Best Graphics card for £150 -180

RavenXXX2 · 23 Oct 2010 at 13:15

Marine-RX179 said:
Na you are missing the point. If I was willing to pay the £150 for getting the GTX460 1GB, it would be a crime not to pay another £25 extra to get the GTX470 on yesterday's offer at £175, considering it is at least 20% faster. At the price stand, the GTX460 1GB would only worth consider if the price was lower, otherwise it would make more sense to stretch for a GTX470.

One reason when I'm more lending toward a low price 6850 or GTX460 1GB is that I don't think I quite need the level of power a 6870/GTX470 offers gaming at 1680x1050, plus the 6850 and GTX460 1GB will be quieter.

So you're going to hold out for £5 price drop and the VAT hike? Prices from what I can see on the 6850 have gone up from launch, £150 being the average, no sapphire 6850 at £132inc vat from what I can google.

JeffyB · 23 Oct 2010 at 13:25

What Marine said really, just look at which card performs better in the games you play and which has the features you will find useful physx/cuda (nv) eyefinity/hd audio over hdmi (ati). If heat and power consumption are important to you it becomes an even easier choise. The marginal lead the 470 has over the 6870 (3% over 5 resolutions in the anand review) could well swing to the 6870 as its drivers mature.

An Exception · 23 Oct 2010 at 13:29

RavenXXX2 said:
So you're going to hold out for £5 price drop and the VAT hike? Prices from what I can see on the 6850 have gone up from launch, £150 being the average, no sapphire 6850 at £132inc vat from what I can google.

From what I can tell, the £135 6850's have just sold out...

An Exception · 23 Oct 2010 at 13:32

Raikiri said:
It's a little faster, wouldn't say it was better though.

6870 - Little slower, much lower power consumption, less heat and noise.

470GTX - Little faster, uses lots of power and makes lots of heat/noise. Overclocks better but would likely need an aftermarket cooler (they're that loud, imo).

Up to you really, both are good.

From the reviews I'v seen the 6870 is slightly faster at stock and also has better minimums?

RavenXXX2 · 23 Oct 2010 at 13:33

As far as I can tell I see no stock anywhere of sapphire 6850's at £135, and as they are not even showing as being out of stock or preorder I can only assume there is now none at that price, correct me if I'm wrong.

crackerbear · 23 Oct 2010 at 13:38

Ejizz said:
From what I can tell, the £135 6850's have just sold out...

From one store that was selling them on preorder. Another store has the XFX version (on preoder again) for £133.57.

RavenXXX2 · 23 Oct 2010 at 13:38

Ejizz said:
From the reviews I'v seen the 6870 is slightly faster at stock and also has better minimums?

Depends on the game really as shown here 6870 has better min in some titles at certain res the 470 has better in others.

Just eye balled the XFX, very good deal at that price if it stays that low.

Helios1234 · 23 Oct 2010 at 13:44

Clocked GTX460 vs clocked HD6870: http://www.vortez.co.uk/contentteller/articles_pages/msi_r6870_review,8.html

Mr Krugga · 23 Oct 2010 at 13:47

RavenXXX2 said:
460 nets more performance overclocked that's why.....

at £152 the Gigabyte with its excellent cooler is hardly overpriced even when compared to a cheaper 6850.

I'm also can't find a 6850 as described for £135inc vat

They didn't bother to use an effective overclocking tool with 6850. I'm aware that 6870 might not be that great of an overclocker but 6850 does indeed look like on.

Have a look here at kitguru - http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/zardon/sapphire-radeon-hd6850-and-hd6870-review/22/

They managed 951MHz on core and 1132MHz on memory from stock 775/1000MHz respectively. That is 23% on core and 13% on memory (with .15V voltage increase). The results are even more impressive, Unigine average fps has increased by 24% (linear overclock scaling) and 30% in 3DMark Vantage Performance test (outscoring the stock 6870 in both tests). You can also compare GTX460s' scaling in there.

RavenXXX2 said:
So you're going to hold out for £5 price drop and the VAT hike? Prices from what I can see on the 6850 have gone up from launch, £150 being the average, no sapphire 6850 at £132inc vat from what I can google.

2.1% increase in VAT won't really affect the pricing, will it? :rolleyes:

I can't find Sapphire 6850 at that low price either, although there's XFX available for £133 ish and can unleash its potential with Sapphire TriXX software.

An Exception · 23 Oct 2010 at 13:50

RavenXXX2 said:
Depends on the game really as shown here 6870 has better min in some titles at certain res the 470 has better in others.

Just eye balled the XFX, very good deal at that price if it stays that low.

In the majority of games the 6870 has better minimums...
So overall it's fair to say it has better minimums.

Also if your a fan of adding more than one card (not me personally) the 6870 scales much better in Xfire, so the 470's would need to be substantially overclocked to compete... which means huge power consumption, heat and noise.

An Exception · 23 Oct 2010 at 13:58

Helios1234 said:
Clocked GTX460 vs clocked HD6870: http://www.vortez.co.uk/contentteller/articles_pages/msi_r6870_review,8.html

Looks like the 6870 OC'd is a fair bit faster than an OC'd 460?

ShakeNBake · 23 Oct 2010 at 14:04

Ejizz said:
Looks like the 6870 OC'd is a fair bit faster than an OC'd 460?

for a £50 price difference it better be

RavenXXX2 · 23 Oct 2010 at 14:04

In the majority of game it has the better minimums

my link says otherwise, care to back up what you type?

