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Best graphics card for around £200?

TheRealDeal said:
I could easily say amd drivers give great support also and offer the only way to get into 3 monitor gaming on the one card but i am not gonna get into that rubbish.

The facts are unlock that 6950 and its the best gaming card there and one of the best deals on the market.
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Both have pro's and con's....there isnt a lot to seperate them if you take ALL aspects of GPU's into account...suppose it will come down to the buyers preference at the end of the day
 
ghutchison14078 said:
Overclocking a 480 is just as easy as any other graphics card, as yes MSI Afterburner is the tool for the job.

When talking about performance I assume you are reffering to frames per second shown on the benchmarking charts...whilst more is obviously better it reaches a point where more makes no difference at all (unless your using a 120hz panel)

Most LCD's are locked to 60Hz which means the max FPS they can display without screen tearing is 60FPS. So gaming at 55fps and gaming at 90fps will feel identical.

There are other things to consider apart from raw frames per second....whilst the 6950 does offer good value, the GTX 560 benefits from excellent driver support, physx support and is quieter than the 6950
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Ah, I didn't realise that, the monitor I'm using is a Samsung P2450H, not sure what Hz it is, I'm guessing 60 though.

So it's narrowed down too:

Asus ATI Radeon HD 6950 2048MB for £210 which can be unlocked to a 6970.

MSI GeForce GTX 560Ti OC Twin FrozR II 1024MB for £204 which can be unlocked to near 570 performance

Asus GeForce GTX 480 1536MB for £208 which can be unlocked too but to what performance?

Sorry if I haven't given enough information, I'm using one monitor @ 1920 x 1080 resolution, I have a i5 2500k CPU and a 550W PSU.
 
a GTX480 can be overclocked too GTX580 performance, which is the best single gpu card on the market.
 
550W psu will be an issue if you get the GTX 480...if its a good quality PSU it should run the 480 but I wouldnt count on much overclocking potential.

Do not under estimate how power hungry the GTX 480 is...under full load it sucks around 250 watts...more if you overclock with voltage tweaks.
 
stulid said:
a GTX480 can be overclocked too GTX580 performance, which is the best single gpu card on the market.
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Really? if so then the 480 is the way to go if that's correct lol.

This gets so confusing sometimes, so many cards to choose from.

Even if I did unlock a 6950 to a 6970, the 480 is roughly the same as a 6970 from the benchmarks, but if I overclock the 480 to a 580 then it is quite better than a 6970.

Anyone else got any suggestions?
 
Rossuk89 said:
Ah, I didn't realise that, the monitor I'm using is a Samsung P2450H, not sure what Hz it is, I'm guessing 60 though.

So it's narrowed down too:

Asus ATI Radeon HD 6950 2048MB for £210 which can be unlocked to a 6970.

MSI GeForce GTX 560Ti OC Twin FrozR II 1024MB for £204 which can be unlocked to near 570 performance

Asus GeForce GTX 480 1536MB for £208 which can be unlocked too but to what performance?

Sorry if I haven't given enough information, I'm using one monitor @ 1920 x 1080 resolution, I have a i5 2500k CPU and a 550W PSU.
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The price is pretty much the same on them all so that matters little. If they are all overclocked to there max i would say the gtx560 would be the slowest card. The gtx480 and 6950 both come with the benefit of having more memory which may become a factor at your resolution in the near future. Take into consideration noise and heat i would say the gtx560 would win hear with the 6950 coming next. The gtx480 loses massively on the power front and would only get worse when overclocked.

I would say the 6950 2gb has the overall balance needed to be the best all round performer. The gtx480 next as its a really fast card and would have been great for not having a few drawbacks that some just cannot put up with namingly the heat/power and noise. The gtx560 for me loses because overall it will be the slowest and for the same money you can get a card with double the memory.

You can also overclock a 6950 when its unlocked to 6970 which will get it nearer to a gtx580 depending on how far you can go. Overclocking a gtx480 will only make it louder again and make it use more power. With that psu i would definately rule out the gtx480 as overclocked they can pull around 400watts on there own.
 
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TO SUM UP:

Either the 6950, GTX 560 or GTX 480 will make you a very happy chappy.

GTX 480: Beast of a GFX card but runs hot, lound and needs a lot of juice from PSU which could be a problem on a 550W unit.

GTX 560: Can overclock to 570 performance and will run quiet and cool compared to the 480 and Nvidia do tend to have better drivers than AMD.

6950: once unlocked to 6970 offers superb value for money, but is louder than the 560 and only marginally out performs it.

THE CHOICE IS YOURS.......................................????
 
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Simple question here? If amd dropped the price of the 6970 2gb to £210 pound for a week would we even be having this conversation. For all purposes thats what the question really is.
 
TheRealDeal said:
Simple question here? If amd dropped the price of the 6970 2gb to £210 pound for a week would we even be having this conversation. For all purposes thats what the question really is.
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http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/309?vs=292

out of the 40 game/performance tests, the GTX480 wins 23

actually its 24 wins, one of the tests is "lower is better" so the GTX480 is the better card.
 
[TW]Fox;18431349 said:
The 480 is the best car for the money without question as long as you are happy with the fan noise.
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I'm not bothered about fan noise to be honest, I have my speakers turned up to a decent volume. Bah!!! this is too confusing now lol

480 is power hungry but will that make a difference with my PSU, it can also be unlocked to a 580?

The 480 seems to win more tests out of any card apart from a 570/580 aswell.

560 1GB can be overlocked to a 570?

480 1.5GB can be overlocked to a 580?

6950 2GB can be unlocked to a 6970

Which card would be the most stable/best to overclock, from reading everyones posts, nobody can decide on one card so this is a tough choice haha.
 
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