ATI HD Radeon 5850 or Nvidia GeForce GTX 470

Physx is not something important you should count on, but an little add-on since not all games support it.

If you want a little more performance(very little) and do not care about the heat and power usage, and ofc the extra price over the HD 5850 then go for the gtx 470.

If you care about those up, go for the HD 5850.

ok but a few thing, one, i thought that the 5850 is a little better but what ever.... but two, But if the game has Physx, and i use a ATI card what would happen.

Like for example, there has been speculation that Half life 3 might use Physx for like water and the Wood breaking and stuff like that.

so what would happen if you run a game that uses Physx for that type of stuff?

PLEASE reply, thanks.

The GTX 470 benchmarks as being a little faster than the ATI 5850. With newer drivers and optimizations, that lead could spread a little bit.

PhysX is a proprietary thing (it only works with nVidia's products). So if you play a game with PhysX support using an ATI card, you just won't get to activate PhysX. Technically this means you may not get all the eye candy related to PhysX. But there really haven't been a whole lot of games that focused a whole lot on PhysX to be honest, and in those few cases it's definitely not a ground breaking deal.

so would you suggest the GTX 470 over the 5850?

and also, can 1 Nvidia card run both the graphics and Physx?

To be very honest, even I'm sort of on the fence with the GTX 470 and ATI 5850. Both offer great performance. I do honestly lean toward the GTX 470. It's not a huge leap performance wise from the ATI 5850, however does excel specifically with Tessellation (which hopefully will become more predominant over time). The thing to consider is that the GTX 470 is about $50 more than the ATI 5850 (if you match the cheapest of both models). And the 470 is louder, and runs hotters.

If you have a single nVidia card, you can indeed use PhysX, however it will slow down overall performance (lower FPS). The best way to use PhysX is either with an SLI setup (2 nVidia cards) or having two nVidia cards but not SLI. For instance, a GTX 470 for graphics, and an older GTX 260 for dedicated PhysX. This way one GPU does all the PhysX calculations, and the other just does graphical stuff. Ultimately, this is what nVidia would like to see you do (so you buy more stuff).

Quite frankly though, I wouldn't build my system around PhysX because it's not that big of a deal.

The ATI 5850 / 5870 vs GTX 470 war will really be won depending on whether Tessellation is coded into many games in the near future. If Tessellation takes off, nVidia will win the battle in the short term. If Tessellation really doesn't catch on for some reason, ATI will probably be the victor simply because their performance is fairly close, and they're cheaper, cooler, and more power efficient.

ok thanks!

Yes.

but so, could i run Physx with a GT 240 in non SLI with the GTX 470 on a single monitor?

That would be a tad ironic considering how ATi fans have been pushing tessellation since the 2xxx series tipped up with it's hardware tessellation chip, don't you think?

LOL Yeah. It's how the GPU / CPU game is played though. Someone gets a step ahead, touts that they're the leader. Then the other guy catches up, gets a step ahead, and claims victory. It's back and forth. Ultimately though, it's good competition and should generally help out the consumer (generally mind you).

Then again, sometimes you get stuff like PhysX, that becomes completely proprietary and really doesn't mean a whole lot. LOL

Although ATi also touted the using of a dedicated graphics gard as a PPU back in 2006 but then once their competitor beat them to the acquisition of Agiea things "changed".

I say go with the GTX 470 because of increased performance and PhysX compatibility giving you the edge over the 5850 in frames and eye candy. So if your playing a game with PhysX enabled you'll be able to use that but still acting like an ATI card in the process. Not to mention the most recent technology, cooling, and build technique for graphics cards. Although power consumption may be an issue if your PSU isn't high enough... Hope this helps! BTW what resolution will you be gaming on?

If you can find a 5850 with 299 free shipping get that. Otherwise gtx 470....I wanted a 5850 but only found it at 309+ and 7.88 shipping and it pissed me off so i got a 5870 for 389 free shipping  

but so can i use a GT 240 to run Physx well?

That's the recommended card by Nv, although EVGA think a GTX260 is better suited for the task.

Best answer selected by yogman.

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey