Radeon 6XXX vs Nvidia Fermi 5XX

With all these next-gen graphics cards coming out, I'm completely baffled on what to buy. The card will be used primarily for rendering in after effects CS5, as well as gaming.

Questions:
1. I've heard that crossfire is significantly more efficient in the 6XXX series, but have not heard anything of 5XX Fermi's SLI being any more efficient than the 4XX series, this being said; is it safe to assume that for a dual-gpu system, crossfire is the way to go?

2. I noticed that the GTX 580 has OpenGL4.1 support, whereas to my knowledge the 6XXX series states nothing about OpenGL support. Does this mean the new Fermi's will have many advantages in rendering, or does the ATI card have something to make up for it, or just not state that is supports OpenGL 4.1?


Obviously the 69XX models have not come out yet, so there is no direct comparison between cards, but I just wanted to clear up some issues I experienced in deciding Fermi gtx 5XX vs 6XXX, any help is appreciated.

The GTX 470 and GTX 285 has CUDA support for your CS5 mercury engine all other Nvidia
have to hack CS5 to make CUDA work. That alone should make you decide on Nvidia. EVGA also has a superclocked GTX 580 and no matter what AMD RADEON comes out with there is no faster single GPU period. And surely enough even the mighty 69xx single core won't catch the mighty beast considering it can beat the 5970 in some games. Add two and its untouchable but so are two GTX 480. If you want a fair fight yes you can run 4 EVGA Classified GTX 480 in SLI.

2cents worth

what games do you play the most? ati cards do well in some games while nvidia do well in others

and i would hold off on making comparisons between 580 and 69xx cards.. theres really no reason to since we have no info on these new ati cards, and by the time they come out 580gtx will likely drop in price

i dont see any reason why ati wouldnt support opengl 4.1

correct me if im wrong, but wouldnt you need dedicated workstation cards for cs5?

http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/performance/

Supported cards at the bottom of the linked page

No, the GTX 285 and GTX 470 are the exception.

Hacking is the only other workaround.

hangten said:

The GTX 470 and GTX 285 has CUDA support for your CS5 mercury engine all other Nvidia
have to hack CS5 to make CUDA work. That alone should make you decide on Nvidia. EVGA also has a superclocked GTX 580 and no matter what AMD RADEON comes out with there is no faster single GPU period. And surely enough even the mighty 69xx single core won't catch the mighty beast considering it can beat the 5970 in some games. Add two and its untouchable but so are two GTX 480. If you want a fair fight yes you can run 4 EVGA Classified GTX 480 in SLI.

2cents worth

Click to expand...

Normally, I would always go Nvidia because they perform well in gaming and exceptionally better than AMD as a workstation card. However, what would make me decide Radeon > Fermi is due to the heat issues the cards have. That being said, do you know if the 580 runs significantly cooler than the previous 4xx models? Also, I only have about $430 (USD) to spend on a video card, if the gtx 580 drops on a x-mas sale , I'd definitely buy it.

The 580 runs cooler and quieter with mostly better performance, and yes it will go down in price near x-mas since AMD is releasing new cards with at least equivalent performance in December (was going to be Nov 22, but it might be delayed).