ATI vs NVIDIA

[Gisse]

Eternal question.

I don't want to talk who is better. Here is simple question. I want to get new graphic card and don't have 1 000 000 $ for new one but just somewhere around 150-200$.

At moment i have HD4850 but want some upgrade. Why upgrade? BF3 of course.

Noticed HD6850 for 150$+-10$ and also noticed GTX560 (no TI) for similar price. All cards are with 1GB of memory and 256bit rail. On tests they write that ATI is better. So what is the question. There is GTX560 TI which is on 180$+ mark and have some 1% better performance then HD4850.

Does that 1% really cost those 30$?

[jaskaman]

Does that 1% cost those 30$? Sometimes 1% can cost 100 eur. Usually Nvidia cards are a bit more expensive than Ati/Amd cards for the same speed.
Because I prefer and use ATI, I should say go for HD 6850. (But u should consider faster cards anyway because it's minimum for BF 3 IMO).

[Gisse]

To tell you the truth, 4850 goes with High settings on BF3, only problem is that i don't see enemies :) (possibly bug of drivers or game or what ever) Didn't check FPS, didn't noticed any lags so didn't check. Hopefully new graphic card which is compatible with DX11 will help me to have normal game experience when final release come out.

There is less then 10 Graphic cards which can give more or less better performance then that one. I understand that 580 have 1/3 better performances but it have ridiculous price. :(

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Radeon+HD+6850

Thanks for fast answer :)

[Asigan]

The benchmarks are just synthetic emulations of the real world applications you could to have a perspective of what are you going to buy, but it's not the best reference that you can take. If you are going to do a little bit of research the common features you should look for, or atleast the ones that i will do, are "Temps, Noise, Number of Phases, Manufacturer". Those are my tips for searching. Here it's a link of Quality/Price for the Gpu in September by Tom's Hardware: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-performance-radeon-geforce,3018.html

By the way if you are going to work with linux in your near future or you're going to be a cracker, you should choose ATI over NVIDIA. If u are going to just play games i would choose NVIDIA, mainly because of drivers stability and drivers updates. ATI it's always a little bit slower in their publications of new drivers.

[Gisse]

About Linux, you have remind me good on that ;)

But i thought that NVidia haw better support for Linux?

[Asigan]

Nope, ATI and INTEL has open the code for his drivers, Nvidia it's still closed, there are some driver development called Nvidia Nouveau and some others i suppose. I'm just saying that it will be more compatibility if use ATI as Linux user and i guess it will be more updates for your graphic card. But well for me atleast linux it's an OS to write code so i'm not gonna play games. Check the first message i'll try to complete a bit.

[Gisse]

Also one more thing. With HD6850 they give Modern Warfare 2 :)

[Hidde]

Better not get the 6850 then.

jk, but can't you go for a 6870? You can get those for €160 here. Don't know what currency there is where you live though :)

[MI-six]

This is what you can help.

benchmark (http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=GeForce+GTX+580) and Benchmark (http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html)

[Gisse]

Personally don't see any use of 6870 because with simple overclocking 6850 can do same.

Going for 6850, will tell you if i want to kill my self because of this decision.

Thanks for all advice :)

[Gisse]

Just got this (http://www.msi.com/product/vga/R6850-Cyclone-1GD5-Power-Edition-OC.html#?div=Overview) card from MSI. Hopefully wont bite my self for ass when BF3 come up with final version. Until then will play Modern Warfare 2 which i got with graphic card.

Colling system on card is awesome. Will write down if it is noise one.

[Hidde]

Very good card.
http://nl.hardware.info/reviews/2067/13/7-amd-radeon-hd-6850-videokaarten-vergelijkingstest-temperaturen
http://nl.hardware.info/reviews/2067/14/7-amd-radeon-hd-6850-videokaarten-vergelijkingstest-geluidsproductie

[Gisse]

Thanks for those tests :)