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GTX470, tell me I've bought the right card

From anands review the 470 with mature drivers is marginally quicker (3% over 5 resolutions) than a 6870 on beta drivers, make of that what you will. Both similarly priced with near identical overall performance. For £175 though the 470 is hard to beat, so long as you are not fussed with heat and power consumption.
 
Hmmm - I;'ve been waiting for the new AMD cards to appear and now it seems the GTX470 is as good or slightly better. This doesn't help choices! I am coming from a 9800GT so anything is going to be better! Do I go for the 470 or the 6870? How do I choose?
 
prescott28 said:
Do I go for the 470 or the 6870? How do I choose?
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The way I see it, both are pretty much on par with each other if you take everything into account.

The 470 has CUDA, PhysX, better tessellation, but is complicated by far greater power consumption (costs more electricity in the long run), heat and as a result of that, is noisier.

The 6870 has Eyefinity and the opposite of the 470, low power/heat/noise but is also (currently) slightly slower than the 470 - this may change with better drivers.

There's not much in it I don't think, it's just a preference to which things you want or need.
 
470 here as well...

I dont see how AMD have improved the tesselation in the 6000 series?

I think they are limited by architecture...

Which may see Nvidia start gaining by the fact they made the jump to a new architecture earlier than AMD and will fixed issues, whilst AMD just start... down that path...
 
I would have gone for the n6870. Lower temps\noise\power, should improve with drivers. Probably better resell value, IF I needed to sell it.

Also, it seems Crossfire scales really really well with the new ATI's, so if you got two of them, they'd be a match for anything.
 
HazardO said:
I bought a pair of GTX470s last week, and I'm not worried about the new HD68xxs. Mind you I did get the Gigabyte GTX470 SOCs.
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No need for worry regardless. Dont have to upgrade gpu ever 6 months.

I think a card should be bought and used for 2 years, then upgrade again...

Thats how I do it for high end.

Or....

You by mid range more often...
 
OK, the 'offer you can't refuse' won the day and I ordered the OCUK Value 470! Like the OP, I hope it is the right choice but either way it will be 'much' faster than my exsiting card.
 
snaggster said:
You have done the right thing. Dont worry about what people say about the noise. Just download Afterburner and setup a custom fan profile. eg(50c=60% fan) This way the card never gets warm enough for the fan to go above 70%.
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A 470 at stock clocks will easily need more than 70% fan to keep the temperatures in check. Any hint of voltage increase will require an increase in fan speed to keep those temperatures manageble.

I used to own one with a custom fan profile set in afterburner. It was noticable with anything more than 60% fan an intolerable at 75%+.

Maybe I am just more sensitive to the noise that others?

At £175 the 470 is good value but it does run hot, it is noisy (70%+ fan) and will consume a lot more power at load than a 6870.

Personally I would have gone for the 6870 only for the fact that I could get 470 levels of performance without any of the other drawbacks.
 
prescott28 said:
OK, the 'offer you can't refuse' won the day and I ordered the OCUK Value 470! Like the OP, I hope it is the right choice but either way it will be 'much' faster than my exsiting card.
Click to expand...


GTX470 will destroy an 9800GT, you will be blown away by the difference.

Regarding 470 heat/noise, buy this and overclock the 470 and the 6870 will be eating the 470's dust yet running cooler and quieter.
 
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The answer to this question is relatively simple.

Buy GTX470 if you can get one priced competitively (for £175 on offer today, the 470 is a no-brainer). Buy it if you need CUDA or Physx (I doubt anyone needs the latter though). There might be your desire for Folding performance as well (in which case Radeons are useless, although there are other interesting projects you can join in with them).

On the other hand, buy the 6870 if it's priced at £180 (as it should be) and GTX470 is £195+. Buy the Radeon if you feel like having a low power consumption card with good temps and no noise issues. It will still perform on the levels similar to GTX470.

BTW, DO YOU KNOW WHAT DAY IT IS TODAY??
 
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