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I have a 4870 With prices as they are should I go GTX470 HD5850 HD6870 or stay as I am?

FoxEye said:
I broke down and ordered the Gigabyte GTX460 1GB OC :p I hope they're as good (and quiet!) as people say :)
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A good friend of mine says it's virtually silent or at least he can't hear it over the rest of his system. He hasn't even overclocked it any further either because he can play all the games he has on max settings @1650x1050 anyway :)
 
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1) 6870 = for £170 ( quiet / efficient / low power draw / eyefinity / overclocks poorly )
2) 470 = for £180 ( phisx / overclocks well / loud / hot / massive PSU draw )
3) 460 = errr skip it me thinks. overclocking is never a guarantee.
4) 5850 = skip it too not worth it.
 
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Skyrocket said:
1) 6870 = for £170 ( quiet / efficient / low power draw / eyefinity / overclocks poorly )
2) 470 = for £180 ( phisx / overclocks well / loud / hot / massive PSU draw )
3) 460 = errr skip it me thinks. overclocking is never a guarantee.
4) 5850 = skip it too not worth it.
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The 460 is known to overclock extremely well and easily. Whilst there's never a guarantee you'll get an amazing overclock as each card has slight differences, you can be pretty certain the 460 can reach near 800Mhz without any voltage change. At this level, it's near the 6870 (which as you say overclocks badly) and can be had around £150.

Take a look at the AnandTech and PC Perspective reviews where they compare the 6870 to the (albeit) factory overclocked EVGA 460.
 
I personally thing that the HD6870 overclocking is limited by the BIOS just as the HD3870 and HD5850 were initially. Give a week or two and I will suspect that better HD6870 overclocks will be seen. Anyway, I would not got a GTX460 1GB over an HD6870. A GTX470 OTH is a better choice IMHO if you want to stay in the Nvidia camp as in many places it is not that more expensive than overclocked GTX460 1GB cards. Also,some websites have got HD6850 cards to around 900MHZ for the GPU so it maybe also worth considering this card too.
 
CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
I personally thing that the HD6870 overclocking is limited by the BIOS just as the HD3870 and HD5850 were initially. Give a week or two and I will suspect that better HD6870 overclocks will be seen. Anyway, I would not got a GTX460 1GB over an HD6870. A GTX470 OTH is a better choice IMHO if you want to stay in the Nvidia camp as in many places it is not that more expensive than overclocked GTX460 1GB cards. Also,some websites have got HD6850 cards to around 900MHZ for the GPU so it maybe also worth considering this card too.
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Yea. At GTX460's 1GB current price I wouldn't consider getting one...just yet, considering that a Sapphire 6850 with a Vapor-X like custom cooler can be bought at £132. If the Gigabyte/MSI Cyclone GTX460 1GB drop to around £130, then I would probably get one...they can keep the HAWK 2 download vouncher for all I care.
 
I like the fact that the HD6850 1GB only has one PCI-E power connector which is ideal for my system. There is one GTX460 768MB card I have seen which has a single PCI-E power connector too but this is priced around the same as the cheaper HD6850 1GB cards.

Anyway,it seems the HD68** pricing is going back to what we saw with the HD38** and HD48** series with the HD*850 cards being £150 and under and the HD*870 cards being between £150 to £250.
 
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Personally I'd go for Nvidia and you can call me a fanboy if you like, because I prefer the feature set.

CUDA - which I actually use for HD video decoding/playback, PhysX - a niceity though it doesn't make that much of a difference in games yet and finally better drivers - this is debatable but I've had a lot of problems with ATI drivers in the past and none with NVidias.

ATI have Eyefinity and that's about it I think, for me, I'm not going to be gaming across multiple monitors any time soon (if ever) so it's something I don't need.

Now if the 470 was cooler, less noisy and less power hungry, I'd buy it in a heartbeat if it's still retailing for around £175, since if you go for purely price/performance, it's the clear winner. But as it is, it's hard for me to consider.

I own a 8800GTS 512mb which is now broken, but when it worked, it ran and spat out as much heat as the 470's do and even during winter my room would become a furnace. I can tell you that it's not pleasant, which is why I'm personally much more wary about buying hot cards.
 
The HD6870 has quite low power consumption when compared to the competing Nvidia cards.

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I dont get were everyone goes on about a 470 being noisy??? at stock fans speeds it's not noisy at all, mine runs a little louder as i have OC it but still at stock or near stock fan, it's quieter than my case fans, which are fairly quiet IMO

Unless the PSU can't handle it why the issue with power consumption?

Dont get me wrong i like the new ATI cards, and if ATI continue on this path, my next upgrade could well see me pick up one of there hign end single GPU's as they seem to be gaining traction on Nvidia in terms of single card performance (not a fan of Xfire/SLI looks very complicated), the 5870 seems to be on a par with the 470 which is close to the 480 which is the flagship, prev ATI cards like 4870/3870 series cards relied on a Xfire setup to trump the top end single cards Nvidia were offering and this put me right off
 
Skyrocket said:
1) 6870 = for £170 ( quiet / efficient / low power draw / eyefinity / overclocks poorly )
2) 470 = for £180 ( phisx / overclocks well / loud / hot / massive PSU draw )
3) 460 = errr skip it me thinks. overclocking is never a guarantee.
4) 5850 = skip it too not worth it.
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I don't think we can say this with any real confidence yet as the cards have only just launched. Models with voltage tweak (Asus) are still on pre-order and haven't been pushed properly by end users yet.

The 460 was designed (and marketed) with overclocking in mind. 95% of cards will hit 800/1600/4000 (core/shader/memory) on stock voltages. Some (like my Sparkle) are capable of very nice overclocks indeed (925/1850/4300 in the case of my sparkle).

Peter450 said:
I dont get were everyone goes on about a 470 being noisy??? at stock fans speeds it's not noisy at all, mine runs a little louder as i have OC it but still at stock or near stock fan, it's quieter than my case fans, which are fairly quiet IMO
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They probably get the idea of the noise from every single review of the reference 470 stating it is hot, loud and power hungry (relative to it's direct competition).

They are a large number of posts on various forums around the web stating it's noisy and runs hot.

The main problem seems to stem from the fact that all 470's are different, some require higher voltages at stock speeds whereas others simply don't.

The 460's appear the same:
My Sparkle runs stock volts of 0.937v whereas my Inno3D 460 runs 1.037v. To get 850 core the Sparkle needs 0.962v whereas the Inno3D needs 1.062v. Correspondingly the Sparkle runs cooler and quieter.
 
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still not sure I like the regular use of "massive power draw" for the 470 - I mean yes its higher - but look at benches above - its only 44W more under load than the 6870 according to that chart - thats not a lot

ok one reckons under furmark - 100W - but thats not regular gaming
 
oweneades said:
The main problem seems to stem from the fact that all 470's are different, some require higher voltages at stock speeds whereas others simply don't.

The 460's appear the same:
My Sparkle runs stock volts of 0.937v whereas my Inno3D 460 runs 1.037v. To get 850 core the Sparkle needs 0.962v whereas the Inno3D needs 1.062v. Correspondingly the Sparkle runs cooler and quieter.
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Thats interesting, i was not aware of there being so much varience, certainly from my experiance of the 470 it's quieter than my old 280, which i did not find that noisey either, slightly louder than case fans when OC
 
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