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[Cortexian]

Nvidia hurry up and stomp AMD with GTX 600's.

[Warsaw]

I have no doubt that Nvidia will do so, but AMD will just slash prices and Nvidia will be left with a $700 space heater whose only market segment is those playing games on three 2560x1600 monitors. With the Xbox 720 rumored to be sporting a Radeon HD 6670, it doesn't look like we'll be getting anything truly demanding for the foreseeable future; might be better to save your money and grab two GTX580s/590s or two HD7950s/7970s and call it a decade.

Also, I don't know how much longer Nvidia can sustain the huge, monolithic GPU that pushes pixels at the cost of excessive heat generation and power consumption, but I feel like they are going to have to go back to the drawing board soon. Have you noticed that their development cycle has been getting longer and longer starting with the GTX280? Sure, the performance benefits are great, but it looks like they are just trying to push back the wall that they are about to run straight into while they figure out a way around.

Not an Nvidia hater here, just musing on the state of the GPU market.

[Cortexian]

I pretty much agree with everything you said, though three 1920x1200 monitors require the same top-end cards that most triple 2560x1600 setups do. The sheer amount of extra pixels when running triple-screen just destroys single card solutions, and all but the best multi card solutions.

I will likely upgrade to dual HD 6990's or 7990's instead of GTX 690's since the performance will likely be similar but AMD will likely have a better price.

[Zeph]

Working with my college to figure out what to stick in our computers for a complete hardware refresh this fall. Having a bit of a disagreement on video cards right now. On the faculty side, they're looking to get Quadro5000s (6k if they drop in price to the current 5k's level) while from a student side we're pushing for non-workstation cards. I know the Quadro5k/6k pull from the GTX 400 series, but I can't find anything to directly compare between a Quadro and GTX (nature of the benches I suppose). Anyone have a direct comparison with Quadros and GTXs benching both productivity and real time?

The faculty are taking into consideration that rendering on the GPU is tending to be more common and are looking at the Quadro hoping it could help in the future. It's a valid concern, but considering the rest of the department it could be a hindrance. Any offline rendering done on a Quadro would also be able to be done on a GTX as well. While the Quadro would be great for the Maya/Photoshop/Film side of the department, we're getting our interaction/games side rolling as well. Quadros really suck when it comes to the real time applications. You're lucky if you can get 10 fps on a student's basic brush level assignment.

For the price, we could wind up with top tier current gen GTX/HD GPUs and update again the next generation for less than a single Quadro5000. The question is, how much of a difference would we notice when it comes to rendering? These are students that we're talking about, so we're not looking at any Pixar-level render times. Even so, they are students and don't always know how to best optimize render settings so it's easy to say that they'll be rending longer than they should.

[Cortexian]

Look into some postings from the guy who runs Digital Blasphemy. He had the same problem when he was looking to upgrade his GPU's for rendering. He ended up going with the consumer GTX cards instead of the Quadro cards since there was such little difference in performace.

[JackalStomper]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814127565

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814127545

Which one.

I have no interest in higher end cards, nor the need for one.

[ThePlague]

I own that 6870, and the thing is a beast. I'd go for it. Running Battlefield 3 at 1600x900 High with at least 80 fps or over, depending on the area of the map.

[Amit]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814127565

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814127545

Which one.

I have no interest in higher end cards, nor the need for one.

Those are both high-end cards, not the ultra high end cards. I'd go with the 6870 for power efficiency and EyeFinity.

[Bodzilla]

i'd shell out a little more for a 6950

i have the card and it's actually amazing

[Amit]

I'd agree with that. I'm sure the 6870 would last a long time, but if you go high enough up (to say like a GTX 570/HD6950) you know you're not gonna need another GPU for at least another 2-3 years...unless you're like ThePlague and destroy GPUs as a weekend project.