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Radeon 6850 or GTX 4601gb

Flashheart

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Hi guy's. I'm a regular viewer of these forums but this will be my first post :cool:

This is my dilemma, I will be buying either the HIS 6850 at £149.99 inc vat, or the Gainward GTX 460 golden sample at £149.99 inc vat.

My 5770 packed up last night so this will be its replacement. I'm not fussed about physx or folding, so I'm just looking for the quicker of the cards after overclocking as I hope to clock either of the cards to within max /reasonable limits.

I have i7 920, ocz 700 watt psu, 6gb ram, asus P6T so neither card should be bottlenecked.

Thanks for any advice in advance, I seem to be going round in circles trying to read up on these two cards!

Flash
 
Looking here I would say you can't go wrong with a 6850 or 460 1GB when overclocking, they are both great clockers. Saying that, some 460's have better cooling than the 6850's and will remain cooler and quieter when clocked to the max.
 
As i understand it both of these cards overclock well so tbh either will perform around the same level. The reviews i have seen put the 6850 a little faster than a gtx460 1gb at stock clocks. Heres what anand think in there summary and i tend to agree.

"As for the Radeon HD 6850 however, things are much more lopsided in AMD’s favor. It’s give and take depending on the benchmark, but ultimately it’s just as fast as the GTX 460 1GB on average, even though it’s officially $20 cheaper. And at the same time it draws less power and produces less noise than the GTX 460 1GB. In fact unless the GTX 460 1GB was cheaper than the 6850, we really can’t come up with a reason to buy it. For all the advantage of an overclock when going up against the 6870, the stock clocked card has nothing on the 6850. Even the GTX 460 768MB, while $10-$20 cheaper than the 6850, still has to contend with the fact that the 6850 is almost 10% faster and only marginally louder."
 
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The performance/speed difference between the two cards are minimal. The 6850 does however consume slightly less power than the GTX460 1GB and only require one 6-pin PCI-E connector instead of two. The GTX460 1GB does however comes with a free HAWX 2, and also that there are more games that runs better with Nvidia cards than AMD/ATI's.
 
Blimey thanks for the quick reply guys, am I right in thinking I wont need a driver reinstall for the 6850? I could just put it in and away we go, as I already have the ati catalyst installed in my rig
 
+1 for GTX460 - Cyclone one is nice and clocking well - good price too.
Be carefull on Gigabyte - when Ocing sometimes these cards becoming dead - some issue with VRM heatsink, as I red on other forums.
 
It's a close choice but I'd get the 6850 because if you ever wanted to get another then xfire is scaling better than SLI, and it has better connectivity, uses less power.
 
Ejizz said:
It's a close choice but I'd get the 6850 because if you ever wanted to get another then xfire is scaling better than SLI, and it has better connectivity, uses less power.
Click to expand...
xfire scaling has indeed improved on the 68xx series, but I destinctly remember someone already post a reply to your claim with a techpower review or something showing that the GTX460 1GB's SLI scaling is STILL ahead of 6850 on xfire...which I think you just ignored since you already made up your mind that AMD/ATI is better.

Edited:
Didn't find the exact same one that the guy posted, but found this:
6850 xfire scaling:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ATI/Radeon_HD_6850_CrossFire/25.html

GTX460 1GB SLI scaling:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_460_SLI/27.html

Ejizz, enough is enough on spreading misinformation of the xfire scaling better than than SLI...
 
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Blackwhite said:
+1 for GTX460 - Cyclone one is nice and clocking well - good price too.
Be carefull on Gigabyte - when Ocing sometimes these cards becoming dead - some issue with VRM heatsink, as I red on other forums.
Click to expand...
Hmm I didn't know that and I've just bought a Gigabyte version too. Oh well, I doubt I'll be overclocking it to the extremes some people are.
 
Xfire and SLI scaling is about on par now as noted by a popular reviews site.

Bottom line: AMD has improved its CrossFireX scaling to match NVIDIA's. Two Radeon HD 6850s, coming in at £300, offer excellent performance with enviable power-draw characteristics. Cayman, over to you.
Click to expand...
 
Lets look at some games that really need crossfire gpu's and that are demanding. These benches will show why everyone is raving about the new scaling of crossfire 6 series.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-6850-6870-crossfirex-review/7

http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-6850-6870-crossfirex-review/9

http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-6850-6870-crossfirex-review/10

http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-6850-6870-crossfirex-review/12

http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-6850-6870-crossfirex-review/13

Check out the gtx470 being matched in sli by the 6860 crossfire in some. These are all pretty much taxing games on the gpu and notice all the dx11 games scale pretty well.
 
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last time i stuck results from techpower it was ohh please tech power make your mind up he was an idiot in your eyes for not using dx11 on dirt.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ATI/Radeon_HD_6870_CrossFire/8.html

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ATI/Radeon_HD_6870_CrossFire/10.html

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ATI/Radeon_HD_6870_CrossFire/11.html

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ATI/Radeon_HD_6870_CrossFire/13.html

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ATI/Radeon_HD_6870_CrossFire/15.html

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ATI/Radeon_HD_6870_CrossFire/4.html

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ATI/Radeon_HD_6870_CrossFire/3.html

Ok theres more check the scaling when the resolution goes up and gpu power is needed. Its very impressive.

Sorry it was getting a little of topic but still on as if he wants crossfire in future these results do show how good scaling is in recent games that need the power sometimes
 
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Both are great cards, either one would be a good buy. the 6850 is slightly faster, draws less power etc.
 
Ejizz said:
It's a close choice but I'd get the 6850 because if you ever wanted to get another then xfire is scaling better than SLI, and it has better connectivity, uses less power.
Click to expand...

I have nothing against the HD6850 but can you stop with the xfire is scaling better than SLI crap.

http://www.rhymes with nexus.net/content/item.php?item=27167&page=8

They scale basically the same (GTX460 vs HD6850).

If we look back at the 5xxx series things weren't so rosy for users with CF (HD5850 included in review I have posted).

You need to change the name in the link I have posted above to get it to work properly due to the stupid blocking of a certain site here.
 
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