nvidia 590 vs ati 6990

This is asking about the desktop versions, I know this is a notebook forum and all but hopefully you guys know stuff about desktops also, and dekstopreview seems dead usually. So my question does anyone know and have proof of any kind showing which one would be the best choice, Im going more for power and not price.

 

GeForce GTX 590 review

it compares both cards.

590 is faster it seems

 

590 is faster it seems[/QUOTE]

Ofcourse, its Nvida after all-

 

The 580 was already meant to be a 6990 killer when introduced so the 590 really seals the deal for nVidia. I will admit, nVidia is still the graphics company to go for when you are looking at desktop platforms. Sure they are still pricey, but their desktop architecture is really advancing on the higher-end spectrum every generation.

That is NOT the case for the laptop offerings though...

PS: inb4lock The mods will still refer you to "dead" DTR.

 

from that review

now talking to the guys who build desktops I know, speed depends on games, in some the 590 can win by 10% in others AMD can win by 20%
and for now the 590 does NOT support quad SLI where you can easily run a pair of 6990's in a quad Crossifre config.

your not going to find alot of benchmarks as the 590 is only days old.

 

Unless I'm mistaken, the gtx590 and AMD 6990 have been out for quite a while, since april or so.

Almost every major tech site did a review comparing the two, and almost every review found that neither had an appreciable advantage. One would excel in benchmarks or a few games, but the other would shine equally in other tests. So from a performance standpoint, it really depends if you're benchmarking or which game you're planning to play. Personally, I would choose the gtx590, since it is smaller than the mammoth 6990 (by 2in at least) and runs quieter (results from tests), and has a cool gimmick (gtx logo glows under load if I'm not mistaken

 

I would get neither. since they are indeed running a sli config, get either 2 gtx 580 or 2 6970, it will be better it will be cooler, it will be less noisy

 

the 6990 is faster at higher multi-monitor resolutions, which is what these cards were designed for...

 

The 580 isn't a 6990 killer. The 580 came out before the 6990. The 580 beats the 6970 by a little bit (6970 is a quite a bit cheaper though), but the 580 sucks compared to the 6990, since that is two 6970s in CFX.

If money is no concern, I'd go for a pair of 580's since that would give you the most power since a 590 is two 570s in SLI. 580's in SLI would be a tad more powerful than both a 590 or 6990.

If performance/money ratio is of any concern, dual 6970s or 6950s are by far the best bang for the buck.

Here is my source on those claims: Best PCIe Card: $400 And Up : Best Graphics Cards For The Money: July 2011

 

The general idea that I ot was that while the ATI card could would get the highest frame rates at peak moments, it also had a habit of getting the lowest too. The nvidia one just seemed more consistant.

As for the 590, it's basically just 2 580's on top of each other with a slightly lower clock (you can clock it back up again if you want, people have clocked them to 580 speeds and beyond). As for what to get if you had to choose between a 590 or 2 580's in SLI, I'd probably go for the SLI rig for these reasons:

1. It'll probably run cooler
2. If you have SLI problems then you can easily disable one card
3. Should one card break then you still have the other
4. Higher bandwidth due to the fact that the PCIe bus isn't shared
(5.) I'm not sure of this, but I don't think you can set up a dual layer card to use one of the GPU's as a physics card whereas with a true SLI setup you can have dedicated physics quite easily

As for ATI vs Nvidia, I'd go with nvidia since they run cooler/quieter, generally have better driver support and that you have CUDA and PhysX to play about with. Nvidia probably costs a little more but for what you get it's well worth the slight increase in price.

 

Anyone know why alienware doesn't carry the 580 or the 6970 cards?

 

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