Today's Hard|Forum Post
Today's Hard|Forum Post
Date:
Sunday , November 14, 2010
Author:
Brent Justice
Editor:
Kyle Bennett
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GeForce GTX 580 vs. Radeon HD 5970 2GB Performance

We will see if NVIDIA’s new GeForce GTX 580 has what it takes to compare to AMD’s Radeon HD 5970 2GB dual-GPU video card. These five apples-to-apples tests will reveal performance differences and memory limitations on the Radeon HD 5970 2GB. The Radeon HD 5970 is less expensive, so let's where the chips fall.

Introduction

This past week, NVIDIA debuted its Fermi architecture refresh in the form of the GeForce GTX 580. The GeForce GTX 580 is currently the fastest single-GPU video card NVIDIA has to offer. This champion has set a new bar for single-GPU video card in-game performance. Our evaluation revealed that it greatly surpassed AMD’s fastest single-GPU video card, the Radeon HD 5870 2GB Eyefinity6. The GeForce GTX 580 also offered a better gameplay experience than the GeForce GTX 480 by about 20% on average. The power envelope and thermal factors for the GTX 580 are better than the GeForce GTX 480, yet it provides more performance in games, and thus a better gameplay experience. While the GeForce GTX 580 trounces the Radeon HD 5870, there is another video card from AMD to consider however that is very price competitive.

The Radeon HD 5970 is AMD’s "fastest" video card. This is not a single-GPU video card like the Radeon HD 5870. The Radeon HD 5970 video card consists of two Radeon HD 5870 (down-clocked) GPUs connected via CrossFireX on a single board. While both GPUs retain all the specifications internally as a Radeon HD 5870, the performance has been reduced by core frequency reduction and memory frequency reduction. But worth mentioning is that many people find the 5970 very easy to overclock by large margins. There is also only 1GB of GDDR5 available per GPU. This memory video RAM limitation can cause high resolutions with antialiasing to run out of local video memory, since memory is not shared on the video card. Each GPU needs its own frame buffer space. The only way to fix this issue is to use more memory per GPU, but the 5970 doesn't have it.

In our evaluation of the GeForce GTX 580 last week, we did not compare it to the Radeon HD 5970. The reason being is that pricing on the 5970 was higher when we began the evaluation process by a full $160. The 5970 ended up being directly comparable to the GTX 580's pricing towards the end of our process. The GeForce GTX 580 is currently going for $499 online. The Radeon HD 5970 can be had now for $469.99 after $30 MIR. This is an excellent deal compared to past pricing, and we wanted to see how performance stacks up against the new GTX 580.

Test Setup

ATI Radeon HD 5970 - Catalyst 10.10d Hotfix and CAP 10.10 CAP 1.

Since the Radeon HD 5970 is "CrossFireX on a card", we are using the latest drivers and CrossFireX profile.

For the GeForce GTX 580 we are using the BETA driver provided by NVIDIA, ForceWare 262.99. For the Radeon HD 5870 2GB we are using Catalyst 10.10d Hotfix.

We will be testing in an apples-to-apples configuration at 2560x1600.

The system specifications are MSI Eclipse, Intel Core i7 920 @ 3.6GHz, 6GB DDR3, Dell 3007WFP, Win7 x64.

F1 2010

We are using the latest patch of the game which enables DirectX 11 graphical effects. We learned in our GeForce GTX 580 evaluation that the new patch changes the performance profile of this game. This game is now much more demanding especially at 2560x1600 with 8X MSAA.

8X MSAA

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In this first graph, we are comparing all three video cards at 2560x1600 with 8X MSAA enabled. As we stated, the new patch has made this game much more demanding. When you look at the graph the first thing you will notice is how much faster the Radeon HD 5970 is in framerates compared to the GeForce GTX 580. Indeed, the Radeon HD 5970 is averaging 16% faster performance compared to the GeForce GTX 580. Compared to the Radeon HD 5870, the Radeon HD 5970 is 20% faster. This does not sound like a large improvement over a single Radeon HD 5870 GPU, and in fact it is not the kind of performance improvement we’d expect from dual-GPUs.

At this setting, with 8X MSAA enabled, the Radeon HD 5970 was very inconsistent in framerates. You can see this clearly on the graph, the GTX 580 and HD 5870 2GB lines are more smoother compared to the Radeon HD 5970. The Radeon HD 5970 experiences wild fluctuations in performance, and erratic behavior. This is because we are running into VRAM limits with 1GB per GPU in this game at 8X MSAA at 2560x1600. While this setting looks playable, we can assure you that it was not. We not play this game at 8X MSAA at 2560x1600 on the Radeon HD 5970, it was not an enjoyable experience. We could feel each dip and dive in performance, and it was very distracting.

What we have done, is to run this test again, but at a lower AA setting, 4X MSAA. At 4X MSAA we are not bound by memory limitations.

4X MSAA

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Now that we are not bound by memory limitations, you can see how much smoother, and less erratic, the performance line is for the Radeon HD 5970. There are no wild swings up and down in performance, it is more consistent. Along with that, performance differences have increased and the Radeon HD 5970 is now 25% faster than the GeForce GTX 580. This game shows us how much memory capacity can affect a multi-GPU configuration.