5870 or gtx 480

[RavenXXX2]

I'll take the opinion of respected online review sites thank you very much.

http://www.techspot.com/review/283-geforce-gtx-400-vs-radeon-hd-5800/

So two months later, both AMD and Nvidia have delivered new drivers for their current generation GPUs and very little has changed. The GeForce GTX 480 is still very fast, on the expensive side, and very power hungry. The Radeon HD 5870 on the other hand is almost as fast, it's a better value per dollar, and much more fuel efficient. For those reasons alone the Radeon HD 5870 still gets our seal of approval.

 

[cupofchow]

I'll take the opinion of respected online review sites thank you very much.

Good for you, at least ive had the option of trying both cards first before making an afformed decision.

 

[RavenXXX2]

Yeah that's good for you, it's not like anyone becomes bias toward a new expensive purchase is it..

 

[nalla]

thanks for the comments, its looking more like ill have the 480 now, i wont be watercooling it though, well at least not yet anyway, i have always had nvidia cards over the years but went over to ati when the 4870 came out which is what i have now,

one more question is there much difference between makes, ie is the ocuk one at £393 going to perform any different from say a gainward or asus.

 

[RavenXXX2]

No difference at all performance wise, buy the cheapest, only variation will be the warranty which is three years for Asus, five for Zotac, ten for EVGA and two years for the rest.

 

[cupofchow]

Yeah that's good for you, it's not like anyone becomes bias toward a new expensive purchase is it..

It wasnt a new expensive purchase It was the same price for both cards and i chose this one simples...

And yeah they all pretty much come with 3yr warranty including Point of view which is the one i have.

Just go with the cheapest as they are all exactly the same apart from company stickers and bios.

 

[marc512]

You got the powersupply, money, decent case you go for the 480...if you dont have a good powersupply, have a long ish case and dont have a lot of money go for the 5870.

 

[bells]

Kinda wrong There chap, the venerable 5970 holds that card, but yes a 480 is your best bet at £400 and that res, the 5870 may overclockto a higher MHz but the 480 gets more net fps from overclocking so it's all good

the 5970 is a dual gpu card ie: crossfire in one card and not a single gpu card.

 

[RavenXXX2]

Yeah it's still one card and spanks the 480 in 99% of games and is therefor the fastest GFX card on the planet.

 

[nalla]

ok cheers guys i am going to get the 480 on tuesday, thanks for the replys.

 

[bells]

What do you mean when you say 'if games support crossfire ?' what happens if they don't ? i use a 5850 which is perfect for me

 

[Rroff]

As Raven says at that res you really want to be looking at cards with more than 1Gig VRAM - even more so if you plan on running any kinda AA - not sure about the "can't tell the difference at that res" tho - playing eve online at 2560x without AA (as the engine doesn't work with it) you can quite plainly see the aliasing on the edges of space ships and out on the profile edges of planets and other games benefit from 4x AA atleast as well.

 

[RavenXXX2]

99% of games released today will support xfire, maybe some not straight away but a few week later with a profile update so it's not a big deal, in the mean time you are still left with 5850 performance.

 

[cupofchow]

99% of games released today will support xfire, maybe some not straight away but a few week later with a profile update so it's not a big deal, in the mean time you are still left with 5850 performance.

Cant we tell you love ATI ?

Oh and the 5970 is a dual gpu gard which means 2 x GPU's... and it doesnt whoop the gtx480's arse at all...

plus you get the xfire supporting the game business, if not then its down to 1 x 5850 gpu plus then you have micro stuttering to deal with which is well documented.

Oh and having a game sat there for a few weeks is a big deal... imagine going out buying the latest game and getting home to play your mates online then having to turn down the AA and res just so its playable. I'd be a little miffed as would others.

 

[nalla]

well yeah thats what i was saying about xfire, some games support some dont, i have had a look at some benchmarks and the 480 kicks the 5970's arse in games that dont like xfire so it does make a difference. but its deffo the 480 for me i think and if its not enough to beat a 5970 then i can always buy a second i suppose.

 

[Shocky-FM]

+1 for the 5870, there isn't much difference between the 2 performance wise ( 480 is a little faster), and the 5870 overclocks far higher

What? No it doesnt, seriously where did you get that from ?

480 as its the fastest single card

No, the HD5970 is the fastest card currently.

well yeah thats what i was saying about xfire, some games support some dont, i have had a look at some benchmarks and the 480 kicks the 5970's arse in games that dont like xfire so it does make a difference. but its deffo the 480 for me i think and if its not enough to beat a 5970 then i can always buy a second i suppose.

You do that, enjoy 55dB+ gaming.

If you go SLI get some good noise cancelling headphones.

99% of games released today will support xfire, maybe some not straight away but a few week later with a profile update so it's not a big deal, in the mean time you are still left with 5850 performance.

You’re exaggerating, it's less than that and there are not that quick at updating the profiles, in some cases they break profiles that were previously working like SH.

Settlers 7 for example, been out a while now and no profile, game actually crashes eventually with CF enabled.

Also Blur, CF gives about half the performance of a single card; let’s see how long it take them to fix that.

 

[Speed]

Nah, you maybe seeing all this through green tinted glasses, from what I have seen in reviews and the majority of 480 owners on youtube the 480 runs a lot hotter than a 5870 and is nosier. regarding drivers I have no problem whatsoever with them and my 5870, recent review on techspot show the 5870 matching the 480 for the most part with the latest drivers from both camps, fair enough it's your personal opinion and that's all it is.

Yeah because You Tube is a reliable source of info!

the 5970 is a dual gpu card ie: crossfire in one card and not a single gpu card.

It is still the fastest single card solution, which is what you said to start with and is therefore wrong. Just doesn't count when you are talking about single gpu cards.

it will be in an antec 1200 case, system only built 8 weeks ago, so airflow should be good enough and have a 650w psu, will that be ok for a 480.oh and not bothered about heat or power.

Assuming the PSU is a decent brand it will be fine.

 

[RavenXXX2]

Yeah youtube is more reliable than most dodgy sites when you can actually see the performance and settings in front of you..

 

[IceWolf]

really happy with my 480GTX - not having heat or noise problems in a Silverstone LC17 HTPC case. Runs everything very nicely.

I'm sure the 5870 is great too but I have never owned one, was happy with 280GTX drivers so stayed with Nvidia.

The extra memory should help at high res on the 480 and the eyefinity 5870s with extra memory seem to be more expensivethan the value 480 on overclockers which I got for £393.

You will probably be happy regardless -these new cards seem to kick ass but that just makes me want SLi for ridiculous fps

 

[cupofchow]

Yeah youtube is more reliable than most dodgy sites when you can actually see the performance and settings in front of you..

I thought you said you would rather trust website reviews ? Isnt youtube just user reviews like myself for example ?