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Whats the 480 vs 6950

Jay85

Jay85

Jay85

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Whats the camparison like in terms of speed, heat, power, performance? I'm building a new computer for my brother and he's on a budget of about £220 for a graphics card atm.

Also will the 6950 fit in the Fractal Design define R3 Case?



Please help!
Thanks
Jay
 
Well the 480 is quite a bit quicker than the 6950. Even if you manage to flash it to a 6970, the 480 is still a little quicker. On the downside, the 480 is a bit more power hungry, hotter and noisier. Make sure you have a decent brand 600Watt PSU minimum if choosing the 480.
 
Jay85 said:
Whats the camparison like in terms of speed, heat, power, performance? I'm building a new computer for my brother and he's on a budget of about £220 for a graphics card atm.

Also will the 6950 fit in the Fractal Design define R3 Case?



Please help!
Thanks
Jay
Click to expand...

Speed and performance is generally game dependant, six and half a dozen.

Comparisons:

6950 v 480:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/293?vs=309

Unlocked Rev 1 6950>70 v 480:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/292?vs=309

Both cards will overclock too at the expense of more power consumption.

6950>70 uses about half the power of a 480.
480 Is hotter and louder.

6950 fits:

96762763e2e91ed2142524ee73c1122c.jpg
 
Nope!

Currently awaiting April's 11.4 drivers, which are meant to be a performance driver, which AMD promises will be something special.

Only problem is there seem to be a lot of bugs that need addressing, which us user, seem to think are more importnat than performance at this stage.

But will see I suppose.
 
If you're considering a 1GB 6950 W/out BIOS switch, an 5870 gives almost identical performance; Drivers are pretty solid too... OC capability not so much though.
 
tommybhoy said:
Speed and performance is generally game dependant, six and half a dozen.

Comparisons:

6950 v 480:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/293?vs=309

Unlocked Rev 1 6950>70 v 480:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/292?vs=309

Both cards will overclock too at the expense of more power consumption.

6950>70 uses about half the power of a 480.
480 Is hotter and louder.
Click to expand...

It's not really six of one and half a dozen of the other though is it :confused:

The 480 is quicker by quite a bit than the 6950 according to the anandtech bench results you've posted.

And although the 6970 is closer to the 480 the Nvidia card still has a few titles (BattleForge, Hawx and Dirt 2) that it runs away with whilst remaining fairly close on the rest of the games.

The Gigabyte SOC that's on special offer is cooler and quieter than a reference 6970.
The 6970 uses quite a bit more than half the power of the 480 which can also be seen in the Anandtech results you've posted!

You also have to add in the fact that Nvidia drivers at the moment are pretty solid (barring of course the nightmare 590 release),
whereas AMDs driver team are still trying to iron out too many issues for my liking.
Instead of trying to rush out a monthly update they should concentrate on releasing a properly fixed driver and forget about time restraints.

At least try to give the OP some unbiased facts please. Fortunately the benchmarks you posted tell the correct story and not the red tinted one you're trying to sell ;)

To the OP, this card is by far and away the best bang for buck at the moment IMO.
 
Mouse lag at top right of screen, 99% bug to name just a few.

I havent seen the above, but users are complaining about this.

My issue which was intorduced with the 11.3 drivers, was for no apparent reason my system ram usage shot up by 2-3Gb on system boot, and there was no process runing over 0-1% during this time. (Clean install of windows as well)

Downgraded from 11.3 to 11.2 and this issue has dissapeared totally.

But I have to say 11.2 drivers works exceptionally well in BFBC2, really consistant fps.
 
Jay85 said:
Whats the camparison like in terms of speed, heat, power, performance?
Click to expand...

Speed = 480 is faster.
Heat = 6950 is cooler running (at least when compared to the early revision 480's. A Gigabyte SOC edition will be cooler and quieter than a stock revision cooler / 6950).
Power = 480 is more powerful.
Performance = 480 overall, though in intensive shader games like Stalker, AMD do often pull ahead quite a bit.

