Get an nVidia GTX 260 or ATi Radeon HD 4870?

Alright I am going to buy a graphic card in the next day or two and I have narrowed it down to these two. Which one would give me more bang for the buck (they are priced nearly the same) and if I get either one which manufacturer should I buy?

Thank you.

Alright I am about to buy it now, can anyone help me?

A few things I forgot in the last post is that I will be playing games.

260 !

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..

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.

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.)

ahem, guy with the weird, numbered name. name 5 popular games that use direct X 10.1

God of war can u plz keep ur e peen comments or provide us with some links. Venom the guys right dx10.1 is not fully here yet but its on its way.

the 260 is an ok card but do some research first, not just the five games nvidia told websites to test
http://legionhardware.com/document.php?id=792

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

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

well Ive never been a sucker when it comes to marketing.
but i do understand that its getting harder to tell the wheat from the chaff

whats that supposed to mean, the 260 216 is better than the 4870 but its not better than the 4870 1gig, in the uk its cheaper, toss in dx10.1 and we have a winner

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

Meant 5 games.

when you find a website reviewing more games than they five, post that

when dx11 comes out it will matter to every one with a dx10.1 card, we will be using all the feachers of our dx10.1 card, and all the ones that got the 260/280 will be missing out

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.

The cards perform about the same a few frames difference here and there but if you like AA x4 and higher ati is your but it all comes down to the price.

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....

War of god really stop opening your wallet and open your mind .

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

Can anyone here name the differences between DX11 and DX10.1? From what I know, DX11 is MUCH closer to 10.1 then 10.

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.