What would be the best card for my situation?

ryancheeseman

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I'm looking to spend somewhere between 2-300$USD will be ordering from newegg.

I'm torn... AMD/ATI or NVIDIA???

i want to be able to max out GTAIV and World of Warcraft... those are really the only games i play.

i do quite a bit of graphic design with photoshop cs5.5 and illistrator

i was thinking of a 560 ti 448 core but for what im going to do with it i most likely dont need that much power.

I guess im looking for suggestions based on others experience with newer discrete graphics cards.

i really dont know the benefits/differences between amd/ati and nvidia

This 6950 is unlockable to a 6970 and seems like it might be a better value

but i jsut dont know......
 
GTAIV is a very poorly ported game.You likely won't see any difference in performance with a upgrade.WoW doesn't take much to max out.With a 6850 you should be able to play on Ultra depending on your CPU.Honestly you really don't need to spend that much if all you play are those games.

What are your full system specs?(CPU,RAM.etc.)

What is the make/model of your PSU?
 

bucknutty

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I would go 6850 or 6870. That would give you plenty of bang for the buck.

Unlocking the 6950 to a 6970 is not as easy as just flashing the bios. Many times a shader bank on a 6970 is defective so they disable it to make it a 6950. Unlocking it will sometimes lead to a good card but will often lead to an unstable card. Also keep in mind only the refrence boards can attempt the unlock. Those are not as widely avalable.
 

dotaloc

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Anyone know if AMD plays nice with Adobe? I thought I read that Nvidia cards were utilized by newer PS, but AMD cards weren't? Otherwise, as long as you are getting competitively priced cards...the brand shouldn't matter too much.

Depending on your setup and intended resolution, you can probably spend less or at least the lower end of your range as others have pointed out.
 

sardonicjester

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I use Photoshop, 3DS Max, Maya, and CryENGINE 3 with my 6870. For me, I don't notice any issues. Everything runs smooth and handles 3D rendering pretty damn good.
 

vitornob

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I think Nvidia cards have some optimizations with parallel functions in Adobe softwares. The optimizations go through CUDA programming. (look at google about it, go for Adobe + CUDA + Tomshardware)

I don't think it's a good idea to stick with GTX 560 Ti-448. Go with the GTX 560 Ti. It'll be easier to SLI in the future IF you want in the future.
 
this page has a list of nvidia cards for adobe mercury engine:
http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/tech-specs.html
this one might help a bit:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/adobe-cs5-cuda-64-bit,2770-3.html
there should be ways to make non certified cards work with mercury engine. use google.
both gta 4 and wow are a bit cpu bound - benefit from strong cpus e.g. quad core cpus over 3 ghz clockspeed. a 6850 or 6870 or gtx 560 should be enough for playing those games. depends on your full specs.