GTX 470 SLI or 5970?

L

lt_wentoncha

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 20, 2005
Messages
285
Howdy all,

Alrighty, I'm getting impatient waiting for the GTX 480 to get out there. Rather than pay the $1000 people want on eBay (btw, to all you eBayers out there, real classy, buy a high
demand card so you can gouge).

I digress, what's the way to go, GTX 470 SLI or 5970? Two GTX 470s and one 5970 are priced the same. I told myself I would never do SLI, but damnation every vender is talking early may for the GTX 480.

I tried listing the Pros/Cons below...as you can see, there is a gap in my ATI knowledge. The only thing that's preventing me from jumping on board with the 5970 is Physx.

Target System:
*i7 930
*GA X58A-UD-5
*I have a GT 240 that I was going to pair up with the GTX 480 b/c I don't think it can do three monitors alone, might keep it strictly for Physx unless there's a bottleneck
*G.Skill PI 6GB DDR3 (1600) 7-8-7-24
*Crucial/Micron C300 128 GB SSD
*1x LG BR Writer
*2x 1 TB drives
*Hauppauge Win-TV 1850 Tv Tuner
*Corsair H50 Heatsink
*2x 120mm case fans
*Powering it all: Corsair 850TX


GTX 470 SLI
Pros
+Physx support
Cons
-Heat
-PSU (slizone oks the PSU...I'm not quite sure but there 72A on the 12+ rail)

5970
Pros
+???
Cons
-???

GTX 470 said:
Chipset
Chipset Manufacturer NVIDIA
GPU GeForce GTX 470 (Fermi)
Core Clock 607MHz
Shader Clock 1215MHz
Stream Processors 448 Processor Cores
Memory
Effective Memory Clock 3348MHz
Memory Size 1280MB
Memory Interface 320-bit
Memory Type GDDR5
Click to expand...

5970 said:
Chipset
Chipset Manufacturer ATI
GPU Radeon HD 5970 (Hemlock)
Stream Processors 3200 (1600 x 2) Stream Processing Units
Memory
Memory Size 2GB
Memory Interface 512 (256 x 2)-bit
Memory Type GDDR5
Click to expand...
 
It's more of a patch vs. hacked drivers. You install the official ones then patch em'.

As long as it's from the right people it's safe because I did it with my GTX 260 and it worked just fine.
 
Prefer the 470 SLI myself, but only by a tiny margin. So you won't go wrong with either really.
 
Your best bet would be to grab two 5850's for $500-550, which will be faster than both GTX470SLI and a 5970, as well as being cheaper. In terms of bang-for-your-buck, it's the best high-end setup out there now.
 
Mr. K6 said:
Your best bet would be to grab two 5850's for $500-550, which will be faster than both GTX470SLI and a 5970, as well as being cheaper. In terms of bang-for-your-buck, it's the best high-end setup out there now.
Click to expand...

I thought the 5970 was essentially two 5870 cores clocked at 5850 speed. How could two 5850's be faster? The 5970 is downclocked on purpose as well and from what I hear should have no problem reaching 5870 clocks. So really two 5870's is faster than two 5850's unless I'm misinformed.

As for the OP:

I would recommend going 5970, you always have the option of adding another 5970 or 5870 down the line for extra performance if you need it.
 
ELox said:
I thought the 5970 was essentially two 5870 cores clocked at 5850 speed. How could two 5850's be faster? The 5970 is downclocked on purpose as well and from what I hear should have no problem reaching 5870 clocks. So really two 5870's is faster than two 5850's unless I'm misinformed.
Click to expand...
Multiple reasons really. My guess is that having both chips on the same card running through one 16x slot creates some sort of overhead/bottleneck. Check out reviews - http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-5970-review-test/12, the 5970 is always a little bit behind (and I'd imagine the 5850's weren't on the latest drivers).

The reason I recommend two 5850's is they really shine once you overclock. The 5970 is tougher to overclock because it only has one fan and one set of 8-pin and 6-pin power connections to feed two GPUs. Two 5850's end up having better power delivery and usually go much further while being quieter. All for at least $100 less. Unless you're limited by PCIe slots, there's little reason to get a 5970.
 
ELox said:
I thought the 5970 was essentially two 5870 cores clocked at 5850 speed. How could two 5850's be faster? The 5970 is downclocked on purpose as well and from what I hear should have no problem reaching 5870 clocks. So really two 5870's is faster than two 5850's unless I'm misinformed.

As for the OP:

I would recommend going 5970, you always have the option of adding another 5970 or 5870 down the line for extra performance if you need it.
Click to expand...

Correct, the 5970 is 2 lots of 5870 hardware downclocked to 5850 speeds to keep the power draw under 300W (PCI-E 2.0 Compliant)

All 5970s will clock to 5870 speeds no problem with a slight vcore increase, most 5970 owners who have overclocked with custom voltages are seeing overclocks that rival good 5870 OC speeds, 1Ghz+/5000Mhz+

The 5870 seems to beat the 470 so when the 5970 is clocked to 5870 speeds it should easily beat a 470 SLI setup, and do it with less overall power draw and way less heat/noise. It will also only take up 1 slot so you have the option for running PhysX (if you really must buy in to this silly novelty feature) with a 2nd Nvidia card and patched drivers.

So basically

470 SLI Pros-
Nothing
470 SLI Cons-
More heat
More noise
More power draw

5970 Pros-
Highly overclockable
Faster when overclocked
One slot design
Cooler
Quiter
Less power hungry
5970 Cons-
Maybe slightly slower at stock speeds
Need a case to fit a 12.5" card
For OCing you'll want a PSU that can handle 15A on the 6pin, 20A on the 8pin
 
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