Radeon HD 6870 1GB vs. GeForce GTX 550 Ti (Fermi) 2GB

[seoguru22]

I'm shopping for a new graphics card. I'm only looking to play SW:TOR at max settings and FPS.

I know the 6870 card is two levels above the 550 Ti from this table:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107-7.html

However, the 6870 has only 1GB and the 550 has 2GB for the exact same price.

I wonder, will the 550 actually give me better performance since it has more memory?

Radeon HD 6870 1GB

GeForce GTX 550 Ti (Fermi) 2GB

I will be upgrading my ram, cpu and motherboard over the next few months, but I want to buy a great mid-level card that will last me a while 1st.

Thanks!!!

 

[antonisrsx]

6870 is better... most of games dont need more than 1 gb but even some games need i think 6870 is still better..

 

[esrever]

6870 is like 2x better than the 550 ti.

I can't believe how much they rip people off with that...

you also don't ever need 2 gb of memory with a 550 ti.

 

[DM186]

^+1
Tell me about it evey time I try to tell people about the 550 ti it's like they don't believe me. I have two GTX 550 Ti's 1gb that are OC'ed and In SLI. In BF3 On low everything I only get 20 to 25 frps and after playing for a while it gets a stutter untill I cool them down.

In my opinion these were the worst 5xx series cards the Nvidia ever put out. Go with the 6870's you will be much more pleased with what they will do. Now the 2gb of Vram is only good for resolution over 1920 x 1200 or if you are going to run more than one monitor.

Now some where down the line you might want to do that but not on the 550's. Also some games out now and some coming out the extra Vram will come in handy. You might want to look into that a little bit more.

 

[iam2thecrowe]

6870 is like 2x better than the 550 ti.

I can't believe how much they rip people off with that...

you also don't ever need 2 gb of memory with a 550 ti.

^+1. More memory doesnt make cards faster, it just allows them to store larger/more textures. But if your cranking details/draw distance/textures up to fill up more than 1gb vram, the 550ti wont be able to process all that fast enough anyway and still give you low fps. so 2gb ram is a total waste on a low-mid range gfx card. There isnt a game out today that requires more than 512mb vram to run, and 1gb will normally run most games maxxed out unless your running greater than 1080p resolution, which, like i said, the 550ti is too slow for anyway.

 

[refillable]

550ti is probably the worst GTX 500 series and should be avoided like others say, and 2GB memory won't benefit when you are running 1080p at single. Definitely get 6870!

 

[seoguru22]

Thanks guys, glad I didnt make that mistake! Going with the 6870 for sure.

 

[seoguru22]

Best answer selected by seoguru22.

 

[DM186]

you are very welcome and good luck to you