Seems that a lot of people are asking this question at the moment (me included!) As most people have said, it more or less boils down to the 6950 or the 480. Good luck in choosing which of these to go far, as I am still undecided despite thinking and researching about it all weekend...
-
Competitor rules
Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.
HELP? Graphics Card Buying advice
- Thread starter cukzta101
- Start date
Let me help!
I had a 6970 and now have a 480.
Get the 480.
Faster, cooler, quieter, better min FPS (roughly the same tho)
Card also looks epic and has a much better RMA process.
I was posting from near the bottom of the page. Has some useful links in there to help you decide.
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18247847&page=5
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18247847&page=5
Soldato
- Joined
- 25 Sep 2009
- Posts
- 10,283
- Location
- Billericay, UK
In that case a GTX460 1Gb, Radeon Hd6850 or Radeon Hd6870. It has to be said the 6850 clocks like the clappers and can be had for £121 inc delivery (I've just been eyeing up a possible crossfire 6850 setup for myself to replace my 5770). Check out the Anandtech bench charts for idea of performance.
I would rather get the 460. better overclocking potential and cooler aswell IIRC
I've seen the 6870's with MSI Twin FrozR II/Sapphire Vapor-X coolers on which offer better cooling.
Noise and cooling efficiency are factors in the choice of card I choose.
they aren't worth it IMO. better to get a 6950
Ok, or the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 480 Special Edition mentioned earlier?
yes. I was talking bout the AMD side.
I have been pushed in the 480 direction once again, however, one reservation I do have (and I mentioned this in another thread) would be if my Q6600 would hold the gfx card back at all....
Yeah, i realise that! Not sure whether to go AMD or NVida.
Soldato
- Joined
- 2 Feb 2010
- Posts
- 11,547
- Location
- Crowmarsh
I picked up an Asus 480 for £185 and i'm seriously impressed! Maxes out everything I've thrown at it, including Crysis 
It's not even as noisey as people will have you believe.
It's not even as noisey as people will have you believe.hijacking this thread slightly, if you had a budget of £275 roughly, would your options still be the 480 or 6950, or would you just get a 570? would an o/c'd 570 not eventually out perform a 480. Or should we wait for manufs to release decent SOC etc
A 570 would outperform a 480, as would a 6970, but the price premium for an extra 5 odd percent performance just isn't worth it. With the 480/6950, you get 95% of the performance for a good 60-70 quid less!
@Cleeecooo I'm sorry mate, but the GTX480 is the second most power hungry card on the market (most power hungry is the 580), is the hottest graphics card on the market (will hit 90-100degrees at points), and on average is a few percentage points slower than the 6970 (benchmarks from multiple websites confirm that). You haven't actually gone from a 6970 to a 480 have you? A massively silly move that is.
Just dont buy the 550Ti, it had one of the worst price to performance ratios going within its price bracket and is more expensive generally that the more capable 460's. So I would suggest either a 460 1gb, or any of the 68X0 or 69X0 cards depening oh how much you want to spend and what offers are available. Having said that if you budget car stretch to just over £200 and your PSU is ok for it I would suggest one of the GTX480's listed
Soldato
- Joined
- 12 Jun 2008
- Posts
- 3,011
I may be wrong as i have only just skimmed over the thread - and if so i apologise -but apart from caracus2k no one has even mentioned the PSU the op is running.
Too late now, its been ordered, but would have been the question to start with before everyone jumped on the GTX 480 *** train.
OP, with that Rig i hope you're running at least a 650W quality PSU, if so, then a good purchase/choice. Will last you a few years yet.
Too late now, its been ordered, but would have been the question to start with before everyone jumped on the GTX 480 *** train.
OP, with that Rig i hope you're running at least a 650W quality PSU, if so, then a good purchase/choice. Will last you a few years yet.
A few corrections to your post if I may be so pedantic
First off, the 480 is roughly as quick as the 6970 and 570, it's really too close to call, this obviously depends on which websites you frequent and what games you play.
However the 480 has the extra memory and memory bandwidth over the 570, and this can come in handy depending on what resolution you game at.
