In Ancient Rome there was a poem about a dog that had two bones. He licked at one he licked the other, he went in circles, he’s now dead.” The dog didn’t use his freedom of choice and it caused his demise. Freedom of choice is one of our greatest privileges; it allows us to pick one or the other or all. Apple Computer would like you to believe that by choosing one of their computers, you are exercising your freedom of choice, but are you? When you purchase an Apple, you are committed to what they want you to have in your computer, inevitably the only choice you get is that you didn’t purchase a PC. When you purchase a PC, you have freedom of choice, you can choose your processor, operating system, memory, motherboard, monitor, case and so on. If you are a computer gamer, your video card choices are many, but you will have to choose which of the two major GPU processor manufacturers you prefer. Those choices are NVIDIA or AMD, and both offer multiple solutions at different price points to accommodate your budget.
Both manufacturers offer spectacular graphics but have different opinions on which optimizations create the best image quality. They also disagree on standards when related to in game physics and 3D immersive play. These disagreements are what allow us, the consumers, the freedom to choose, one or the other, based on preferences and not what one or the other would like us to believe. With that freedom comes responsibility and that is to make sure you research each product, so your choice is based on an informed decision and not an impulse based on a recommendation. NVIDIA has announced that they are offering us another choice and that is their newest DirectX 11 video card, the GeForce GTX 570, which falls into the Mainstream-Enthusiast Gamers category of computer graphics.
The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 is based on the same GF110 GPU architecture as the NVIDIA GTX 580. The GeForce GTX 570 comes with 480 CUDA cores, 60 texture units, 40 ROP units and 15 streaming multiprocessors. The GF110 architecture has been re-engineered from the transistor level to increase power efficiency, lower heat output and also increase performance on the average of 25% over its predecessor, the Geforce GTX 470. NVIDIA has also redesigned their heatsink and fan solution to ensure a quieter gaming experience. As an added bonus, the core and memory clock speeds have also been increased when compared to the GTX 470.
