Question of the week: what will be your next graphics card?

[wiak]

4870 hands down, well great price & performace compared to the GTX 260
i get mine on monday

[Methanoid]

Most review actually shows that the 4000-series doing less well than the latest nVidia...

evidence? I at least posted a link showing Nvidia producing more heat.. and thats an independent source who quotes where all his info comes from...

[Blitzen]

4870 hands down, well great price & performace compared to the GTX 260
i get mine on monday

You sure about that?
Price vs performance maybe.

Price AND performance......i have serious doubts.

[Noxvayl]

You sure about that?
Price vs performance maybe.

Price AND performance......i have serious doubts.

Doubts about what? The HD4870 beats the GTX260 most of the time and even competes against the GTX280 in certain games. All the reviews I've read agree that the HD4870 is better than the GTX260 in both price and performance.

[shadowmaster]

Doubts about what? The HD4870 beats the GTX260 most of the time and even competes against the GTX280 in certain games. All the reviews I've read agree that the HD4870 is better than the GTX260 in both price and performance.

At £200 for the 4870 compared to the £260 for the GTX260, I cant see any reason to buy the GTX260 even if it might be slightly better.

[TooNice]

evidence? I at least posted a link showing Nvidia producing more heat.. and thats an independent source who quotes where all his info comes from...

Edit: I found your link a little hard to read, but if I am reading it correctly, it shows the gives 59W for the 4870, 36W for the 4850, 40W for the 260 and 46W for the 280. I suppose that you are right if you stick with the lower end 4000 cards as you seem to be, with their rather impressive 10W, but the upper end 4000 cards aren't particularly great compared to their less powerful siblings or comparably powerful nVidia offerings.

For the upper end cards though, all the following shows the 4850 use around the same level of power as the 200 series and the 4870 a lot more.. on idle.

Anandtech
Ars Technica
Tweaktown
Legit Review
Hot Hardware
PC Perspective
Tech Report
Extreme Tech

Yeah that's right at idle the nVidia card is slightly lower(and its only by a few W so nothing to go crazy about tbh) than the ATI cards at the moment but at load the ATI cards are far better.

If you play games a lot then the ATI card uses less power but if it sits idle they are pretty much the same.

I agree that nVidia is much worse when it comes to power consumption under load, but if we go with Anandtech (I trust them most out of the above sites) the difference at idle is more than what I would describe as 'a few W' in the case of the 4870. In their test system, it works out to be 45W between the 4870 and the GTX 280. Going from one card to the other increase the system power consumption by 28%, so the difference between the cards must be even more than that. That's rather significant in my opinion. In contrast, the difference under load is about 35W, which I agree is significant (but actually less than the difference under idle). So I can't agree with both part of your conclusion, at least going by Anandtech's data.

I don't have the time to work out the difference in absolute terms/% across all the other reviews listed above, but a quick glance at a couple of others. Using some rough calculations in my head (feel free to check and work out more thoroughly if you doubt it - I would if I had the time), the 45W gap is possibly unique to Anandtech, but 35+W isn't, and the difference between the two cards are idle is greater than at load (in other word, the GTX 280 is better than the 4870 at being idle than the 4870 is better than the GTX 280 at load from a power consumption perspective). There are many reasons why I prefer the upper end HD 4000-series over the GTX200 series, but power consumption is not one of them unless you play games more than you leave your PC idling - which is not true in my case.

[Steven W]

surprising how few people have voted for NVIDIA options!

[rufeo]

getting a gtx260, after deciding to get the 4870 by being won over pretty much by everyone here. but there was a last minute switch in light of the 'failing' 4870s. getting a bfg gtx 260 OC for £240, only £20 more pounds than what i would have spent on a 4870 (at the time i ordered). in my view its worth it, lower temps and similar performance to the 4870. can't put many aftermarket coolers into my case, so wouldn't be able to overclock the 4870 without it getting really really hot but i'm sure i can get more out of the gtx 260 when rivatuner supports it

willl miss not have the nice way that the ati's handle sound via hdmi though

[HEXUS]

AMD and NVIDIA's next-generation graphics cards are now readily available, and the HEXUS.community members show a clear preference for the AMD option.

Read more.

[fac51]

From a price point of view I'm definitely favouring the Radeon 4870 at the moment.

[Saracen]

I voted 4850, because right now, that represents the value-for-money sweet-spot for me. 4870 is a possibility. Crossfire or SLI are out of the question for me. I'm not interested in two cards, and nor spending that on a graphics solution.

[TAKTAK]

i voted for other nVidia cos i'm expecting even further price drops that will put nVidia back into price/performance contention against the 4870's...... OBV this may/may not happen... but i think it will

[Brewster0101]

I voted 4850, because right now, that represents the value-for-money sweet-spot for me. 4870 is a possibility. Crossfire or SLI are out of the question for me. I'm not interested in two cards, and nor spending that on a graphics solution.

I wonder what market there actually is for SLI or Crossfire. I can't see that AMD or Nvidia get their money back from making these technologies when there is only a small percentage of people that even buy two cards in the first place.

Anyhow, I have been having ATI since my geforce 3 and I don't really have a preference on name or what clever technology is on these card (that won't work for 12months), just value and lets face it AMD/ATI were always about value, thats what they know best.

[this_is_gav]

I wonder what market there actually is for SLI or Crossfire. I can't see that AMD or Nvidia get their money back from making these technologies when there is only a small percentage of people that even buy two cards in the first place.

The thing is, AMD aren't really losing that much by doing it. It's supported in all modern Intel chipsets (though will only shine on x38 or x48 as thing stand), and they're obviously supporting their own boards too.

For NVIDIA on the other hand, you either need an NVIDIA-based motherboard, which is less than desirable for most, or that Intel SkullTrail thing.

In short - AMD only have to provide driver support and a couple of connections and connectors, while NVIDIA have to provide a whole platform for each CPU.

Surprised the HD4850 is losing out so much to the HD4870 in the poll personally. It costs a stupidly small amount in comparison, yet has a lot of the performance, whereas the HD4870 is starting to get into enthusiast money. I'm aware that this is an enthusiast site, but still.

[TooNice]

I am also a little surprised that it's not a little more divided between the 4850 and the 4870. If I was to get a card today, it would be the 4850 simply because for the bang for buck. Perhaps most people will get the best card £180-ish will buy them.

I am not surprised by the nVidia loss though. Strictly speaking there is very little going for them. I can only see people going nVidia if they value performance at any cost or distrust AMD drivers/card makers (whether the reason is real or perceived).

It wouldn't surprise me if over 50% who voted AMD this round would go nVidia next round if they come out an equally impressive lead over it's competitor from a bang for buck perspective in the £100-200 range. Yet 25% may decisively stick AMD then.

[vrykyl]

Either a gtx280 or 4820X2 single card solution for me....depending on how low nvidia push their pricing..... probably the 4870x2