I do like the 4 monitor support that this one card offers.... That seems nice.
I do like the 4 monitor support that this one card offers.... That seems nice.
Yea i just got my 3GB 580 last month. I'm very happy with it for what i use it for>> single 27' monitor running 1900, 1080. It will last me a long while I'm sure. I also have a 580 1.5 GB I'm not sure what to do with it, its value just took a nose dive hehe... might just save it as a back up.
Currently 5 Boxing 5 Protection Paladins on Whisperwind Alliance
The Power of Five!!! ( short video )
Controversy behind this nVIDIA release.
http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=162901
Part number controversy lolol...
Now playing: WoW (Garona)
So now comes the decision of which way to go.
Asus 2Gb 680 is $699, Asus 3Gb 7970 with 6 outputs is $679.....
The slight extra speed of the 680 does not seem to outweigh the extra framebuffer size and ability to run one character per monitor fullscreen of the 7970 but am interested in others opinions before I pull the trigger next week.
It's a tough call but, there's something that stuck in my mind from glancing over lots of threads on it over the past few days. People were talking about the memory bandwidth on the GTX 680 and how it might be lacking at higher resolutions. Now, I realize that most of us don't play above 1920x1080 but, that's 1920x1080 x3 or x5 or more... so the pixels start adding up. I don't know enough about all of that to really make the call but, I can't imagine you can go wrong with the 7970.
Here's a thread about some memory bandwidth stuff - http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2234397
Yeah, that's the issue I was considering with the framebuffer and the same reason going from 1Gb to 2Gb or 1.5Gb 580 to 3Gb 580 made such differences previously. We're not really running 1920x1080 when boxing but rather 1920x1080xClientCount which with a 5box would be close to running 1920x1080 at 8AA so a higher framebuffer will always be better. In fact yeah, if you are running at a lower fps across all clients due to lower framebuffer on a faster card then the power increase isn't really a benefit.
This of course is without taking into account the memory bandwidth and if 680 can use it's memory more efficiently to overcome the lower framebuffer. Might have to see what AT forums do have to say about it as it's an interesting theoretical discussion.
Well this maybe the issue I am seeing with the new 7970 I just got. I run Rift at 2560x1600 at medium on my main monitor and the slaves are running on two secondary monitors in software render mode. When use AMD system monitor to measure the GPU usage I am getting max of 80% YET my frames are only around 30fps dropping as low as 15 fps in Meridan. The 7970 is a 3gb card but I wonder how much memory it is using and if the frame buffer is a bottle neck.
My 5 Man team
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Uther&n=Abhram
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Uther&n=Stallker
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Uther&n=Allspark
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Uther&n=Shámán
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Uther&cn=Shammyhealz
Considering they have increased the amount of memory and the speed at which it is utilised through better/more processors, it does seem a bit strange that they have gone from a 384bit bus in the 580 to a 256 bus in the 680 again... Almost feels like they are deliberately gimping this build a bit like they were forced to with the 480 (albeit disabling shaders due to thermal problems which this card does not appear to have) so that the next gen card can use fairly similar architecture to achieve much better performance through simple upgrades (Assuming memory bus and buffer size will be improved) for the 780?
ie. Fermi MkI (480) Fermi MkII (580)
Kepler MkI (680) Kepler MkII (780?)
Connect With Us