With the 480 SOC at such a low price, I'd consider nothing else. If power draw is an issue then grab a 6950. Don't forget you can flash a revision one 6950 to a 6970 though that will change the power draw comparison.
 
Last edited:
coupe69 said:
It's not really six of one and half a dozen of the other though is it :confused:

The 480 is quicker by quite a bit than the 6950 according to the anandtech bench results you've posted.

And although the 6970 is closer to the 480 the Nvidia card still has a few titles (BattleForge, Hawx and Dirt 2) that it runs away with whilst remaining fairly close on the rest of the games.

The Gigabyte SOC that's on special offer is cooler and quieter than a reference 6970.
The 6970 uses quite a bit more than half the power of the 480 which can also be seen in the Anandtech results you've posted!

You also have to add in the fact that Nvidia drivers at the moment are pretty solid (barring of course the nightmare 590 release),
whereas AMDs driver team are still trying to iron out too many issues for my liking.
Instead of trying to rush out a monthly update they should concentrate on releasing a properly fixed driver and forget about time restraints.

At least try to give the OP some unbiased facts please. Fortunately the benchmarks you posted tell the correct story and not the red tinted one you're trying to sell ;)

To the OP, this card is by far and away the best bang for buck at the moment IMO.
Click to expand...

Point out where I informed anybody to get 1 card over the other.

Look through the soc thread and you will see that I recommended the soc in the past.

Since the 11% rma rate and other people getting their cards returned fault free when they artifact at stock speeds, I stopped recommending them.
If your opinion is to bump up the voltage to make it run stable then fine, imo everything should perform to advertised specs right out of the box!

The benchmarks provided was to inform op, he's free to decide!

Pick 1 resolution and see if it's not 6 and half a dozen.

Both have driver faults.

99% is usually down to xfire with i7 setup from what I've read.
 
tommybhoy said:
Speed and performance is generally game dependant, six and half a dozen.

Comparisons:

6950 v 480:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/293?vs=309

Unlocked Rev 1 6950>70 v 480:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/292?vs=309

Both cards will overclock too at the expense of more power consumption.

6950>70 uses about half the power of a 480.
480 Is hotter and louder.

6950 fits:
Click to expand...

Actually over here you'll be buying hte 480 SOC rateh rthan the standard one, so the performance looks more like this:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/292?vs=305
This will be the performance between the out-of-the-box GTX 480 SOC and an unlocked 6950 overclocked to 6970 speeds.

So I'd say the 480 SOC is better value for money
 
tommybhoy said:
480 soc is a 580 now? lol
Click to expand...

Look at benches. It is very close to 580 performance.
http://www.guru3d.com/article/gigabyte-geforce-gtx-480-soc-review/13

Using a 580 for comparison will be a tad more accurate than using a 480 because the perf is closer to stock 580 than stock 480.

On top of that the 6950 not only needs to be unlocked, it also needs to be overclocked to match 6970 speeds. So if you're going to use a 6970 bench (as a standin for the 6950 rev1) when comparing then I think it's even more fair to use a GTX 580 as a standin for the 480 SOC
 
tommybhoy said:
480 soc is a 580 now? lol
Click to expand...

Yep, it's very close in fact Bjorn3D reckon with a further overclock it would beat the 580!

While the power consumption might be higher on the GTX 480 than on the GTX 580, we believe that when the GIGABYTE GTX 480 SOC is overclocked even a bit further than the factory OC frequencies, and it can perform faster than a GTX 580 at a much lower price tag. We are putting the GIGABYTE GTX 480 SOC at the top of our list, and it earns an outstanding 9/10 points and the Bjorn3D Golden Bear Award.
Click to expand...

Link here

As for the higher than normal returns, yes it is a slight concern but it wouldn't put me off buying one,
at the end of the day you've still got nearly a 90% chance of getting a good 'un!
 
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