GTX960 vs 5870 Eyefinity 6

[veedub565]

I have two old graphics cards, and I'm wondering which one I should pick to use in my PC (Dell Vostro 430). I know both of these cards are old, as is the PC. I tend to go for 2nd hand or free stuff  few years behind everyone else. Both of these cards and the PC were free. Mostly I do internet browsing, I run some HAM radio related apps, and occasionally play a few old games (Crysis 1-3, Half-Life2 , Dirt, Sims4, etc)

So Nvidia GTX960 or the Radeon 5870 Eyefinity 6 ?

Monitor is an Asus PG279Q, to be honest having previously dual screened a pair of 17" TN panels I'm finding the 27" Asus IPS a bit big and bright for my small desk in a darkish room. I might downsize :/

I've found that the 5870 won't run this monitor above 100hz, whatever I try. 5870 only has displayport 1.1 (so 144hz at 1080p but it doesn't even seem to want to do that on this monitor) GTX960 has 1.2 I think.


I guess I could try benchmarking them both, see which wins. Just wondered peoples opinions. I found a comparison here http://gpuboss.com/gpus/Radeon-HD-5870-Eyefinity-6-vs-GeForce-GTX-960

[veedub565]

Thanks, the GPU benchmark seems to give it largely in favour of the GTX 960, but I think the run of the mill Radeon 5870 is a lower spec than the Eyefinity 6 version.

I see what you mean about it being a train wreck, what this card can do in theory, and what it can do in practise with a given driver ..... Maybe I will run some benchmarks on my system and see with my specific setup and my specific card etc whats what.

[mariush]

GTX 960 will be faster and better, and probably also comes with 2 GB of GDDR5 while  the 5870 will probably come  with just 1 GB.

The 5870 is 2008-2009 technology, made on 40nm, power hungry,   GTX 960 is 2014-2015 technology, 28nm, and better support for gaming (DX 12 level, Vulkan, Shader model 6.4  vs max shader model 5 for AMD card and max DX 11, no Vulkan etc)

[NiHaoMike]

Nvidia tends to be better with software support nowadays. The main exception is if you're an open source purist, in which case AMD has much better open source drivers.

The 960 should be able to upscale 1080p video to 1440p at high quality or downscale 4K to 1440p just fine. (It should even be able to upscale 1080p to 4K since a well tuned upscaler only uses 30% of a 970, which would correspond to about 45% of a 960.)

[veedub565]

GTX 960 will be faster and better, and probably also comes with 2 GB of GDDR5 while  the 5870 will probably come  with just 1 GB.

Eyefinity version of the 5870 comes with 2Gb, but yes still 2009 technology plays 2015. I did notice the 5870 requires two power connections and the GTX960 only one.


I ran some 3dmark benchmarks on the 5870 Eyefinity card, will run the same again on the GTX960, It'll be interesting (to me anyway) to see which one comes out on top.

[MathWizard]

I remember the 5870 being at the top of single cards, back then. I had just gotten back into computers. Yeah vs a gtx960 tho, wow actually the 960 blows it away.

The HD5000 series was out around the gtx400 series, and nvidia skipped gtx800, iirc

an AMD R9 290 would be around a gtx960 or 970 iirc, or an R9 280x, all still pretty good cards and cheap now.

[Mechatrommer]

about 3 years ago there was selling frenzy of used mining cards. i got a RX580 for about $100 and RX470 for $50... i tried to find them again recently at the price to no success, they are currently sold at $200+. looking at the spec and price of the new 8MB GDDR RAM cards line, i thought i've got a good deal. i also grabbed one non functional RX470 for $25 i dont have time yet to repair.. looking at benchmark, RX470 can performs better at some aspects compared to GTX960, RX580 is few steps ahead...

within few days, i looked upon (considering) 1600-2000W mining ATX PSU ($50 range) because my RX470 is too much power hog in my new PC HW upgrade. if using cheap china 500W psu, full fan speed at idle (normal windows usage) and killed/reset it when doing unigine benchmark test (100% directx and power/memory usage), doesnt happen with my HD4650 that i currently used for years. looking reviews in youtube for the mining psu, i can still see few nutteries still using array of those cards to do mining when china already has full FPGA factories scales to do the mining, hopefully one day they will sell their cards at cheap again when they upgrade to FPGA based miner. fwiw.

[veedub565]

Ok results are in, scores on the doors for these two old timers 

I used DDU to clear out any old drivers/installation before installing each card. Did a clean install of the latest available AMD/NVIDIA drivers. And refresh rate set for 100Hz. PC is a Dell Vostro 430, core i7 CPU and 8Gb RAM. And for the test I used 3DMark Firestrike test

Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity 6
Graphics score - 2881
Graphics test 1 - 15.06 FPS
Graphics test 2 - 10.73 FPS

Physics score - 6644
Physics test - 21.09 FPS

Combined score - 1284
Combined test - 5.97 FPS

Overall score 2771

NVIDIA GTX 960
Graphics score - 7826
Graphics test 1 - 37.56 FPS
Graphics test 2 - 31.11 FPS

Physics score - 6173
Physics test - 19.60 FPS

Combined score - 2658
Combined test - 12.36 FPS

Overall score 6338


SO the Nvidia GTX960 monsters it, although weirdly a slightly lower physics score. Which is a CPU test not graphics, I dunno maybe it had a brain fart mid test. It's close enough. I ran the NVIDIA card again at 144Hz refresh, and the results dropped very slightly but not by much. Even at 144Hz it beats the Radeon at 100Hz.

So I guess I now know which of these freebie cards I'll keep in my PC (also a freebie)