GTX 480 vs AMD 6970 benchmarks
GTX 480 vs GTX 570 benchmarks
Secondly, the 480 is actually more power hungry than the 580 believe it or not, so it therefore takes the award of "most power hungry single GPU video card".
Link for above info here
Thirdly, the Gigabyte 480 SOC and SE models which everyone's talking about are not hot or loud running due to Gigabytes custom cooler,
they're actually considerably quieter than a stock 480 and 6970.
Link for above info here
Fourthly, unfortunately for AMD their driver team is nowhere near the same size as Nvidias,
there's also considerably more games in Nvidias "The way it's meant to be played" program than there is in AMDs "Gaming evolved"
Link to Nvidia TWIMTBP list of games
Link to AMDs Gaming evolved list.
This obviously means that a Nvidia video card owner will potentially have less issues in less games.
You see it all the time on these very forums, people with AMD video cards constantly asking when's this going to be fixed, why doesn't such and such work?
I'm not saying that Nvidia doesn't have any issues at all because they do,
but what I am saying is there seems to be a disproportionate amount of people with AMD problems compared to those who use Nvidia, especially when you consider the below pie chart.
Taken from the Steam hardware survey
Now I don't want to come across as a raging fanboy but taking all of the above into consideration (barring of course the power usage) plus the added benefits of PhysX, CUDA,
and immeasurably better 3D implementation you've gotta ask yourself why anyone in their right mind would you choose a 6950/6970 over the 480 at its current price?
I guess you could argue that Eyefinity may seal the deal, but seriously you'd want a couple of high end cards to run 3x 1080p monitors and maintain decent fps surely?
And if that's the case then Nvidias surround solution is arguably as good as AMDs?
To conclude, The only reason I can see why somebody would take a 6950/6970 over the 480 that is currently on offer is because their PSU isn't up to the task, plain and simple
Last edited:
A few corrections to your post if I may be so pedantic
First off, the 480 is roughly as quick as the 6970 and 570, it's really too close to call, this obviously depends on which websites you frequent and what games you play.
However the 480 has the extra memory and memory bandwidth over the 570, and this can come in handy depending on what resolution you game at.
GTX 480 vs AMD 6970 benchmarks
GTX 480 vs GTX 570 benchmarks
Secondly, the 480 is actually more power hungry than the 580 believe it or not, so it therefore takes the award of "most power hungry single GPU video card".
Link for above info here
Thirdly, the Gigabyte 480 SOC and SE models which everyone's talking about are not hot or loud running due to Gigabytes custom cooler,
they're actually considerably quieter than a stock 480 and 6970.
Link for above info here
Fourthly, unfortunately for AMD their driver team is nowhere near the same size as Nvidias,
there's also considerably more games in Nvidias "The way it's meant to be played" program than there is in AMDs "Gaming evolved"
Link to Nvidia TWIMTBP list of games
Link to AMDs Gaming evolved list.
This obviously means that a Nvidia video card owner will potentially have less issues in less games.
You see it all the time on these very forums, people with AMD video cards constantly asking when's this going to be fixed, why doesn't such and such work?
I'm not saying that Nvidia doesn't have any issues at all because they do,
but what I am saying is there seems to be a disproportionate amount of people with AMD problems compared to those who use Nvidia, especially when you consider the below pie chart.
Taken from the Steam hardware survey
Now I don't want to come across as a raging fanboy but taking all of the above into consideration (barring of course the power usage) plus the added benefits of PhysX, CUDA,
and immeasurably better 3D implementation you've gotta ask yourself why anyone in their right mind would you choose a 6950/6970 over the 480 at its current price?
I guess you could argue that Eyefinity may seal the deal, but seriously you'd want a couple of high end cards to run 3x 1080p monitors and maintain decent fps surely?
And if that's the case then Nvidias surround solution is arguably as good as AMDs?
To conclude, The only reason I can see why somebody would take a 6950/6970 over the 480 that is currently on offer is because their PSU isn't up to the task, plain and simple
Nice points there tbh mate!
