6850 vs Gtx460

Also I would go with the 460. ATI have pretty much forced my hand into being an Nvidia fan boy now though. I HATE the ati divers now... every release they get worse. And benchmarks aside, I find in game performace of ATI cards poor compared to the same level Nvidia.

I do run both ATI and NV cards in my 2 main PCs and fondly remember the days when i loved everything ATI. But for now, i would go with NV every time.
 
the Hardware heaven link is not a true example of a fair review, put a stock clocked 460 up against it and they will be nearly the same, and from what Iv'e seen else where the 6850 beats a stock 460.

Overclock the 6850 and it will destroy that 460 OC all day long.

any how I would say go with what your comfortable with, doesn't matter either way both cards are very strong for modern games.

(and yes I have a 6850, but I read some reviews 1st hence my comments and why I went the 6850 route. A 460 was certainly something I concidered also.)
 
I am currently facing this very difficult choice.

I am leaning towards the 6850 though, mainly because it will be easier to Crossfire in the future, it has low power consumption and I hope to be able to OC it.
 
Divide by Zero said:
Does it support PhysX, Cuda, 3D?

All depends on what you want to do... though for me I would still take the NV over the ATI as I really hate the ATI drivers now.
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Physx (Dead) Cuda(not relevant for games) 3D why yes it does.

any how all personal preference, but does use less watts and is cooler than the NV option, I don't think you'd be disappointed with either.
 
Well almost dead....

I used to have a BFG dedicated Physx card back in the day for GRAW, I suppose I'm just bitter I got sucked in by the hype lol must be costing Nvidia some money though seeing as most games use Havok these days.
 
Wont cost NV a thing now they own Physx. I am a big fan of Physx and Havok and all the new tricks in DX11... anything to make games more realistic and pretty.

I know 2 people who are thinking of changing to NV cards from ATI as they want Physx.
 
Yes I must say coming from DX10 to 11 I've noticed some nice improvments in effects and image quality in some games, Like i said I nearly went for the 460 but the performance increase oc'd is pretty awsome on the 6850 so I'm happy with that. TBH if I had the money I'd buy a 570/580 but gone are my care free days of spending what I like on kit.

exciting times at the moment with the cards in the market just now, both offer different plus points i suppose Nvidia more so with physx and cuda etc. I think the gtx 560 might just hurt ATI 6 series a bit more.

any way I'm rambling now.

I hope the dude asking for advise enjoys his new 460 I'm sure he will :D
 
General consensus seems to be that the 6850 and 460 1GB offer incredibly similar performance- I think the 6850 edges it over the 460, but not by much. It really comes down to which is cheaper, and the 5850 is now a contender too with some models being cheaper than the 460/6850, and its performance being better than either.

There's a lot of ATI vs NVidia fanboyism and brand loyalty, largely ending up in NV's favour, but realistically both companies have a pretty bad reputation for making drivers. The only thing that should sway you for one brand or another is features- are things like CUDA, 3D Vision, Eyefinity and PhysX important to you? Of course, the one exception I will make on the drivers front is for Linux users. ATI's Linux drivers are terrible.
 
Divide by Zero said:
Also I would go with the 460. ATI have pretty much forced my hand into being an Nvidia fan boy now though. I HATE the ati divers now... every release they get worse. And benchmarks aside, I find in game performace of ATI cards poor compared to the same level Nvidia.

I do run both ATI and NV cards in my 2 main PCs and fondly remember the days when i loved everything ATI. But for now, i would go with NV every time.
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i second this, ATI drivers always crash. They are very unstable. That aside, if Nvidia made the drivers for ATI cards, Or even make ati drivers open source, we'de see a turn around. Nvidia is very good for stability but generally looses on the heat/voltage side.
 
hybrid572 said:
There's a lot of ATI vs NVidia fanboyism and brand loyalty, largely ending up in NV's favour, but realistically both companies have a pretty bad reputation for making drivers. The only thing that should sway you for one brand or another is features- are things like CUDA, 3D Vision, Eyefinity and PhysX important to you?
Click to expand...

I've always had Nvidia card's, I guess out of brand loyalty and hearing the troubles friends have had with ATI.
But I must admit I'm really considering ATI for my next upgrade. I fancy trying out multi-screen gaming , so will really want to try to get the new system capable of that.

Although the 3D Vison from Nvidia looks very interesting also, however as that needs the extra purchase of the Nvidia GeForce 3D Vision Kit and a 120Hz monitor and to do 3D Vision surround (Multi Monitor) would need 2-way or 3-way SLI and 3x 120Hz Monitors, seems very expensive.

As most of the ATI cards have 2 DVI and a Displayport and are capable of running 3x normal monitors from a single card with Eyefinity, makes it a lot for appealing from a financial point of view. Although obviously running games over 3 monitors on a single GPU is probably not going to be the best solution.

Still it's great reading the posts on here to get an idea of what I might get when I finally get around to upgrading.
 
I've always had Nvidia card's, I guess its the same reason ive been married to the same woman for 19 year.
 
razorback09 said:
i second this, ATI drivers always crash. They are very unstable. That aside, if Nvidia made the drivers for ATI cards, Or even make ati drivers open source, we'de see a turn around. Nvidia is very good for stability but generally looses on the heat/voltage side.
Click to expand...

I disagree entirely. It would seem to me that there's another problem at play causing this sort of problem, very possibly the PSU used, mother board, memory etc. In my experience there's little difference in the stability of nVidia vs ATI. ATI did have problem with their drivers but that was years ago (like pre 2000). Of course there have been 'bad versions' of drivers, but how many times have you seen "uh oh nvidia XX.XX drivers are broken, better roll back to YY.YY"?

In my experience the real difference comes down to personal preference. I have liked the image quality on my ATI cards, on the 2 nVidia cards I've always felt that they were a bit lack lustre. This is just personal but I remember going from the ATI 9800 pro to nVidia 7600GT and thinking "What!!???!?!". It wasn't just the short cuts nVidia were taking at the time with AA compared to ATI but what is to me the age old problem with nvidia: they can't seem to get a decent quality image from the card to my screen. Noticable not just in games but especially when watching movies.

This sort of judgement is VERY subjective, and isn't even the sort of thing you can even analyse by looking at screen shots produced by each of the cards.

Another problem is that benchmarks don't tell the whole story. It would be great if companies gave the full distribution of FPS within a benchmark, but they don't. All you get is an average and the min/max, if you're lucky. e.g. you might prefer a card that managed a steady 60ish fps but at a single point dropped to 20 fps in a game over one that had an average of 70fps but with frequently dipped as low as 24 ... but you won't get that information from a bench mark.

My advice is to try to get an experience of both cards first hand or, if you can't, watch the cards in action on video within a review with commentary and see which YOU prefer. I like ATI but I can see why others like nVidia ...
 
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I have a ATI 4870 512 meg version and am also looking to upgrade.
Not sure which one of these cards to buy! :D
 
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