ATI HD4870 vs. nVIDIA 260

[Goldfish92]

Both cards pretty simillar in price and performance so which do you prefer?

nVidia has the CUDA 'advantage' but ATI's cards are slightly cheaper.... so which would you recomend as an upgrade?

[AntiTalent]

What size is your monitor?

If you're running 1440x900 or less then I'd say a 512MB 4870, due to much lower price and good performance.

If you're looking at 1650 + then it's between the 1GB 4870 and GTX 260, which are so close it's really down to personal preference.
If you Fold, or play games which use PhysX, then nvidia,
If you play Stalker in DX10.1 then ATI.
If you do neither, then decide on price.

[Blitzen]

I posted about this a few months back so let me give you an insight.

I have 2 x 4870's in Crossfire. The performance is VERY good.
Bad Points:
High temps.
Price (at the time).

I also installed an EVGA 260GTX into a friends PC.
I was astonished at the quality.
No bad points at all that i could see.
Good Points:
Excellent FPS
Great Value
Low Heat

If i had the time again, i would much rather go for the single 260GTX

[Hicks12]

but blitzen a dual card setup would beat the 260 and ofc there will be heat, newer 4870's with custom coolers( vapour x etc) are better than the 260's most of the time and possibly use less power. I bet the 260 was expensive at the time really.

It depends on your needs and price, physx is a bunch of marketing crap from Nvidia as you dont need to let the bottleneck of the system take even more load, it is only good if your cpu is utter junk(like pentium 4 ) however it is good if you want to boast about synthetic benchmarks.

Both cards will perform great especially at most resolutions up to 1900, you can get a gtx260 for £110 or a 1gb 4870 for £100.

[holy god of nil]

I would look at a sapphire 4870 vapor-x, a cheap 4890 if you want the extra performance or a cheap 260. This obviously all depends on what to you is the sweetspot of performance vs price vs heat/noise

Personally I'm currently considering selling my xfx 4870 to replace with a vapor-x or a 260 (although this is because I am tempted by the side power connectors as I have a small case) if this gives you any indication, stock 4870's are hot and loud.

[Goldfish92]

Well... settled for a 512MB XFX HD 4870 XXX at £101... should just fit in my SG04 but will be interested in how it handles thermally and audably. It was too close to call so I decided on price.
I have no intentions of buying myself a 3D monitor anytime soon and will make do without PhysX i spose.

Thanks for the input