Advice needed, ATI virgin considering the EPIC HALLOWEEN DEAL - MSI 6970

[JButlerUK]

BTW average 6950 is around £230 whilst the 2gb GTX 560 is £240

:-S

 

[JButlerUK]

BTW BTW went for this in the end lol:

MSI GeForce GTX 570 OC Twin FrozR III Power Edition 1280MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card

I like the brand, i like the military parts and i just want that one and althought its a little more i will enjoy that one..

 

[fowler002]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

change to the 6950 toxic, use the £60 saved towards the 64gb crucial m4 ssd

 

[JButlerUK]

Money isnt everything.

This is my hobby and makes me happy so i will spend on it

 

[Gee]

Pointless card frankly, firstly all the fancy military grade parts, fine if you want to cool it under LN2 and shoot for 1.3-1.4Ghz speeds and single 3dmark runs, in real life it makes no difference over a £30 cheaper card. Nice cooler, but still expensive, 10-15% more performance than a 6950, which costs 20-30% less.

The top end cards are rarely good value, the 4870x2 actually was, it was cheaper than 2x 4870's separately, offered similar performance and was great overall.

Either way, don't buy yet, december through Jan is the time for new AMD cards, meaning, in just over a month you could potentially be buying a card thats 70-80% faster, for the same price.

This is the worst possible time to upgrade, even if new cards weren't coming out, 6950 is a much better value card, and 2gb 560ti's, horrific option, £80-90 more at the moment for 1gb extra mem, which should cost £10 more, and takes the price above a 6950 which is a much faster card in the vast majority of games.


If absolutely, utterly desperate, the 6950 is easily the best value high end card around, if you can wait 4-6 weeks, new cards should move prices around on current gen, both AMD and Nvidia, and potentially have great new cards that are far better options anyway, you can't really lose, 6970 for far less, or 7970 with far more performance for the same price, win win.

Its unclear exactly when(rumoured the 6th Dec) and exactly which cards, (mid or high end) but it shouldn't matter. if the midrange matches the current high end, the current high end price will drop, so the midend has to drop, etc, etc.

Was considering purchasing a new card at the weekend but after reading this I think I'll wait til after Christmas!

 

[Rroff]

Yup pretty much as DM said;

6950 not that much slower than 6970 with a fair price difference.

The difference in CPU usage between nVidia and AMD cards is absolutely negligible not sure what anyone mentioned it- there are some highly specific instances but for general useage its absolutely no issue.

From my experience when people seem to have the most problems is when they switch brand (in either direction) I don't generally reccomending switching brand if your comfortable with one or the other.

 

[Troezar]

I'm going to do exactly what DM says and for exactly those reasons. Saving cash now for launch day whenever that is, never had a new card at launch so looking forward to it My guess is 7950 just under £300...

 

[tommybhoy]

The difference in CPU usage between nVidia and AMD cards is absolutely negligible not sure what anyone mentioned it- there are some highly specific instances but for general useage its absolutely no issue.

Like gaming?

On a side note, the 570 won't perform at it's best as it's going into an AMD system too, Nvidia cards perform better in Intel systems due to the Intels higher clockspeeds:

Source: PCformat July 2011

My last point to make is that seeing that you are so used to AMD cards, the crossover to Nvidia Control Panel can be off puting (and vice versa of course)

From my experience when people seem to have the most problems is when they switch brand (in either direction) I don't generally reccomending switching brand if your comfortable with one or the other.

Agree with you there though, very confusing sometimes, 'With the Nvidia Control Panel I could.......but I can't do it in CCC' etc etc and vice versa.

 

[CinderzFTW]

Originally Posted by Rroff
The difference in CPU usage between nVidia and AMD cards is absolutely negligible not sure what anyone mentioned it- there are some highly specific instances but for general useage its absolutely no issue.

Total balls mates!!!

ATI cards don't rely on the CPU as much as Nvidia cards do and Nvidia Cards do prefer Intel CPU's like ATI cards prefer AMD CPU's. And here is a bit of information for you about ATI cards. If you run an Nvidia card next to a AMD Llano, the onboard cpu graphics will not run, but run one next to a ATI card and the ATI card will run next to the onboard gpu on the cpu giving a boost in graphic power.

BOOM!

 

[CinderzFTW]

Found that one out from Custom PC magazine xD

 

[Rroff]

Granted I don't have as much experience with AMD CPUs, but I've setup and tested a huge and diverse range of intel CPU based systems and there is no appreciable difference based on CPU that would mean an nVidia card is at a disadvantage over a similiar AMD card on a slower CPU, etc.

The highly specific scenarios are certain shaders and/or compute useage where the drivers may be handling more of the backend on one brand compared to the other or certain features "strapped" in software. For general gaming the CPU arguement is 100% rubbish on intel systems and I suspect the same on AMD, PC Format is hardly the most reliable source for testing and custom PC even less so.

 

[CinderzFTW]

Granted I don't have as much experience with AMD CPUs, but I've setup and tested a huge and diverse range of intel CPU based systems and there is no appreciable difference based on CPU that would mean an nVidia card is at a disadvantage over a similiar AMD card on a slower CPU, etc.

The highly specific scenarios are certain shaders and/or compute useage where the drivers may be handling more of the backend on one brand compared to the other or certain features "strapped" in software. For general gaming the CPU arguement is 100% rubbish on intel systems and I suspect the same on AMD, PC Format is hardly the most reliable source for testing.

LMAO! SORRY ABOUT THE BOOM!

I have just oven cooked my misses 8800GTS as it died this afternoon and got the critter working again! 200C for 10 minutes really can fix a GPU!

And PC Format/Custom PC are great for testing I think. They test every piece of hardware they get thoroughly to give us the results. If it wasn't for CPC I wouldn't have got my HD5770 running at 5850 speeds.

I trust them!

Again sorry for the boom! lol

 

[TheRealDeal]

Found that one out from Custom PC magazine xD

Amd cards dont prefer amd cpu's. Intel cpu's will pretty much always give better fps on nvidia or amd cards due to they are faster and thats the bottom line. Nvidia cards need more cpu horse power compared with amd from reading that artical.