Ati 6990 vs GTX 590

Judging from the tech specs the 6990 has 3072 streaming cores, the 6970 has 1536 streaming cores, therefore the 6990 will be two 6970 GPUs. The 590 has two 580s GPU cores, so on paper the 590 will be faster than the 6990, although pricing wise, the 6990 will probably be a fair bit cheaper than the 590. However if you are going to go gaming on multiple monitors, I would say the 6990 is the better choice, since it has 4GB of GDDR5 RAM, so it should fair better are higher resolutions. Also and more importantly Eyefinity is a significantly more mature technology than 3D Surround, so when it comes to scaling the 6990 will be ahead.

Also note that the 6970 GPU is better at Direct X 11 Tessellation, but no games utilize it to a point that the 6970 will be better than the 590. What this means, that for all current titles, and most titles in the foreseeable future, the 590 will be the faster card unless you are planning on going multimonitor gaming, than the 6990 will be the better choice.

Remember when it comes to pricing these two wouldn't be in the same league. If I was to estimate the prices the 6990 will probably be around $750-800 AUD, which is $50-$100 more than the 580.

If I was the boss of Nvidia I'll probably have the 590 being on it's own for crazy people with too much money to buy, but also create something called the GTX585 which would have two 570 GPUs to contend against the AMD 6990 and push them out, since there would be larger market in that price range in my opinion. Just a thought. Although since the manufacturing costs of the 580 and 570, they could drop the price significantly for the 590; incredibly unlikely.
 
I'm going to sit back and wait to see if ASUS do to the 590 what they did with the 580. That being said I don't even know if there's a cooler, quieter version of the 580, yet. I've not had time to compare.
 
Zeals said:
Judging from the tech specs the 6990 has 3072 streaming cores, the 6970 has 1536 streaming cores, therefore the 6990 will be two 6970 GPUs. The 590 has two 580s GPU cores, so on paper the 590 will be faster than the 6990, although pricing wise, the 6990 will probably be a fair bit cheaper than the 590. However if you are going to go gaming on multiple monitors, I would say the 6990 is the better choice, since it has 4GB of GDDR5 RAM, so it should fair better are higher resolutions. Also and more importantly Eyefinity is a significantly more mature technology than 3D Surround, so when it comes to scaling the 6990 will be ahead.

Also note that the 6970 GPU is better at Direct X 11 Tessellation, but no games utilize it to a point that the 6970 will be better than the 590. What this means, that for all current titles, and most titles in the foreseeable future, the 590 will be the faster card unless you are planning on going multimonitor gaming, than the 6990 will be the better choice.

Remember when it comes to pricing these two wouldn't be in the same league. If I was to estimate the prices the 6990 will probably be around $750-800 AUD, which is $50-$100 more than the 580.

If I was the boss of Nvidia I'll probably have the 590 being on it's own for crazy people with too much money to buy, but also create something called the GTX585 which would have two 570 GPUs to contend against the AMD 6990 and push them out, since there would be larger market in that price range in my opinion. Just a thought. Although since the manufacturing costs of the 580 and 570, they could drop the price significantly for the 590; incredibly unlikely.
Click to expand...

You see, it's this kind of thinking that makes peoples lives a whole lot easier!
happy.gif
thank you for taking your time to explain all of that. And I will take all of this into consideration. Excellent feedback good sir!
 
I believe if both card use the maximum TDP it will be the company with the best FPS/watt that will pull ahead of the competition. 3840 stream processors in the 6990 thats a unseen 1920 per. And how downclocked a dual GTX may be. These factors are keeping me on the edge of my seat awaiting a thorough review.
 
JCBenton said:
I'm going to sit back and wait to see
Click to expand...

And that is what I'll be doing. Once the smoke clears, and we see prices settle down, and have multiple reviews to ponder, then I'll open the wallet, blow the dust and cobwebs out, and maybe buy one of them.

I'd like to see AMD officially come up with a way to tackle PhysX and Cuda using their cards, because I like those effects, but I don't hold out much hope for it.

For me, it'll probably come down to who uses less power, because both will have stunning performance overall.
 
I'll be putting it down to price and performance as I don't pay the electricity bills for now, may as well take advantage of this situation
laugh.gif
 
The problem Nvidia have is heat!

