6950(6970) vs. 480GTX

MikeHiow · 28 Jan 2011 at 16:09

I doubt I'm alone in wondering this, but it seems to be a very hard choice.

With the 480 at £195 and the 6950 at £210, they are both similarly priced and seem to offer similar performance.

The 480 has overclocking on its side, where the 6950 has the unlockability going for it, too.

For me, I'm kind of edging toward the 6950. Partly because of the heat/power/noise concerns with the 480 and partly because my board doesn't support SLI, so the 6950 leaves me with the upgrade option of crossfire in the future (plus the ATI cards seem to scale better in a dual setup).

That said, I bought my 6800GT, 4850 and now 4890 all with the intention of going SLI/Crossfire at some point, and have never got around to it.

Thoughts?

Rroff · 28 Jan 2011 at 16:10

Flip a coin?

jigger · 28 Jan 2011 at 16:42

I would have to go for the HD6950.

Snooble · 28 Jan 2011 at 16:49

I'm going to ask the most hated question on the forum;
What are you planning on using it for?

kmufc77 · 28 Jan 2011 at 16:49

I would get the 480 but thats based on purely my experience when having one and knowing what there like when heavily OC.

Also for the price that the Asus 480s are selling for,its a superb deal.

RavenXXX2 · 28 Jan 2011 at 16:50

The 480 is faster than the 6950 and on par with a 6970, the AMD cards are not exactly cool running or power efficient either and overclocking seems to not give as good as result as with the Nvidia card. My pick would be the 480 and an aftermarket cooler then overclock its nuts off for 580 busting performance. You can't go wrong with either purchase really.

kmufc77 · 28 Jan 2011 at 16:56

Raven are you not tempted to pick up another 480???

Steves1982 · 28 Jan 2011 at 16:57

I can only suggest the 6950 flashed to 6970 as that's what I have.

Great card for the price but then so is the 480. I think I'm right in saying the 6950s will scale better in xfire than 480s will. Might be worth thinking about if you plan going down that route in the future.

RavenXXX2 · 28 Jan 2011 at 16:57

kmufc77 said:
Raven are you not tempted to pick up another 480???

I'm on stock cooling with a mid size case, SLI is a no no. My HX750 will not be enough for two highly clocked 480s either.

J.D · 28 Jan 2011 at 17:11

RavenXXX2 said:
The 480 is faster than the 6950 and on par with a 6970, the AMD cards are not exactly cool running or power efficient either and overclocking seems to not give as good as result as with the Nvidia card. My pick would be the 480 and an aftermarket cooler then overclock its nuts off for 580 busting performance. You can't go wrong with either purchase really.

Yeah but it's easy to get 950Mhz out of a 6950 with unlocked shaders (Practically a 6970 with different memory timing). I've had mine to 1000Mhz. I'm settled at 950/1450 for now though until I want to start adding volts through RBE again.

Yes the GTX 480 is faster but with that comes more heat and more of a power draw also. So it's not as clear cut as you make out. When you add price into it, it weighs more in the GTX 480s favour.

MikeHiow · 28 Jan 2011 at 17:26

Snooble said:
I'm going to ask the most hated question on the forum;
What are you planning on using it for?

Playing games?

I'm not sure this question is entirely relevant when we are comparing two cards that are so similar in price and performance.

Electroshadow · 28 Jan 2011 at 17:28

how bad is the noise on the gtx480??

my no dead 280 was really bad....

fizzle-187 · 28 Jan 2011 at 17:42

Get the 6970 it's 20% faster than the 580, according to some members on here.

MikeHiow · 28 Jan 2011 at 17:44

fizzle-187 said:
Get the 6970 it's 20% faster than the 580, according to some members on here.

Are you sure you're not getting confused with the 5970?

J.D · 28 Jan 2011 at 17:47

fizzle-187 said:
Get the 6970 it's 20% faster than the 580, according to some members on here.

Who?

. *Grabs popcorn and waits.

Mr. May · 28 Jan 2011 at 17:50

Electroshadow said:
how bad is the noise on the gtx480??

my no dead 280 was really bad....

the question is what is your tolerence for noise ?

Electroshadow · 28 Jan 2011 at 17:52

not mine but the misses lol

Helios1234 · 28 Jan 2011 at 18:34

http://www.vortez.co.uk/articles_pages/asus_eah6970_2gb_review,10.html

The Nvidia GTX480 and GTX570 are AMD’s target competition this round. At stock speeds, the GTX480 we had on test came out on top by an average of 3.7% across all games. Even if we disregard H.A.W.X 2, which favours Nvidia cards much more, the performance difference is around 1.5% in favour of the GTX480. In a few situations, the HD6970 makes better usage of its 2GB memory to close the gap on the Nvidia card but it lacks the raw power to take the crown. Unfortunately, it gets worse when both are overclocked seeing as how the headroom on the HD6970 was relatively less than on the GTX480 in this case. In the end, the GTX480 took an average lead of 9.5%. It appears that Nvidia still provides better tessellation performance in Unigine.

So even if your HD6950 unlocks to a HD6970, you'll have to hope that it can overclock further for it to be a better alternative performance wise. On the plus side, it will be quieter and run cooler.

Mr Krugga · 28 Jan 2011 at 18:38

RavenXXX2 said:
The 480 is faster than the 6950 and on par with a 6970, the AMD cards are not exactly cool running or power efficient either and overclocking seems to not give as good as result as with the Nvidia card. My pick would be the 480 and an aftermarket cooler then overclock its nuts off for 580 busting performance. You can't go wrong with either purchase really.

MikeHiow · 28 Jan 2011 at 18:44

I think that has sealed the deal on a 6970 for me.