Choice between these two 6870s

The HIS one will be the better choice in my opinion. However the performance gain isn't large enough to warrant the upgrade in my opinion. http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/313?vs=290
I'd suggest saving a bit more and getting a 6950 or 7850. You could go SLI for your current card but you'd be prolonging an old card and adding the disadvantages of SLI/CF.
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/314?vs=290
Also you'd need a good PSU for SLI. what is your current PSU brand and watt?

XFX has a double lifetime warranty, meaning you can sell the card (once) and the warranty will transfer to the buyer.

I have an XFX 6870 that I'm pretty happy with. If I was going to buy in that range today I'd look at the 7000 series.

Only card in the range of 6850 and 6870 ($150-180) on the 7xxx series is the 7770 and it performs under the 6850 most of the time. The 7850 which is around $250 however is quite a jump in performance (6950-6970 performance without OCing), but it's out of their price range unless they don't mind spending/saving a bit more.

MSI HAWK anyone ?
Great Cooling and OCing Capabilities

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

Totally agree, be patient and save ... you will notice a nice bump in performance with a 7850. The 6870 is a good card, but not much better than what you have to warrant an upgrade in my opinion.

Agreed, http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/549?vs=510
The 7850 has A LOT of OC room and out performs the 6950 for the same price.

The 7850 gets my recommendation for an upgrade for the OP
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/549?vs=542
huge improvement over the 460 1GB and at a lower power consumption. Try to sell the 460 1GB to afford the 7850 if you can.

the HIS one is better but I also agree you should wait to upgrade to something better if you can.

Get another GTX460 or wait for 78XX or new nvidia cards.
-Bruce

I guess "upgrade" wasn't the best way of putting it...I have two PCs, one of which I'm transferring parts to as I'm upgrading my good one. The other one's specs are:

ASUS M4A89TD Pro USB3
Phenom II 955BE
4G GSkill DDR3 1333
GeForce 9600gt

So I'm basically replacing a 9600gt, as I'm going to put the 6870 into my better rig, then transfer my GTX460 into my older one...I'm trying to get two PCs ready for when Diablo 3 releases so my wife and I can play.

Thanks for looking out for me, though  

Omega, my PSU is a Corsair tx650, but I'm going to be getting another PSU along with the GPU, as my older PC's PSU can't support my GTX460...and along that train of thought, the XFX one has a handful of bundle deals on good PSUs. If the difference between the two cards is negligible, I'll probably go with the XFX so I can get a discount on the PSU, but if the HIS one is noticeably better, I don't mind spending an extra 15-20 bucks.

get the xfx one then but check the psus. Make sure they are decent.

The difference is pretty negligible/non-exsistent performance wise. I suggested the HIS because of the cooler, the XFX one will do fine and would be the better route like esrever said if they have a decent bundled PSU. You should check PSU's outside bundles as well as I've caught better PSU's for the same price as what the price would be with the bundle discount.

In that case I recommend this 6870 ===> Asus  


I have them in Xfire ...they run cool and quiet.  

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?Ite...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?Ite...

Those are the two combos that caught my eye, and both were 4 eggs, albeit with a fairly low amount of reviews. The Silencer PSU looks good, gets $20 knocked off with the bundle, and has a total of $35 in MIRs, so I'm leaning towards that one.

They are both overkill for the build IMO. are you planning on CF/SLI on either of the builds?
If you plan to CF/SLI then get the PPC silencer one, it's not a bad deal if you can get the MIR. However you could save some money if you don't plan to SLI/CF even while getting the HIS one if you look at some other PSU's not in the bundles.

...good point...no I'm not  

The only thing I'm considering upgrading at any point would be if they ever released an AM3+ CPU that impressed me, but that wouldn't warrant such a beefy power supply.

What wattage would be a safe bet for a 955BE/GTX460 and a 1100t/6870 build?

So something like this?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

It's the best-rated one in my price range that has a single +12v rail.

Pretty much what I was thinking, and yeah a single 12V rail is the way to go! ^_^

Get the 600watt, same price with rebate.  

Best answer selected by Inane_Asylum.

Thanks, everyone.  

No problem, glad to help