Search
Sign in with
Sign up | Sign in

Get an nVidia GTX 260 or ATi Radeon HD 4870?

Last response: in Graphics & Displays
Share

Get an nVidia GTX 260 or ATi 4870?

Total: 81 votes (30 blank votes)

  • nVidia GTX 260
  • 40 %
  • ATi Radeon HD 4870
  • 61 %
Register or log in to remove
Related ressources
Ask the community

260 for higher oc'ability, lower price and physX. 4870 if you want to crossfire later...

but wtf how many 4870vs260 threads to we need >< doubt this will be the last though..

go for the BFG or EVGA GTX260-216. It performs better, consumes less power, it's more silent, has more overclockability, has PhysX, better drivers. Without a doubt go for 260.

well, it all depends... i mean instead of getting a new graphics card later on, you could just CF it with the 4870 which would be better than selling the 260 or whatever... all depends either way.

Just get XFX GTX 260 xxx edition. It has 192 cores, but its faster than all the others GTX 260 even wit 216 cores. Think if you overclock her more!! I have this card from July and i am very very VERY satisfied! Specs very close to GTX 280.

In Crysis at 1680X1050, very high, 8X AA i get 40,3 fps!!
My cpu is E6850 and 4 GB of Ram.
Graphics card Master

And he should be wrong as well. The 216 is identical as the 192. They share the same clock speeds for all three things. The only difference is the 216 has more SPs enabled. This means clock for clock, the 216 should be faster. All one would have to do to match his speed, is simply slightly overclock their 216. They wouldn't even need to overclock as high as his, as they have more SP.

I'm also laughing at everyone pushing for the GTX. So far we have claims of it "performs better, consumes less power, it's more silent, has more overclockability, has PhysX, better drivers." The performance of the original GTX260 was a bit lacking, hence the reason for the 216. The 192 performs a bit less then the 4870, the 216 a bit more. Honestly, I doubt you'd even be able to tell the difference. Fan speeds have been upgraded in the newer drivers for the 4870, so you can adjust how much heat/noise you want. Better drivers is a bit subjective as well, I'm not even sure what he means by that. (AMD puts out monthly drivers, how long was Big Bang II delayed?) The funniest part is how everyone forgets that 4870 is DX10.1, and the GTX260 is DX10 only. Not that important right now, but we already nearly had one DX10.1 game. We would have one game right now if Nvidia didn't squash it.

To top it off, we still haven't heard from the OP. We have no idea what games he plays, and at what resolution. Neither of these is the right card if he games on a 19" monitor at 1440x900. (or if he plays sim games and needs a CPU upgrade more then a GPU upgrade.)
Graphics card Master

The 13 at the end of his name must be his age...

Venom, I already said we would have one game, if it weren't for Nvidia. Obviously the answer to your question is none. Rangers, I'd be careful asking that question, as it can be done. I was simply trying to respond to the earlier statement that listed ALL THESE ways that the 260 is better then the 4870, yet fails to list any benefit to the 4870. If the GTX260 is all that, why did the GTX260 216 come out? Obviously its because the 4870 is a good card, and Nvidia had to come up with something to stay competitive. If you and other chose to ignore that, thats your problem.

We all know the gtx 280 is faster then a single 4870. Nvidia carefully disabled a few cores just to slightly beat the 4870 which was a dumb move now everyone will go for the gtx 260 216 which is half the price of a gtx280 for less then 15 percent performance difference.

rangers said:
name five games that the 260 wins over the 4870 1gig excluding the five that nvidia has optimized for


Dude... listen to yourself.

Anyway, the ati fanboys have been holding it in for so many years, that when ati actually became the better choice they went nutts. Now nvidia has slightly improved the 260 and lowered the price, 260 is the again the better choice. The fanboys are still partying and cannot come to terms with this fact, which is why you see posts like the one I quoted.

Dx 10.1 is pointless, simply because nvidia has made it so by not supporting it. You might want to be political and use that as a reason to buy ati, but I think most people just want the best card for the best price. And as we've seen with recent benchmarks this is currently the 260. Also, CUDA might be additional reason for nvidia.

yes nvidia came out with that card to stay competitive, that's why ati came out with the 4870 1gig and in the uk its cheaper that the 260, and except for five games, and nvidia's overblown drivers (bigbang) its still the better card

daskrabbe said:
Dude... listen to yourself.

Anyway, the ati fanboys have been holding it in for so many years, that when ati actually became the better choice they went nutts. Now nvidia has slightly improved the 260 and lowered the price, 260 is the again the better choice. The fanboys are still partying and cannot come to terms with this fact, which is why you see posts like the one I quoted.

Dx 10.1 is pointless, simply because nvidia has made it so by not supporting it. You might want to be political and use that as a reason to buy ati, but I think most people just want the best card for the best price. And as we've seen with recent benchmarks this is currently the 260. Also, CUDA might be additional reason for nvidia.


go to my link, and Ive all ready stated the 4870 1gig is cheaper than the 260 in the uk

I am sorry. I must have left my time machine at work. Didn't realize you were going to post that you are talking uk prices, after my post. I should naturally have seen that coming.
Anyway, I think the OP is American, so why drag uk prices into this?
I read your link and don't see your point. It is nvidia vs nvidia benchmarks... So because nvidia beats ati, and according to your link nvidia beats nvidia, you conclude that ati beats nvidia?