And kitguru lol, who are they lol, I don't regard them as a reputable site at all, their results are way off the more respectable sites results.

They managed 951MHz on core and 1132MHz on memory from stock 775/1000MHz respectively. That is 23% on core and 13% on memory (with .15V voltage increase). The results are even more impressive, Unigine average fps has increased by 24% (linear overclock scaling) and 30% in 3DMark Vantage Performance test (outscoring the stock 6870 in both tests). You can also compare GTX460s' scaling in there.

Well look here, they apparently have a 6850 clocked at 1000 core and it's slower than a stock 6870 in all the tests you referred to. Stick to the respected sites like anandtech.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 23 Oct 2010 at 14:11

RavenXXX2 said:
Well look here, they apparently have a 6850 clocked at 1000 core and it's slower than a stock 6870 in all the tests you referred to. Stick to the respected sites like anandtech.

Actually in most of the games tests the HD6850 at 1000MHZ core is matching or exceeding an HD6870 at stock speeds. In a few games the extra stream processors of the HD6870 does help though and even an overclocked HD6850 cannot match the HD6870 at stock speeds.

Anyway,it will be interesting to see how much the performance of the HD6850 and HD6870 will increase over the next few months with more mature drivers.

Mr Krugga · 23 Oct 2010 at 14:19

CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
Actually in most of the games tests the HD6850 at 1000MHZ core is matching or exceeding an HD6870 at stock speeds. In a few games the extra stream processors of the HD6870 does help though and even an overclocked HD6850 cannot match the HD6870 at stock speeds.

I second this. Plus the difference of few hundred points in Performance test in 3DMark Vantage is nothing, it can vary from one to another and if you do several tests on the same rig with the same settings, you're bound to see a variation of 100-150 points. The point is, HD6850 overclocked can match a stock 6870. A card that can be had for £133 matches a direct competitor of GTX 470 - that is a result. Also, your previous point about weak overclock gains is no longer relevant. Look up the review you just linked and if you can be assed, calculate a few numbers up. You're bound to see some surprising results.

RavenXXX2 · 23 Oct 2010 at 14:22

If them results are accurate " I have my doubts " a 1000 core 6850 is on par with a stock 6870 for the most part, faster in less shader intensive games like RE5, but showing lower minimum fps than a stock 6870 in the majority of games.

Yeah we all appreciate driver performance boosts, but with the 6*** not being vastly different to the 5*** series I wonder how much extra performance there is left to gain.

crackerbear · 23 Oct 2010 at 14:25

Mr Krugga said:
The point is, HD6850 overclocked can match a stock 6870. A card that can be had for £133 matches a direct competitor of GTX 470 - that is a result.

I'm curious to know what the longevity of such a big overclock is.

Assuming you're using the stock air cooler and nothing else, surely that card will burn out way faster than say a stock 6870 or 470. I mean, yes it can reach those speeds, but would you want to run the card like that constantly?

Mr Krugga · 23 Oct 2010 at 14:30

RavenXXX2 said:
If them results are accurate " I have my doubts " a 1000 core 6850 is on par with a stock 6870 for the most part, faster in less shader intensive games like RE5, but showing lower minimum fps than a stock 6870 in the majority of games.

Yeah we all appreciate driver performance boosts, but with the 6*** not being vastly different to the 5*** series I wonder how much extra performance there is left to gain.

Why have doubts, they share the same core and only have less shaders. It was the same case with 5850 and 5870, yet the latter was somehow sold for £100 and over more than its smaller brother. 15% more shaders would make up for 10-15% performance in real-world IMO, that would be roughly 5% or less when the difference on core is more than 10% as in this case. It's pretty basic maths and you can clearly see the correlation between this generation and the previous one. Minimum framerates are irrelevant, why is everyone using this argument at all, I have no idea.

Regarding the performance boost from drivers, there are still releases improving performance in games such as Bad Company 2 for 5700 and 5800. I still think that drivers should fix the issues with performance where cards struggle with rather than try to increase performance where unnecessary.

crackerbear said:
I'm curious to know what the longevity of such a big overclock is.

Assuming you're using the stock air cooler and nothing else, surely that card will burn out way faster than say a stock 6870 or 470. I mean, yes it can reach those speeds, but would you want to run the card like that constantly?

Why not? People run their GTX470/480s at much higher clocks/volt increases/temps on day-to-day basis and they reassure everyone that their cards are going strong. I have yet to see a Radeon 5000 that failed from overclocking and we pushed them as high as 40-50% overclocks on core with 25% voltage increase (not me in particular but many others in these Forums). 15% increase in voltage and 30% overclock is nothing for these cards.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 23 Oct 2010 at 14:30

crackerbear said:
I'm curious to know what the longevity of such a big overclock is.

Assuming you're using the stock air cooler and nothing else, surely that card will burn out way faster than say a stock 6870 or 470. I mean, yes it can reach those speeds, but would you want to run the card like that constantly?

The same could be said of the massively overclocked GTX460 768MB and 1GB cards too.

RavenXXX2 · 23 Oct 2010 at 14:33

Keep temps down and don't over do the voltage and it's all good, for the price you are playing for the card I want to get the best performance out of it I could.

Can't go wrong with a gigabyte 460 or that XFX 6850 if it comes in at that price when in stock.