What's best for emulating Dolphin/Pcsx2? GTX 570 or HD 6970?

tuanming · (This post was last modified: 01-19-2011, 07:24 PM by tuanming.)

This thread might seem fruitless, but I'd really like to know which card would benefits the most from emulating Dolphin or Pcsx2. The GTX 570 or the HD6970? Both GPUs cost just about the same in the US. Yes, I do know that both of these cards are powerful enough to run Dolphin and/or Pcsx2...but still, I'm curious as to what the dolphin developers have to say on this or people that know what they're talking about, or if you currently own one of these cards. But what the heck, feel free to state your opinions.

In Pc games, it's a back and forth game; some games prefer AMD (formally known as ATi) and some are optimized for Nvidia. If I were to used the Pc games as a reference as to what card is better, then there's really no way of telling them apart because the games sometimes favor one brand over the other. Therefore, it's hard to make a decision based on the fps of each pc games.

Since we can't base the emulation performance on pure fps from pc games. The next step is looking at each card specs and then try to deciphers the specs. Since the dolphin developers made dolphin, I'm assuming that they should knows what's best for dolphin.

GTX 570 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_500_Series
Radeon HD 6970 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_AMD_graphics_processing_units#Northern_Islands_.28HD_6xxx.29_series

Discuss...

**abfab126** · 01-19-2011, 07:26 PM #2

a bit off Topic from me , but , you can flash a 6950 to 6970 BIOS in like 2 minutes (70 dollars in your pocket ^^) , so there is a real difference in Price / Performance !

tuanming · 01-19-2011, 07:34 PM #3

Yeah, I've read about that. But I wouldn't take the risk though. People are reporting artifacts, instability, etc after flashing the hd 6950 to hd 6970. Even after re-flashing back to the original bios, the problem(s) still exist, so it's a gamble really.

**abfab126** · 01-19-2011, 08:07 PM #4

Weird ! Maybe people doing the thing upside down as the card has 2 different slots for bios ( so 2 BIOSes ), anyways , at this point in time , I really feel Nvidia has more to offer , if you have the money of course , 3d Vision is such a great thing .
If I had to swap my 2 5870's , I'll definitely go with 2 Geforce 560 TI (incoming!) or 2 570's.

tuanming · (This post was last modified: 01-19-2011, 08:37 PM by tuanming.)

I've read about a lot of people complaining about AMD/ATi Drivers...but the good news is the hd 6900 series comes with 2gb of ram which is kind of future proofing if you ask me. Since my screen size is 1920x1080, do you think it would go over 1gb of graphic memory if i max out all the settings in pc games like Metro 2033, GTA4, or future games like Crysis 2? I'm pretty sure that GTA 4 can eat up 1gb easily, my gtx 460 768mb clearly wasn't enough to max out those settings in that game, not to mention 60 fps at 1080p res!

**dannzen** · (This post was last modified: 01-19-2011, 08:47 PM by dannzen.)

@Topic
Dolphin is capped in that case by the CPU...

The Question is, if the 2GB Versions are fast enough to handle the really 2gb...
i read somewhere that dolphin eats a max of 250mb if everything enabled

a review of a 2gb version i saw last week, said in the conclusion that the 2GB Versions are 0-1% slower until more than 1gb ram is used...
just a ram delay

**Squall Leonhart** · 01-19-2011, 09:50 PM #7

570 rapes 6970

**Link_to_the_past** · 01-19-2011, 10:04 PM #8

(01-19-2011, 09:50 PM)Squall Leonhart Wrote: 570 rapes 6970

In pc games. If you ask about dolphin though ati cards have a clear advantage according to this thread http://forums.dolphin-emu.org/showthread.php?tid=14201. Maybe their architecture favors dolphin or it is an nvidia driver thing, fact is there seems to be a clear advantage in Dolphin.

**NaturalViolence** · 01-20-2011, 12:50 PM #9

Quote:The Question is, if the 2GB Versions are fast enough to handle the really 2gb...

It doesn't work that way. A game can either use the extra vdram if it needs it or not. If a game does not need the extra vdram then it won't make a difference regardless of how much throughput the memory or gpu has. GTAIV is the only game I can think of that can use more than 1GB of ram at resolutions of 2560 x 1600 or lower. 1GB+ vdram is mainly only used for eyefinity/3d surround setups with insane screen resolutions like 5760 x 3240.

Quote:Since my screen size is 1920x1080, do you think it would go over 1gb of graphic memory if i max out all the settings in pc games like Metro 2033, GTA4, or future games like Crysis 2?

Hell no. Throughput is way more important. If this is a long term investment in the future your games will start running slow due to lack of throughput before they need that much vdram (2013/2014 maybe based on current trends).

I would go with the gtx 570 due to the sheer frequency of people complaining about the new amd gpu drivers (ever since catalyst 10.5 came out).

tuanming · 01-20-2011, 02:29 PM **#10**

Quote:I would go with the gtx 570 due to the sheer frequency of people complaining about the new amd gpu drivers (ever since catalyst 10.5 came out).

You mean memory bandwidth? The hd 6970 has 176Gbit of memory bandwidth with 256-bit memory bus vs the gtx 570 which has 152Gbit memory bandwidth with 320-bit of memory bus. Which is better for pc game and emulation?