Upgrading my PC

[hordekips]

Should i get 1 ati radeon hd 7970 or 4 gtx 560s?

[hordekips]

No one? I cant make important decisions myself... as i havent slept in the last 48 hours

[Thieme]

Then i suggest sleeping a good night about it first ...
Or visiting a hardware's forum

[maxsi]

'-' buying four graphics cards instead of one that is as powerful as the 4 combined is not a good plan

[SilvasRuin]

A friend who I trust as reliable (and who helped me pick parts for my current computer) has advised me to hold off on graphics cards altogether for a few months. According to him, both major graphics card companies are going to transfer to new manufacturing practices and designs this year that should boost performance considerably. As a result, and for the sake of competing against each other, he believes the new and better cards will be of comparable prices to current cards despite the much increased performance and lowered heat. He also believes that even if the newer and better cards aren't favorably priced, the current cards on the market will plummet in price to get them sold and out of the way for the models that are making them obsolete.

I don't have any references to back him up as I didn't think to ask, so listening to me is going on hearsay... so, yeah, fair warning there.

[whitechaos35]

'-' buying four graphics cards instead of one that is as powerful as the 4 combined is not a good plan

No, this is completely wrong. Never underestimate the power of parallel computing. 2 560s in SLI is the system I'm running, and I can literally run every game on the market on the highest available graphics settings. There are diminishing returns when you go beyond 2 cards in SLI. Crossfire actually has lower diminishing returns beyond 2, so if you wanted 4 cards, go with ATI, not NVIDIA. Also, 4 ports on a P67 or Z68 motherboard (if you're going with Intel) costs a bundle.

[Kain Magin]

A friend who I trust as reliable (and who helped me pick parts for my current computer) has advised me to hold off on graphics cards altogether for a few months. According to him, both major graphics card companies are going to transfer to new manufacturing practices and designs this year that should boost performance considerably. As a result, and for the sake of competing against each other, he believes the new and better cards will be of comparable prices to current cards despite the much increased performance and lowered heat. He also believes that even if the newer and better cards aren't favorably priced, the current cards on the market will plummet in price to get them sold and out of the way for the models that are making them obsolete.

I don't have any references to back him up as I didn't think to ask, so listening to me is going on hearsay... so, yeah, fair warning there.

This is true of anything, but most so of computer parts. There is always something better on the horizon. And whenever the process is improved upon that can leap beyone the capabilities of current technology, it "tries" to be competively priced, and the previous tech plummets in price within the month. ::remembers when a 250 Gig HDD cost $500....::

Question. are youre choices of 1 radeon or 4 gtx's based on price? or does price matter? i'd suggest 2 radeons, prior to 7900 series if price is a concern. I prefer ATI to NVIDIA. I have used both in the past and ive had a better time with ATI, specially with updating the graphic drivers, NVIDIA has had, at least in the past, issues with releasing updated that have temporarily broken their own cards... and you had to revert to a previous driver. Havnt had that problem with ATI (so far ::crosses fingers::)

'-' buying four graphics cards instead of one that is as powerful as the 4 combined is not a good plan

No, this is completely wrong. Never underestimate the power of parallel computing. 2 560s in SLI is the system I'm running, and I can literally run every game on the market on the highest available graphics settings. There are diminishing returns when you go beyond 2 cards in SLI. Crossfire actually has lower diminishing returns beyond 2, so if you wanted 4 cards, go with ATI, not NVIDIA. Also, 4 ports on a P67 or Z68 motherboard (if you're going with Intel) costs a bundle.

I agree partially. The main reason of the diminishing returns is the CPU cant keep up in most cases. Without overclocking at least some. Tho if you want the most out of a quad carded system, extreme overclocking is needed... Personally I don't like the smell of melting plastic ^^ so i tend to stay away from overclocking. So stick with "at most" 2 video cards... unless you have an insane cpu or decent knowledge of overclocking... Or you want to break a record... lol

1 card: normally good enough...
2 cards: optimal
3 cards: wasted power
4 cards: ::laughs menacingly:: Mwahahahahaha

[whitechaos35]

The main reason of the diminishing returns is the CPU cant keep up in most cases.

