How do you compare graphics cards?

[toorisky]

Hello,
Forgive my lack of knowledge but is there a standard benchmark to compare graphics cards.some cards seem to have impressive numbers but in actuallity are slower than some cards which have lower numbers. so how doi find out real performance for the sake of comparison?

 

[Supernova1138]

Hello,
Forgive my lack of knowledge but is there a standard benchmark to compare graphics cards.some cards seem to have impressive numbers but in actuallity are slower than some cards which have lower numbers. so how doi find out real performance for the sake of comparison?

Synthetic benchmark scores sometimes aren't the greatest indicator of real world performance. Performance will heavily depend on the application used. Some applications favour nvidia's architecture and will run a lot faster on an nvidia card compared to the equivalent ATI card, eg. HAWX 2. Other applications may favour ATI's architecture and will run better on one of their cards compared to the equivalent nvidia eg. Lost Planet II.

To compare real world performance it is usually best to look at benchmarks from a variety of different games. While some games may favour ATI or nvidia, most games will give similar performance scores to similar cards. From that you can determine how a card stacks up against others, eg. The 6870 and 5850 and GTX 560 will usually produce very similar frame rates on most titles, while faster cards like the GTX 560Ti or 6950 would pull ahead, and slower cards like the GTX 460 768mb and the 5770 would run slower than the 6870.

 

[mactronix]

Hello,
Forgive my lack of knowledge but is there a standard benchmark to compare graphics cards.some cards seem to have impressive numbers but in actuallity are slower than some cards which have lower numbers. so how doi find out real performance for the sake of comparison?

What is it you are looking for exactly do you just want to know or are you looking at buying a new card and want to know where the performance of the old one stacks up against the new cards ?

Either way we can provide links to hardware sites if you like. Here is a starter for 10.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/

Mactronix

 

[jyjjy]

This are both fairly accurate;
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-graphics-card-game-performance-radeon-hd-6670,2935-7.html
http://www.overclock.net/graphics-cards-general/502403-graphics-card-ranking-5th-time-last.html
Or for more specific numbers use the charts in the reviews from the link Mactronix pasted.

 

[toorisky]

Thanks guys, those rankings and side by side comparisons were really helpful, think i'm gonna plump for the MSI GeForce GTX 570 Twin Frozr II/OC 1280MB GDDR5 PCIe
Seems a good buy for the money and a significant step up from my (still very capable)
285 GTX