6970 or best gpu

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tjosborne

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ok im new to pc gaming. im trying to build my first pc and was wondering if i should go with the radeon 6970 or what? will it be future proof for a year or two? will it run upcoming games such as witcher 2, skyrim, and rage on max everything and get at least 45 fps? im thinking about going with 2600k for cpu if you need to know. also i dont wana have to overclock for at least a year. and price range is around 350 to 400. ok thank you
 
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Depends on what you can afford. If you want the best for the highest settings, sometimes with three monitors, then you want a monster GTX 590 or Radeon 6990. Of course the 6990 sounds like an airplane and the 590 blows up. Even so that's overkill for most people. As far as single GPU cards you're looking at a Radeon 6970, GTX 580 or GTX 570.

The best bang for the buck is certainly a 6950 unlocked to a 6970, but you are taking the risk that it won't work and you end up bricking your 6950. There are guides to make custom BIOS images to basically have the 6970 resources at 6950 clocks, which is where you want to start. Other cards to consider are the GTX 560, 6950 1GB, and 6870. Just depends on what you want to spend.

dwarf10

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I would say it's a very good choice. although you can get 6950 for much cheaper and max out new games .... 60+fps.... you can just unlock the 6950 to 6970 which means you have the 6970 for the price of 6950. You only get two use 2 6 pin connectors also instead of 1x 8 pin and 1x 6 pin....

 
Guru3D uses the following games in their test suite, COD-MW, Bad Company 2, Dirt 2, Far Cry 2, Metro 2033, Dawn of Discovery, Crysis Warhead. Total fps (summing fps in each game @ 1920 x 1200) for the various options in parenthesis (single card / SL or CF) are tabulated below along with their cost in dollars per frame single card - CF or SLI:


$155.00 460-768 MB (314/592) $0.49 - $0.52
$155.00 6850 (371/634) $0.42 - $0.49
$190.00 6870 (434/701) $0.44 - $0.54
$250.00 6950 (479/751) $0.52 - $0.67
$285.00 6950 Frozr OC (484/759) $0.59 - $0.75
$240.00 560 Ti (455/792) $0.53 - $0.61
$335.00 6970 (526/825) $0.64 - $0.81
$240.00 560 Ti - 900 Mhz (495/862) $0.48 - $0.56
$335.00 570 (524/873) $0.64 - $0.77
$500.00 580 (616/953) $0.81 - $1.05
$725.00 6990 (762/903) $0.95 - $1.61
$700.00 590 (881/982) $0.79 - $1.43

Based upon the above, if getting and staying w/ a single card, the 6950 flash to 6970 is the way to go w/ single card ... if a 2nd card is in the plan, I'd do 560 Ti's (900 Mhz) ... last week two 560 Ti (900Mhz) wuda cost ya $430, but now lowest is $480.
 
Depends on what you can afford. If you want the best for the highest settings, sometimes with three monitors, then you want a monster GTX 590 or Radeon 6990. Of course the 6990 sounds like an airplane and the 590 blows up. Even so that's overkill for most people. As far as single GPU cards you're looking at a Radeon 6970, GTX 580 or GTX 570.

The best bang for the buck is certainly a 6950 unlocked to a 6970, but you are taking the risk that it won't work and you end up bricking your 6950. There are guides to make custom BIOS images to basically have the 6970 resources at 6950 clocks, which is where you want to start. Other cards to consider are the GTX 560, 6950 1GB, and 6870. Just depends on what you want to spend.
 
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