Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I recently traded in my ATI HD 5870 for this card from nVidia. The reason for the change? I had my last straw with the ATI drivers. The ATI drivers are slow, big and buggy. It seems like every other version of the drivers had some major issue that didn't allow me to use them. I would always keep a running history of drivers and track which ones were acceptable for which purpose. Needless to say, I was sick of it and decided to give nVidia a try.
Not surprisingly, this new nVidia GTX 570 was slightly faster than the ATI HD 5870. The driver download and installation was a breeze. Not only did the drivers work well, but the website also worked (something that ATI can't seem to get right). The website easy to use and remembers what card I selected previously (nice touch). The driver installer is clean, fast, easy to use and doesn't install any game demos like the ATI drivers.
The nVidia control panel is also much easier to use than the ATI Catalyst Control Center. Things are clearly labeled and interactions are simple and make sense. Very refreshing after having struggled through the very poorly designed ATI CCC for the past 1.5 years. You can also setup rule based policies that allow you to change settings automatically when certain criteria are met (very snazzy).
There are a few bugs though. Nothing as catastrophic as what I experienced with ATI, but bugs none-the-less. Certain games like Mass Effect 2 and Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, are not able to enable Anti-Aliasing. I've researched the problem and at the moment(2-16-2010) there just isn't any way to do it. Forcing anti-aliasing in the nVidia control panel does nothing. There are applications like nHancer which allow you to override these limitations, but nHancer currently doesn't support the GTX 570. I am hoping that either nVidia or nHancer will come out with an update to fix this problem.
There is also a bug in the power management when using 2 monitors. The card/drivers are supposed to turn the clock speed down when idling, this reduces power consumption and heat. This doesn't work when 2 or more monitors are connected. The card constantly runs at 100% power and idles hot at around 56 celsius. If one of the monitors are unplugged/deactivated, the temperature will drop to around 43 celsius. According to the nVidia forums, this shouldn't happen if both monitors are running at the same resolution and sync speed, which mine are. One other solution is to use a second video card, which I might do eventually when I go SLI.
Overall, this card, hands down, is worlds better than the ATI HD 5870. Faster, better drivers, better support in games with physics hardware acceleration support and 3D. With the dual monitor bug, the card does run hotter and consume more power than my ATI did, but I am hoping this and the anti-aliasing bug will be fixed soon. The PNY version of the card works great and is one of the cheapest versions of the GTX 570. I highly recommend it.
Click Here to see more reviews about: PNY NVIDIA GeForce® GTX 570 1280MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Video Card with HDMI Output, VCGGTX570XPB
Introducing NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570, with screaming performance and an innovative vapor chamber thermal design. The GTX 570 rips through the latest games while running quieter than the previous generation. As you've come to expect from a GeForce GTX GPU, GTX 570 packs support for all the premium GTX gaming technologies such as NVIDIA Surround, 3D Vision, PhysX, and SLI. GeForce GTX 570 - don't play DX11 without it.
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