Best 3D card for £250-£300?

[Terbinator]

i would of thought the only real choice for a 3D set-up was GTX 460 SLi or a GTX 470/80.

[Pob255]

intresting, if thoes numbers are correct then 6870 vs 5850, they've dropped the number of streams and memory bandwidth (low speed maybe?) but upped the clock speed slightly.
If it performs around the same and better with tessellation then it does raise some questions as to the weak points of the 5850 and graphics cards in general.
namely the point where fewer faster streans are better than more slower streams.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The slide has a typo as the memory bandwidth for the HD6870 is actually higher than the HD5850:

http://www.amd.com/uk/products/deskt...verview.aspx#2

The architecture has been slightly altered when compared to the HD5850.

[malice19]

Realize that it will take a bit longer for the 5870 to come down in price, (thinking Mid Nov / Dec) i then found this article and am i right in thinking that bang for buck that the 470 now @ £200 mark is a better buy? As 5870 is still round the £270-£300 mark?

http://www.overclock.net/nvidia/7155...vs-nvidia.html

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The HD6950 will probably be between £250 to £300 so I would wait until it is released in the next few weeks.

[Terbinator]

Realize that it will take a bit longer for the 5870 to come down in price, (thinking Mid Nov / Dec) i then found this article and am i right in thinking that bang for buck that the 470 now @ £200 mark is a better buy? As 5870 is still round the £270-£300 mark?

http://www.overclock.net/nvidia/7155...vs-nvidia.html

That article is quite old, there have been plenty of driver releases since then just in case you hadn't noticed

[malice19]

That article is quite old, there have been plenty of driver releases since then just in case you hadn't noticed

Yeah did notice that after i posted
Just been thinking with Christmas coming up I don't really want to blow £300.
So that's why i was considering the 470 as its now £200.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Yeah did notice that after i posted
Just been thinking with Christmas coming up I don't really want to blow £300.
So that's why i was considering the 470 as its now £200.

The GTX470 can be had for around £190:

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/p...OV-GTX470.html

http://www.dabs.com/products/asus-ge...product+search

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/1280m...-dvi-mini-hdmi

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...odid=GX-135-OK

[malice19]

The GTX470 can be had for around £190:

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/p...OV-GTX470.html

http://www.dabs.com/products/asus-ge...product+search

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/1280m...-dvi-mini-hdmi

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...odid=GX-135-OK

Cheers for the links... Im still not too much in a hurry to upgrade yet but do you thinks its work waiting for the 5870 to drop in price? As am i right in thinking the 470 is in-between the 5850 and the 5870 so might hold out a bit long for the 5870?

[malice19]

Cheers for the links... Im still not too much in a hurry to upgrade yet but do you thinks its work waiting for the 5870 to drop in price? As am i right in thinking the 470 is in-between the 5850 and the 5870 so might hold out a bit long for the 5870?

http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=27831
Now a good time to purchase? Or do you think it will drop more in the new year when the next gen cards come out?
Cheers

[scaryjim]

Personally, I'd wait for the 6970 / 6950 to come out, since they're due tomorrow

Then watch the prices on those and the GTX570, as they should all be in or around your original £250 - £300 price range. And depending on performance, they might push the general price of the 5870 down so you'd have more choice if you went for the older card...

[malice19]

Personally, I'd wait for the 6970 / 6950 to come out, since they're due tomorrow

Then watch the prices on those and the GTX570, as they should all be in or around your original £250 - £300 price range. And depending on performance, they might push the general price of the 5870 down so you'd have more choice if you went for the older card...

Oh right, cheers mate did not realize that they were coming out tomorrow already.
Cool will wait and see then.

Thanks

[Lustral]

im in the market for a new gpu , but im waiting to see what the 6970 are like

[malice19]

Personally, I'd wait for the 6970 / 6950 to come out, since they're due tomorrow

Then watch the prices on those and the GTX570, as they should all be in or around your original £250 - £300 price range. And depending on performance, they might push the general price of the 5870 down so you'd have more choice if you went for the older card...

Still don't quite get it though,i take it its not all about how many cores it has as the
6950 has 1408Cores
6970 has 1536 Cores
but the older
5870 has 1600 Cores


????

[scaryjim]

New core layout: the 5870 (in fact all ATI / AMD cards between the 2900 and the 6870) used a 4+1 shader layout, where they had 4 simple shaders and one complex shader in a cluster, then a number of clusters tied together to make a single graphics engine - recently they used 16 clusters per engine, to make 80 shaders per engine. As a result all recent AMD cards have had shaders in multiples of 80.

The 69x0 use 4 complex shaders in each cluster, but keeps the 16 clusters per engine, so cards based on this architecture must have shaders in multiples of 64. The biggest difference is that they've reduced the number of shaders per engine but kept the same number of texturing units, so the new cards have more texturing capability compared to the pure mathematical throughput. They also tweak the architecture each generation to make each shader more efficient.

Based on the Hexus review conclusions, the 6950 gives you better than 5870 performance at about the same street price and power draw.The 6970 gives about GTX570 performance (~ 15% higher than HD5870 using Hexus' normalised performance), but is quite a bit more expensive, so if you want to spend more than the £225 for the 6950 then the GTX570 appears to be the card to go for. However, if your motherboard supports SLI or CrossFire then £300 will get you either 2 GTX460s or 2 HD6850s that will provide GTX580 performance or better at most resolutions.

tl;dr? If you want to buy one card at £250 - £300 get a GTX570

[malice19]

New core layout: the 5870 (in fact all ATI / AMD cards between the 2900 and the 6870) used a 4+1 shader layout, where they had 4 simple shaders and one complex shader in a cluster, then a number of clusters tied together to make a single graphics engine - recently they used 16 clusters per engine, to make 80 shaders per engine. As a result all recent AMD cards have had shaders in multiples of 80.

The 69x0 use 4 complex shaders in each cluster, but keeps the 16 clusters per engine, so cards based on this architecture must have shaders in multiples of 64. The biggest difference is that they've reduced the number of shaders per engine but kept the same number of texturing units, so the new cards have more texturing capability compared to the pure mathematical throughput. They also tweak the architecture each generation to make each shader more efficient.

Based on the Hexus review conclusions, the 6950 gives you better than 5870 performance at about the same street price and power draw.The 6970 gives about GTX570 performance (~ 15% higher than HD5870 using Hexus' normalised performance), but is quite a bit more expensive, so if you want to spend more than the £225 for the 6950 then the GTX570 appears to be the card to go for. However, if your motherboard supports SLI or CrossFire then £300 will get you either 2 GTX460s or 2 HD6850s that will provide GTX580 performance or better at most resolutions.

tl;dr? If you want to buy one card at £250 - £300 get a GTX570

TOP MAN! Thanks for making it Cristal Clear
Cheers for your time.