Radeon HD 6950 Alternate

[EvanJackPenn]

Just went on Scan to buy a reference 6950, as to flash into a 6970. I'd been browsing a while before and found this card "2GB ScanFX RADEON HD 6950 PCI-E 2.1" for around £190. I went on today and it was gone. No reference cards remained. And now all the 2GB cards are £200+. There goes my hopes of flashing a top end card

So, I've come to ask - what are good alternatives to this? I have a £200 MAX budget. I know nothing now will match up to that (effectively) 6970. *sigh*

Thanks


P.S. Also, what's a good monitor size for PC gaming? I've heard 22"-24" is the sweet spot?

[dfour]

What about buying a pre flashed one second hand?? There are a few floating around on various forums for £180+ . Nvidia alternative is a second hand 570 which is approx 10% faster than a 6950 as the cheapest 570 new is £240 on scan.

Slower is the 560ti, the Hexus recommended MSI GeForce GTX 560 Ti TWIN FROZR II 1GB is £184:27 and the cheapest 2gb version is the Palit GeForce GTX 560 Ti 2GB at £189:07. Ati would be the MSI HD 6870 HAWK 1GB at £135:22 or an older 5870 which is faster in most things than the 6870 if you can find one.

IMHO a 23 or 24 is the best size . Dell ultrasharps U2311H etc.

[eyezpy]

Agreeing with dfour, the Dell ultrasharps U2311H has a great screen and good price for a ultrasharps, considering the 24" Ultrasharp is almost double the price.
If I had to get a new monitor that would be one for consideration, but right now I am happy with my 24" Samsung.

If you are lookign for a new card, the 560Ti is a good card and can be had from £160. The Gigabyte OC 900mhz one seem to be more consistanly priced at about £170.
The MSI HD 6870 HAWK 1GB is £122.39 on Scan today only! I would say get this one and upgrade at the end of the year or early next year to the 28nm cards

[EvanJackPenn]

Agreeing with dfour, the Dell ultrasharps U2311H has a great screen and good price for a ultrasharps, considering the 24" Ultrasharp is almost double the price.
If I had to get a new monitor that would be one for consideration, but right now I am happy with my 24" Samsung.

I would say get this one and upgrade at the end of the year or early next year to the 28nm cards

On the first part, are ultrasharps good for gaming? Becuase I've read some comparisons of IPS and TN monitors, and I heard some monitors are more suited for other things.

For the graphics, I may consider postponing my build until Ivy Bridge. These 28nm cards you talk about, I presume they will be around by then? And they will be better than the current gen ones?

Thanks!

[kalniel]

On the first part, are ultrasharps good for gaming? Becuase I've read some comparisons of IPS and TFT monitors, and I heard some monitors are more suited for other things.

I'd say they're not really suited for gaming - I've got one and the ghosting is noticeable compared to a TN screen (there's no artifacts, it just blurs quite easily), it's also not that good at scaling up non native resolution stuff (again, compared to my previous monitor). But as a photo/web design/etc. monitor it's very good.

For the graphics, I may consider postponing my build until Sandy Bridge. These 28nm cards you talk about, I presume they will be around by then? And they will be better than the current gen ones?

Sandy Bridge has already been out quite a while. 28nm cards are likely to appear in volume at the start of next year.

[EvanJackPenn]

Oh damn. I meant ivy. Excuse my sillyness.

[dfour]

I have gone from TN to the ultrasharp using display port and have never noticed any ghosting and all I play is FPS games.

[eyezpy]

IPS panels has always been able to give better image quality then TN, in the past IPS was less suitable for gaming due to lower response times, but not any more, they are on par now I think.
A friend got the Dell 23" ultrasharp two weeks ago and I don't think he had any problems playing games with it.

If you can wait for Ivy Bridge then why not wait, but I think it will cost more than the current Sandy Bridge.

Talk around the web say 28nm cards should be out by the end of the year, but availibitly may not be untill early next year and AMD should release before NVidia. NVidia say that the new 28nm cards will be 3-4 times the performance of Fermi.

Sounds very exciting, no? Only down side is that lots of new games are coming out around November!

[kalniel]

If you can wait for Ivy Bridge (high end) then why not wait, but I think it will cost lot more than the current Sandy Bridge (mid range).

I think you're confusing Ivy Bridge with Sandy Bridge E. Ivy bridge is 'just' the 22nm shrink of Sandy Bridge. It'll be faster no doubt, but also cheaper to make, so cost should be roughly equivalent. Sandy Bridge E (skt 2011) is the high end chip for servers/enthusiast.

Talk around the web say 28nm cards should be out by the end of the year, but availibitly may not be untill early next year and AMD should release before NVidia. Either way it will come before Ivy Bridge. NVidia say that the new 28nm cards will be 3-4 times the performance of Fermi.

I think we'll only see low-end cards this year at best.

[Hicks12]

interesting you say that kalneil, i havent noticed any ghosting or bluring on my u2311h which wasnt on my tn panel lg monitor, the only game that blurs slightly is starcraft 2 but that was on the tn panel aswell. What games did you play? maybe i just cant see it .

Its not a 100% true 16bit colour, its got brilliant performance/colours etc but from what ive read i think it essentially works similar to tn panels but alot better (its the cheaper ips panel from lg) so response times are good aswell as the colours, takes the pros from both sides .

