing turned down and I get 50 - 60 fps everywhere including the usual test spot at the top of the satirs leading to Dragon's Reach and looking out over Whiterun (vsync + tripple buffering enabled). Skyrim has to many issues if you disable vsync which is why I leave it on.

With AO on (nVidia control panel, 290.53 beta drivers) you lose about 10 to 12 fps but it looks awsome. Even with it on though I never dipped below 38 fps and most of the time it's above 40 with peaks going up to 55 fps.

Thats on a GTX 560. I'm pretty sure the GTX 580 will do even more great things.

As far as 3d modeling and design goes it has very little to do with your GPU and a lot to do with your CPU and RAM. A good GPU doesn't hurt of course but most of the work is done at render time and rendering is all CPU power so you'll do fine.

Enjoy.