gtx 560 2GB vs gtx 570 1280MB

[surandome]

Looking to buy a new graphics card with my new sandy bridge setup. For 3dsmax work, which would be the better buy.. the 2gb gtx 560 or the gtx 570 at 1280 MB? From what I know, the 570 has more processing power, however the 560 has more VRAM..

Edited January 26, 2011 by surandome

[AJLynn]

Those are both quite fast. Now, the 560 is new, as in new today - I can't say specifically how good it is at Max, but barring some unforeseen bug (it's a new GPU core - expect bugs, but also expect fixes) it should be fine for Max use. For DirectX game performance, which is as good a projector of Max viewport performance as anything currently available on these new models, the 560 is a bit faster than the 470 or the Radeon 6870, and the 570 is maybe 20% faster the 560. The extra memory on the Palit version of the 560 isn't going to do much for you in Max unless you plan to use a CUDA renderer, so you're looking at an extra $70 for a viewport speed bump.

 

So get the 2GB 560 if you use iray, Vray RT-GPU, Arion or Octane, and otherwise, you can get the 570 is the extra money isn't a big deal but if it is the 560 is certainly going to be enough power for most uses.

[Derek Forreal]

how come the 560 gets the 2GB and the 570 doesn't? it was the same with the 460/470/480 too.

[surandome]

That's a good question.. and now the GTX 580 gets 3 GB as well. Perhaps the performance gap would be too close with a GTX 570 at 2 GB, but it's really annoying nonetheless. 1280.. weird memory number to have too. Because of the SB recall and the fact that I had to return everything, I decided to switch to an AMD setup (GPU: 6950 2 GB) until Q3 2011 with the new LGA 2011 socket and potentially the Kepler GPU being released. I look forward to it, we will see!

[AJLynn]

I'd been assuming that only the 460/560 could go up to 2GB because a 470/480/570/580 with added RAM would be competition for the (catastrophically overpriced) Tesla cards, which nVidia wouldn't allow. But a 3GB 580 would be killer for CUDA use - the only other card you could even consider would be a 6GB Tesla or Quadro, if you had really large memory needs.

[Derek Forreal]

I'd been assuming that only the 460/560 could go up to 2GB because a 470/480/570/580 with added RAM would be competition for the (catastrophically overpriced) Tesla cards, which nVidia wouldn't allow. But a 3GB 580 would be killer for CUDA use - the only other card you could even consider would be a 6GB Tesla or Quadro, if you had really large memory needs.

that's a good point but, like you say, the same would be valid for the 3gb 580. it's all good though. i was going to get a 2gb 560 but i'm going to wait a couple more months to see what else might happen.

[AJLynn]

BTW if one can find those 3GB cards in stock, they're $600. That's 1/6 what a Tesla C2070 costs. The Tesla has more memory but the 580 is substantially faster.