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£100-120 Nvidia or ATI?

gavin19

gavin19

gavin19

Associate
Joined
19 Jan 2009
Posts
20
I ordered a few things from OC last week to replace my old rig. I picked up

i5 2500k
Gigabyte Z68AP-D3
8GB Corsair Blue
650W OCUK PSU

I didn't bother with a new GFX card as I'm only an occasional gamer, but now the weak 5570 seems out of place. Also, I use my 32" LCD (720p main tv) as a second monitor for when I want to wheel out Skyrim or other joypad-preferred games, keeping my 22" LG for when I'm playing sims/RTS or the like.

My past 3 setups have been budget AMD/ATI, but now I have a decent CPU and I'm back with Intel I was thinking about picking up an Nvidia card. Is there any merit still to the Intel=Nvidia, AMD=ATI rule?

In my price range the 550Ti seems to be about the best for the money, but then I noticed the more powerful(?) 6850 on offer and read it overclocks very well. Any advice?

Cheers.
 
The AMD Radeon HD 6850 is expected to perform better than the NVIDIA Geforce GTX 550 Ti by 0.5%
http://www.graphicscardbenchmarks.com/page/compare

OcUK GeForce GTX 550Ti OC 1024MB £95 today with 5% discount and free shipping.

Factory overclocked.
Core clock: 950Mhz
- Processing Cores: 192
- Memory: 1024MB GDDR5
- Memory Clock: 4200MHz (Effective)
- Shader Clock: 1900MHz

Will be slightly faster than the HD6850.
 
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GTX550Ti is a little slower than the 6850. I wouldn't get either of those and get a 1GB GTX460 instead.

If you search around you can get a "EVGA Nvidia 1Gb GeForce GTX 460 SuperClocked Graphics Card" for just over £100!

Radeon HD680 Vs GTX460 1GB - fairly evenly matched but the GTX460 overclocks like a beast!
 
Davefran said:
The AMD Radeon HD 6850 is expected to perform better than the NVIDIA Geforce GTX 550 Ti by 0.5%
http://www.graphicscardbenchmarks.com/page/compare

OcUK GeForce GTX 550Ti OC 1024MB £95 today with 5% discount and free shipping.

Factory overclocked.
Core clock: 950Mhz
- Processing Cores: 192
- Memory: 1024MB GDDR5
- Memory Clock: 4200MHz (Effective)
- Shader Clock: 1900MHz

Will be slightly faster than the HD6850.
Click to expand...

The results in that comparison site don't make sense.

A HD 6850 out performs a 1000MHz GTX 550Ti by a decent margin.

Check out the Guru3D GTX 550Ti review from this page onwards.
 
It doesn't really matter too much, because both are 1680x1050 cards and nothing more, and both can provide adequate performance at that resolution.

Neither are 1080p cards, nor pretend to be. A GTX 460 is obviously better all around, as it can actually manage some playable games at 1080p.
 
Surveyor said:
The results in that comparison site don't make sense.

A HD 6850 out performs a 1000MHz GTX 550Ti by a decent margin.

Check out the Guru3D GTX 550Ti review from this page onwards.
Click to expand...

This is what that site states : http://www.graphicscardbenchmarks.com/

Unlike other sites that display graphics card and GPU data, our graphics card comparison and performance charts are based off of mathematical linear regression AND aggregate benchmark data. Certain hardware specifications unique to each and every GPU are published by the manufacturer, and we utilize advanced mathematical models (fit to aggregate benchmark data) to accurately determine the performance of each card based upon this information. Because we use mathematics, we can accurately predict the performance of one card relative to another, and even estimate a GPUs performance before it is ever put into a system and benchmarked.






460nh.jpg
 
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Davefran said:
This is what that site states : http://www.graphicscardbenchmarks.com/

Unlike other sites that display graphics card and GPU data, our graphics card comparison and performance charts are based off of mathematical linear regression AND aggregate benchmark data. Certain hardware specifications unique to each and every GPU are published by the manufacturer, and we utilize advanced mathematical models (fit to aggregate benchmark data) to accurately determine the performance of each card based upon this information. Because we use mathematics, we can accurately predict the performance of one card relative to another, and even estimate a GPUs performance before it is ever put into a system and benchmarked.

skip images
Click to expand...

I read that but it doesn't work, at least not comparing the HD 6850 and the GTX 550Ti.

Actual benchmarks show the HD 6850 offers a decent amount of extra performance over the GTX 550Ti.
 
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Actual benchmarks are obviously more meaningful for cards that actually exist. So when comparing the 550Ti and 6850 it makes no sense to use that site...

What I like about that site though is the ability to test out hypothetical situations. Purely for amusement, if nothing else.
 
bru said:
that comparison site really is (insert derogatory comment here) all it is doing is comparing the specs of the cards and giving a performance estimation based on those stats, which is sometimes very wrong.
example

try the gtx 460 vrs a gtx 550ti :eek:
Click to expand...

Unfortunately linking to that site with a particular comparison doesn't work, you still need to select the particular cards.

Having done that it says the GTX 550Ti is expected to perform better than the GTX 460 by 5.2%.

A load of rubbish.
 
After a bit more research into the site, it appears it's made "By Gamers for Gamers" and is more useful for entertainment purposes than actual comparisons.
As such I won't be using it again :o. Sorry for posting that utter tripe previously.

My new opinion is you are an Nvidia fan go for the GTX460, or an AMD fan go for the HD6850. Looks like they're pretty evenly matched, depending on which games you compare them on.

I'd pick the GTX460 myself ;)
 
Well, with pretty much everyone settling on the 460, the fact that it OCs very well and it's Nvidia, that'll do me. If I was more inclined towards BF3/COD then I'd just jump to the 560 but I'm more of a Settlers/X3 gamer.

Thanks to all for the input. Just waiting on the refund then I'll pick up the 460.

EDIT: Not that I've changed my mind already, but how relevant is this?
 
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