[Solved] Gtx 260 or 4870

No idea what games you play, no idea what your current hardware is. Impossible to give any realistic recommendation.

PhysX is a nice way of taking what can be done on the CPU and making it proprietary so NVIDIA can have another selling point for their cards. It doesn't serve much purpose other than making a few smoke effects look prettier in some games (it can do more, but the real-world implementation is usually basic). The games need to be PhysX-enabled for it to even work, of course.

Wait if you want, but nobody knows how long you'll be waiting. NVIDIA says Christmas. All the signs point to Q1 2010 at the earliest. But it's still unknown.

Get the one which is cheaper...
Both perform nearly the same.

A 5850 is worth considering too, if you have the money.

so what about physx is it worth the extra dollars and also i would have to buy a new psu for gtx 260

no man i don't have over 260$.
i presently own a 9600gt and a 20.5 " monitor (1600*900 resolution) so should i just upgrade to 4850 for now and buy dx11 cards later

It doesn't make a significant difference. If moving papers will make the game more fun then by all means go for PhysX.

PhysX, when used properly, can look really nice (check out Mirrors Edge and Batman Arkhum Asylum physX demo's on youtube) BUT there are only a handful of games that support it AND you will take a hit on your FPS to use it.

DirectX 10.1 also is only used in a handful of games and will give you roughly a 15-20% increase in FPS when using DX10.1 hardware (hd4870).

AMD/ATIs solution also gives better anti Aliasing performance....when using 4xAA the performance hit is really quite small. Nvidia's doesn't do so well compared.

So really it depends what you want it for.

Nvidia = Slightly better performance in non-PhysX games over ATI + benefit of using PhysX in supported titles

ATi = Almost free 4xAA + DX10.1 support but no support for PhysX.


To be quite honest unless you really like the physX idea the HD4870 is by far the best buy. Cheaper also.