6950/560ti - two cards enter, only one can leave!

[JulioH]

That extra vram will probably come in handy for DX 11 games especially BF3 which is an Amd 'Gaming Evolved' title so it may possibly run better on Amd hardware on release.

There'll be no difference, at least nothing big. All marketing that, just like the nVidia "the way it's meant to be played" in games.


Personally I'd go with the 560Ti.

 

[tommybhoy]

There'll be no difference, at least nothing big

I didn't say there will be a difference, I pointed out that 'it may possibly run better on Amd hardware on release'.
Look what happened with DA II on release with Nvidia cards, it took them a few weeks to fix performance issues.

 

[Nelly]

A few 560 ti out there with 2GB, could always go for an EVGA one.

I woudn't bother with POV, Palit, Gainward if you value warrantys.

 

[Helios1234]

My brother bought a 560 over a 6950 due to Custom PC(he was a diehard) saying that it was better than the 6950. He loves playing Dragon Age and when DA II came out, it ran like a dog on Nvidia, so I offered him a go of one of my 6950's to try it in his rig. He said the same thing about having a better all round experience with the games he plays on the 6950 and now has one after selling on the 560.

Incidentally he wasn't happy with CPC and had a go at them in their forum(who had a go back and called him a fanboi but then apologised to him) for being biased.

It's like any reviews though, they key is to look at games that you play and judge your purchase on that. I personally found the GTX560Ti to be better overall but there are games where the Nvidia card wins by quite a margin and others where the AMD wins. The problem is that some reviews don't look at a broad spectrum of games and base their conclusion on a couple of tests which isn't ideal.

 

[1LANCS]

Also worth noting DA2 had issues with Nvidia drivers which caused the game to run like crap on ALL Nvidia cards not just 560Ti, chances are if he installs the patch and latest Nvidia drivers it will run as smooth as silk, it did on my GTX470.

 

[tommybhoy]

The problem is that some reviews don't look at a broad spectrum of games and base their conclusion on a couple of tests which isn't ideal.

Another problem I find is that most review sites don't push each cards IQ ability in games either, HOCP is good at showing us though:

'Surprisingly the 2GB Radeon HD 6950 also performed faster than the GeForce GTX 560 Ti in this game at these settings. We saw on the previous page that the GTX 560 Ti has a large performance lead in this game. However, when running this game at these insanely high settings, the GTX 560 Ti suffers and the 2GB Radeon HD 6950 reigns as the superior video card for this game!'

and:

'We had to run all video cards at 4X AA at 2560x1600 in this game because the two 1GB video cards in this evaluation were completely unplayable at 8X MSAA at this resolution. When we tried to run this game at 8X MSAA on the 1GB Radeon HD 6950 and 1GB GeForce GTX 560 Ti we experience framerates in the 0-3 FPS range, which rendered playing the game impossible. However, the 2GB Radeon HD 6950 was completely playable at 8X MSAA! Its performance did not degrade much at all moving upwards from 4X AA and we’d consider 8X MSAA to be playable on the 2GB Radeon HD 6950. This game proved that memory capacity can go a long way to opening up higher playable settings.

and:

If you love the high levels AA eye candy, or game at higher resolutions go for the 6950 2GB model.

http://hardocp.com/article/2011/02/24/amd_radeon_hd_6950_1gb_performance_review/3

Also worth noting DA2 had issues with Nvidia drivers which caused the game to run like crap on ALL Nvidia cards not just 560Ti, chances are if he installs the patch and latest Nvidia drivers it will run as smooth as silk, it did on my GTX470.

Already pointed that out in post 22