The 6990 runs stupidly hot as pointed out by Tom in the review.

GTX570/580's require more power and generate more heat then there AMD equivalents.

Getting around the 300w TDP limit and the heat is going to be there problem but there's 2 ways around it.

Have a dual BIOS system like the 6990 reducing the cards clocks to pass the TDP limit.

or

Under clock the card and reduce power consumption and heat at the same time.

A dual BIOS to me seems unlikely with the more realistic option being that Nvidia will just simply under-clock the card to keep the power and heat requirements down.

Now the gap between 6970 Crossfire and GTX570/GTX580 SLI is not all that big depending on the game so depending on how much Nvidia down clock the card it could very well end up being slower then the 6990.
 
All cards can be cooled well enough and beyond for any sort of use. There are no "problems" with heat from either camp. Intel cpus suffer with heat if you don't plan your cooling ffs ! (ffs? really??)

I wouldn't be too eager to judge either of these dual cards tbh. Sure there are some "issues" - but stand up and deal with them. Enthusiast is more than just a word to band about, no ?
tongue.gif


Imo, dual cpus are a waste of agrevation, but that's besides the point. Everyone has an experienced opinion.

In all honesty, if I'm shopping for a dual gpu card, the last thing I'm worrying about is power. I'd already have a 24"+ screen, or 2/3x screens, and enough cash to buy the PSUs required to power the beast. Plus in the same cash bracket these cards are intended for, power use and hence my lecky bill isn't a consideration. I want the "best" and I'm willing to pay for it.

That's not quite me, but it's surely a purchaser of such good cards ? Or atleast those who think little before shelling out cash for them.

Personally I'm happy with the best single gpu whenever I need one and I'm sticking to it, despite the tax breaks
tongue.gif


I've already seen people complaining about this card using too much power - it's a silly argument to me.
 
Now down to 580 or 590, not spending £500 on a card that can barely keep itself cool, same goes for 590 when that comes about. So are we likely to see that in the next week or so?
 
I'm hoping that it will drive down the prices on their line of GPU's. I would luv to get a new GTX 570 for under $300 US. Besides not all of us old timers/gamers/PC guys can pony up the excess cash for these expensive baubles......
rolleyes.gif
 
I've already seen the prices of the 5xxx series cards, the 5870 can be purchased for around 230-240 dollars. That's a steal of a deal. And they still destroy games. If you really want a killer setup for a cheaper price. I'd say throw yourself in for a 2x Crossfire 5870 setup or if you have a 4 way sli or any eatx motherboard get 4 of them and make a killer system.
 
KTCRITCH said:
I've already seen the prices of the 5xxx series cards, the 5870 can be purchased for around 230-240 dollars. That's a steal of a deal. And they still destroy games. If you really want a killer setup for a cheaper price. I'd say throw yourself in for a 2x Crossfire 5870 setup or if you have a 4 way sli or any eatx motherboard get 4 of them and make a killer system.
Click to expand...

quad xfire/sli sucks balls mate
 
thestepster said:
quad xfire/sli sucks balls mate
Click to expand...

Dude, think about it. It doesn't suck balls. It's great. It's just not as good as other setups that would cost more. But it can still run anything a hell of a lot better than one card. That's like saying. A corvette Z06 sucks balls compared to a lamborghini murcielago lp 670-4 Superveloce. It's all about cost. You're still getting kick ass performance. But to get crazy results you need to spend more cash.
 
IMO performances are about the same.

remember: benchmarks always favour nvidia

the only difference being - nvidia does physx
 
KTCRITCH said:
Dude, think about it. It doesn't suck balls. It's great. It's just not as good as other setups that would cost more. But it can still run anything a hell of a lot better than one card. That's like saying. A corvette Z06 sucks balls compared to a lamborghini murcielago lp 670-4 Superveloce. It's all about cost. You're still getting kick ass performance. But to get crazy results you need to spend more cash.
Click to expand...

just cause u have more cards doesnt mean that ur gonna get better results mate the reason quad/tri sucks is support, there are very very very few ppl compared to single or sli so game developers dont really code in support very often and more often than not u end up with worse performance cause the game doesnt know what to do with all those gpu's
 
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