[kalniel]

interesting you say that kalneil, i havent noticed any ghosting or bluring on my u2311h which wasnt on my tn panel lg monitor, the only game that blurs slightly is starcraft 2 but that was on the tn panel aswell. What games did you play? maybe i just cant see it .

Its not a 100% true 16bit colour, its got brilliant performance/colours etc but from what ive read i think it essentially works similar to tn panels but alot better (its the cheaper ips panel from lg) so response times are good aswell as the colours, takes the pros from both sides .

F1 2010, Fallout 3/NV, Mass Effect 2, The witcher etc. (basically all the games both I and the wife have!) You get used to it quite quickly, but on scenes where the whole scene is moving across the screen there's a slight blurriness compared to my LG TN monitor that the wife is now using if you look at them side by side. When the scene's not moving as much it's fine, and where the movement is only in part of the screen it's hardly noticeable (the only way to see it on f1 2010 is the green best line arrows - they are sharper on hers).

But for a 6bit panel, the colours are good on the Dell

[eyezpy]

Don't mean to cause any confusion (previouse post amended), mainly want to say I think it will cost more than the Sandy Bridge at launch.
Just because it cost less for Intel to make them doesn't mean they will charge you less. It hasn't happened with the SSDs, GPUs, or bank interest rates its competition that drives down the price. You get charged with what ever the company think they can get away with. Of cause there will be an increase in performance so you could look at it as you are getting more performce for your money.

Don't they normally release the high end cards first and rebrand the last gen for the low end cards. either way availablity for this year looks to be limited.

[EvanJackPenn]

3-4x the performance?! Wow! I'm excited. If that's true, an equivalent to a 560ti would be pretty low down the ladder.

Ivy is just the "tick" of the tick-tock cycle. I quote, "Intel is targeting a 30 percent graphics performance and 20 percent CPU performance boost compared to Sandy Bridge".

It looks like an equally powerful machine can be bought a lot cheaper at the start of next year. And despite the 'Holiday Season' games, the ones I'm most interested in (SKYRIM!!!) are mainly single player. So buying a few months later will have no difference, apart from cost and bug fixes.


What would you say about LED+IPS monitors such as the LG IPS236V? Is it just simply a change of backlighting, or is it any better?

[kalniel]

Don't mean to cause any confusion (previouse post amended), mainly want to say I think it will cost more than the Sandy Bridge at launch.
Just because it cost less for Intel to make them doesn't mean they will charge you less. It hasn't happened with the SSDs, GPUs, or bank interest rates its competition that drives down the price. You get charged with what ever the company think they can get away with. Of cause there will be an increase in performance so you could look at it as you are getting more performce for your money.

Sure, there's always an early adopter price - sandy bridge is cheaper now that it was at launch as well.

Don't they normally release the high end cards first and rebrand the last gen for the low end cards. either way availablity for this year looks to be limited.

We haven't seen that pattern from AMD - current gen they released the 6870/6850, then the 6970/50 later, and the 6990 even later still. But when they move to a new process they often use a low or mid range product as a test - the 4770 was their first 40nm product for example. There's even more confusion this year as they're using two fabs, one of which is known for having problems with new processes, but that's the one they're expecting to put out the higher end parts on, so it could be that we only see very low end products from glo-fo at the end of this year, while the higher end stays with TSMC and gets delayed a little further.

As for nVidia's 3-4x faster than fermi claim, a) it's nVidia making the claim b) fermi was their broken monster. Performance per watt and die size was pretty bad - if those are the metrics then they're already quite a lot faster than fermi even with cards like the 560ti.

[eyezpy]

Heck, you can keep waiting and the price will keep dropping, I think they call it the waiting game. Questions is how long can you wait?

Yeah, the first Firmi was one fat and overly hot SOB, but they fixed it with the 5xx I think and the GTX460.
Totally agree its a marketing from NVidia, those are the figure on paper. I won't be expecting an equivilant card to 560 Ti with 3-4 time the performance at the same price point. Still, gets your geek juice flowing Same with Ivy Bridge and SB-E which they say will be 47% faster then the 1366.

EvanJackPenn, if you are still thinking about getting a 6950, consider this one:
http://www.dabs.com/products/asus-at...refs=464800000

Granted that you probably wouldn't want to flash the BIOS on this card, but since its a DirectCU from Asus it should be overclock friendly and very quiet and at £174.99 I think it a good price. Current due in 3-4 days apparently.


LG IPS236V looks interesting, I think its one to consider. Its a lot cheaper than the Dell u2311H.
Looking at a couple of reveiw and discussions on the web, it looks good to me. The main point I picked out was "Dell get their IPS panels from LG", "the LED can inhibit color performance since it is white LED and not RGB", but saw a yotube video comparing the LG IPS236V to a Dell TN monitor, didn't give me any negative impressions.

[dfour]

The 6950 eyezpy pointed to is a 1 gig model and wont be flashable at all, only the 2 gig models are/where flashable.

You could wait forever for the 'next best thing' and never buy anything. You will have to commit sometime or end up just wishing.

I went for the dell because it has display port on it as does my 6950 and its a better known comodity than the LG (im not saying the lg is worse just less well known)