Battle of the $1,000 GPU Configs: HD 6990+6970 vs. GTX 580 SLI

Looking to spend a cool grand on a GPU setup, but are unsure of which configuration to go with? Heck, having trouble finding a GPU configuration that comes as close to $1,000 as possible? Indeed, it can be a little tough, given AMD’s and NVIDIA’s pricing isn’t quite 1:1 on their competitive products, but [H]ard|OCP managed to put together proper “versus” configurations with the help of AMD’s ability to mix and match GPUs from a given series.

The resulting AMD setup ended up being a single Radeon HD 6990 coupled with an HD 6970, against an NVIDIA SLI setup, featuring dual GeForce GTX 580s. At first glance, AMD’s setup does seem to be a little unfair, given that despite being housed in just two graphics cards, there are three GPUs at play, but the fact of the matter is, this is a $1,000 competition, and there are only two physical graphics cards on each side. To me, this is fair.

What this kind of competition does highlight, is that AMD has a good thing going by giving its users the ability to even construct such a setup. You can’t mix-and-match different NVIDIA GPUs of the same series currently, but it’d be great to see that ability opened up in the future. As this article proves, though it is kind of an oddball setup on the AMD side, it does help deliver some unbelievable performance.

In each one of the games the site tested, AMD’s configuration came out ahead, and in some cases, well ahead. This was true both in [H]’s apples-to-apples comparisons and also the highest-playable settings comparison, where in some cases, AMD’s setup might have delivered similar performance, but was able to see more settings enabled or graphics detail increased in general.

One thing’s for sure, and that’s that current $1,000 setups are heavily geared towards those with multi-display setups, with 5760×1200 or 5760×1080 being ideal resolutions. For single displays, even those supporting 2560×1600, the need for CrossFireX isn’t quite as important (a good thing) as it used to be.

For our evaluation today we are going to directly compare these price comparable multi-GPU configurations. Before you start writing us angry emails that we aren’t comparing things fairly because one is a 3-GPU setup and the other is a 2-GPU setup, we remind you about price, it is all about what is comparable at the “same’ price point. The fact is 3-GPUs from AMD are price competitive with 2-GPUs from NVIDIA right now. A 6990+6970 or 3x 6970’s are at GTX 580 SLI pricing.