Also, you conclude the drivers are overblown because of its nickname? What do you mean by overblown?

Quote:
Last week when the Forceware 180.43 drivers trickled onto the scene quite a few people made a really big deal out of them, we suspect with a little prodding from Nvidia. Still it interested us enough to investigate, but as it turns out there is nothing all that interesting to be seen. When comparing the Forceware 180.43 driver to the four month old 177.79 version we found almost no difference in performance.

While not only the latest and greatest games were tested, we also made a point of testing with older games as well. FarCry 2 for example really surprised us, as we thought if any of the games were going to show a performance improvement it would be this one, after all the game itself told us the 177.79 drivers were outdated. Nevertheless, not a single frame extra was to be had when comparing the Forceware 180.43 drivers to the older 177.79 version.

Although we did try to mix the quality settings up, essentially we did only test at 1920x1200 with the GeForce GTX 260 (216SP) graphics card. There seemed little point in testing at lower resolutions since we were using the GeForce GTX 260. The reason for testing with the GeForce GTX 260 (216SP) was not really our own, as Nvidia has been aggressively pushing this product and all current comparisons are focusing on this graphics card.

So while we didn’t see any performance gains, and we half expected not to see any, this is not to say that there aren’t any. It is rare that driver updates deliver across the board gains, and the Forceware 180.43 certainly does not. What we wanted to investigate is the mysterious GeForce GTX 260 (216SP) performance gains, which are not that mysterious after all.

Soon we will compare the GeForce GTX 260 (216SP) to the Radeon HD 4870 (1GB) in not just the latest games such as Fallout 3 and Call of Duty 5, but also the older ones such as Company of Heroes and Unreal Tournament 3. Although the performance of these two graphics cards in the very latest games is probably the most important thing to consider, we need to find what has changed.

After all, not that long ago we were recommending the Radeon HD 4870 (1GB) over the GeForce GTX 260. Even the newer 216SP version did not seem to have enough gas to take on the Radeon. However over the past few months with a number of new highly anticipated games being released, this all seems to have changed. For now it seems that the GeForce GTX 260’s second lease on life is not driver related, and we suspect it has something more to do with the recently released games.



what i was getting at is, the new nvidia drivers are not much better than the last, and that makes the 4870 1gig still the better buy

rangers said:


what i was getting at is, the new nvidia drivers are not much better than the last, and that makes the 4870 1gig still the better buy



No... it just means the 260 is also better with the older drivers.

Looking at your link the new drivers do slightly worse in dead space. However in the driverheaven test of the new 260 with the new drivers, they show that the 260 beats the crap out of the 4870 1gig in dead space. The only conclusion I can make is that the 260 beats the crap out of the 4870 1gig regardless of the driver versions. If you can come to any other conclusion I will by very impressed.

daskrabbe said:
No... it just means the 260 is also better with the older drivers.

Looking at your link the new drivers do slightly worse in dead space. However in the driverheaven test of the new 260 with the new drivers, they show that the 260 beats the crap out of the 4870 1gig in dead space. The only conclusion I can make is that the 260 beats the crap out of the 4870 1gig regardless of the driver versions. If you can come to any other conclusion I will by very impressed.



you have fell hook line and sinker for nvidia's marketing, show me a list of games that are not on the nvidia top five that the 260 comes out on top

rangers said:
you have fell hook line and sinker for nvidia's marketing, show me a list of games that are not on the nvidia top five that the 260 comes out on top


No... I just followed your arguments to their logical conclusion.

I am not aware of any 'nvidia top five'. I've just looked at the benchmarks I could find and noticed that the new 260 is slightly edging out the 4870 1gb, while being at a lower priceout. Ending up being the better buy.

6 games here: http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=1414&pageID=5827
To be fair, far cry 2 is much closer on other benchmarks.
Add crysis, crysis warhead, the other call of duty game, oblivion... Now stop wasting my time with pointless challenges, and come up with some proof of your own claims.

you may not be aware of the nvidia top 5 but that link is the top 5 nvidia pushed web site's to review with there bigbang drivers, that's how its so hard to get a review of other games with the new drivers

I found this post so educational. I am picking a card between 260 and 4870 myself. LOL. From what I've read here, seems like there isn't a big difference. Both cards will do fine, right?

Xaxaxaxa Cyber_jockey you are so funny.....
just search for a review of XFX GTX 260 xxx edition and you will see that i am right.

I will tell you for the last time: SPECS VERY CLOSE TO GTX 280!!
search.....and open your mind....

....OR YOU COULD OC A NORMAL 260 YOURSELF AND NOT PAY FOR THE "XXX" LABEL: what is it nerd porn? :pfff: 

really, if you get either card, you will be happy. whats half a fps between friends...

randomly, i can hear a bug underneath the A key being squished every time i press it :D 

V3NOM said:
thanks ranger fanboi. so you're saying that dx11 will be compatible with dx 10.1 cards but not dx 10.0? i scream BS.



i never said that, when dx11 comes out, the ppl with ati cards will have the benefit of dx10.1 and all the ppl with the 260/280 will still be playing with dx10. and i for one think that's a big boon, that's because i don't change my card every year

So it seems when windows 7 comes out you gotta have ATI....im happy with that. I also heard that Nvidia are moving away from graphics and putting a lot of their efforts into developing a new line of processors.
Register or log in to remove
 
Ask the community
Read discussions in other Graphics & Displays categories
!