No, this is false. CPUs are not guiding everything graphics cards do. And the CPU definitely doesn't care if there are 1 or 4 graphics cards (to an extent). Each of the graphics cards receives the exact same communication from the CPU. They then communicate with each other to resolve who computes what, and that gets more and more difficult with more cards.

Tho if you want the most out of a quad carded system, extreme overclocking is needed.

This is also false. The benefit received by overclocking would not be greater with a four card system than a one card system because you have four cards; it would be greater because the CPU could communicate on the PCI bus a little bit quicker (this might not be true, as I think the PCI bus uses a different clock that can't be adjusted on consumer-grade hardware). But, as I mentioned previously, this is usually broadcast to all of the cards, so the gain in overclocking a 4 card system vs a 1 card system is extremely minimal.

[Poppycocks]

If I remember right the CPU frequency is derived from the FSB frequency. Thus increasing one would increase both (unless you set the cpu clock multiplier lower on purpose at the same time). I'm fairly certain higher PCI traffic demands mean higher FSB traffic demands. Thus overclocking your whole system (as opposed to overclocking just your CPU) might make a real difference.

Then again, the last time I dabbled in this stuff was 10 years ago, so don't take my word for it.

[Shengji]

The price premium on the 7970's is indefensible, you may as well go for the 7950 and never notice the difference - if you have money to burn. Otherwise, the only graphics cards I would ever recommend are:

AMD Radeon HD 6850 -
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti
AMD Radeon HD 6950
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti with 448 cores

And as you clearly want the highest end, that's a recommendation from me of the GeForce GTX 560 Ti with 448 cores

Why: it’s the real high-end GPU deal and uses exactly the same three-billion transistor GF110 graphics chips as the GTX 570 and GTX 580 cards. It absolutely renders the 570 redundant and if I had to pick between it and the Radeon 6950, the NVIDIA GPU would get the nod due to reliability both in terms of drivers and more consistent performance more of the time.

Regarding NVIDIA’s SLI and AMD’s CrossfireX. I would say "Don’t bother". Now, that’s going to upset people successfully running multi-GPU rigs, particularly SLI systems, which are definitely preferable to AMD’s flaky CrossfireX technology.

But the case against easily outweighs the case for. Number one, multi-GPU in all flavours is less reliable. It’s hard to be sure if it’s working optimally. In my view, guaranteed if slightly lower performance is preferable to the constant worry that comes with multi-GPU. What’s more, multi-GPU performance isn’t always what it seems to be based on benchmark results. One reason why is micro-stuttering. We’ve not the space and I’ve not the inclination to explain why here. If you want to learn more, I suggest you start here. If I were you, I’d just trust me on this one. Life is happier with single-GPU.

[whitechaos35]

Regarding NVIDIA’s SLI and AMD’s CrossfireX. I would say "Don’t bother". Now, that’s going to upset people successfully running multi-GPU rigs, particularly SLI systems, which are definitely preferable to AMD’s flaky CrossfireX technology.

But the case against easily outweighs the case for.

You never argued the case for multi-GPU rigs. I agree with you about everything, but there is clearly a growing trend in utilizing multiple GPUs for superior graphic performance that should not be ignored. However, the pace at which that utilization is growing would not justify anything more than a two card system.

You're spot on on the 560 Ti.

[DaveYanakov]

A friend who I trust as reliable (and who helped me pick parts for my current computer) has advised me to hold off on graphics cards altogether for a few months. According to him, both major graphics card companies are going to transfer to new manufacturing practices and designs this year that should boost performance considerably. As a result, and for the sake of competing against each other, he believes the new and better cards will be of comparable prices to current cards despite the much increased performance and lowered heat. He also believes that even if the newer and better cards aren't favorably priced, the current cards on the market will plummet in price to get them sold and out of the way for the models that are making them obsolete.

I don't have any references to back him up as I didn't think to ask, so listening to me is going on hearsay... so, yeah, fair warning there.

I seriously doubt the comparable price part of this. Changing tooling is incredibly expensive and these companies know that their early market for a card consists of people willing to pay a couple hundred dollars for a few percentage points of performance.

[Kain Magin]

yea, the wordshould be "competitive", not comparable. they'll be expencive yes, but not extremly outrageous