New graphics card $250-$300

[shizam]

I'm looking at upgrading my 5850 to a new card and in looking through Newegg it looks like it comes down to a GTX 570, an OC GTX 560, a 7850 or 6950 and I don't care if its ATI or AMD, whichever is better and this will mostly be used for Diablo III and Skyrim.

Part of my problem in looking at the GTX 560 and 570 is how do I tell which one is better, am I just looking at the CoreClock and Stream Processors to make the decision?

Oh BTW, this will be powering a 30" monitor at 2650x1600.

Thanks,
Sam

 

[alvine]

ati and amd is the same thing now i think you meant amd or nvidia lol
i would go for the 7850 because the gtx 5xx are the old nvidia cards that use to compete with amd 6xxx cards

this gen currently is gtx 6xx (gtx 680 from nvidia so far, soon we will see a gtx 690 that compete with the 7xxx series from amd)

 

[borisof007]

usually the higher the number, the better the card (some minor exceptions on some of the AMD series cards).

The 570 is better than a 560. However a 560 ti 448 core is about the same as a 570, and if you OC it just a tid bit, it pretty much is the same.

The things you want to look at when comparing video cards are:

1. Price
2. Core clock
3. Amount of cores/stream processors (when comparing one brand to itself, e.g. nvidia to nvidia)
4. Memory clock
5. Ports available
6. Power draw
7. Power connector requirements
8. Size
9. Noise (if you care about that sorta stuff)
10. Heat dissipation
11. Performance reviews/Consumer reviews (I get my performance reviews and FPS comparisons off of Guru3d.com, sorry Toms!)

Looking at your budget of 250-300, you're in the market for a 560ti 448 core, a 570, or a 7850. A 6950 isn't worth the money, 7850 costs the same, has better features, and is more future proof.

A 7870 is only slightly out of budget, coming in at about $330 (before taxes of course).

You can see performance reviews for all of those cards here:

http://guru3d.com/article/amd-radeon-hd-7850-and-7870-review/1

Their 7850/7870 review includes results from a lot of different cards as well so you can see how these measure up in terms of power consumption, noise, FPS in multiple popular titles, overclockability, etc.

Hope this helps!

 

[Rockdpm]

7850>570>6950>560

 

[maxinexus]

Powering 30" requires a lot of GPU power I run 2 6950@6970 at 2560x1600 and I got 90ish FPS all high in D3 so assuming that one 6970 will do about half so 45 FPS ...6950 will do probably 40ish...so since you are running 30" I would recommend at least 7850 or 7870 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131467 $337.56

$40 above budget is not that bad...that is one week of home made lunches instead of takeouts

 

[swifty_morgan]

7850 minimum. I wouldn't touch any of the old nvidia cards and I wouldn't buy a card with less than 2gigs of vram. Perhaps holding off until nvidia releases their next batch of consumer friendly priced cards will yield something of interest.

 

[shizam]

Wow I'm glad I asked you guys! I had kind of settled on a OC GTX 650 based on price and numbers and I didn't really know where the next threshold was in terms of price/performance. I don't mind going $30 or $40 over at all especially if it comes with a significant performance bump for moving up a tier.

Looks like I'll wait till a week before D3 ships and if nothing better is available jump on a 7870, now to take a good hard look at my Intel Q6700...

Thanks!

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Here's how the 570 / 6950 / 560 Ti stack up

Guru3D (2011) 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:

$ 220.00 6950 (479/751) $ 0.46 - $ 0.59
$ 240.00 6950 Frozr OC (484/759) $ 0.50 - $ 0.63
$ 200.00 560 Ti (455/792) $ 0.44 - $ 0.51
$ 210.00 560 Ti - 900 Mhz (495/862) $ 0.42 - $ 0.49
$ 310.00 570 (524/873) $ 0.59 - $ 0.71

Looking at last year's testing it's quite obvious that, on a cost per frame basis in single card configuration, the factory OC'd 560 Ti is the best bang for the buck, followed by the 560 Ti and the 6950 in 3rd. The 570 wins the fps title but at a significant increase in cost.

In SLI / CF, the factory OC'd 560 Ti edges out the 560 Ti again for the cost per frame title and the 6950 finishes a distant 3rd. However, just 11 fps separate the 900 Mhz 560 Ti and the top performing 570.

The 7850 was tested using the Guru3D 2012 suite which has only 5 games in common with the 2011 suite (COD-MW, Bad Company 2, Far Cry 2, Metro 2033, Dawn of Discovery). Using just those 5, here the 7850 (360 fps) finishes right in between the 900 Mhz 560 Ti (372 fps) and the 560 Ti (342 fps). The 570 got 390 fps. On a cost per frame basis they finished as follows:

900Mhz 560 Ti - $ 0.56
560 Ti - $ 0.58
7850 - $ 0.72
570 - $ 0.79

Prices are based upon lowest card price on newegg from a *major* vendor.

I didn't include the 560-448 above because it's simply a 570 with one "broken" (or disabled) SM. here's the "stats" for the 2011 game test suite ... It beats the 900Mhz 560 Ti by 6 fps in singe card configuration and loses to it by 27 fps . My major concern tho is, since it is a limited production run, how many will be around when ya wanna add a 2nd one in SLI ?

$ 270.00 560-448 (501/835) $ 0.54 - $ 0.65

Personally, I find this time of year a very difficult one to choose GFX cards.... the last generation cards are proven performer and we know what to expect of them. The newer cards have issues, drivers are still maturing, we're at "Revision A" hardware (remember last year's early 570's ) and we know the beefed up "non reference" designs are just weeks away.

I'd sit on ya 5870 for another 6-8 weeks and see what the keplers that pop on may 12 have to offer. By then AMD will surely resolve remaining driver / CF issues and we should be well into Revision B or even C hardware....with quite a few hot non reference designs available from AMD.

The 560 series was unusually successful, outselling it's nearest AMD competitor 3:1. The trick will be not for it to compete with its successor. This is what hit Steam servers in February

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 ----- 10.25%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 ----- 4.37%
ATI Radeon HD 6950 ----- 3.83%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 ----- 3.76%
ATI Radeon HD 6970 ----- 1.85%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 ----- 3.02%
ATI Radeon HD 6870 ----- 1.37%

Methinks though nVidia is gonna have to snip production of the 560 Ti to spur the 650 / 660 cards. A card that overclocks 30% above reference speeds, if still available when the new card breaks, is highly likely to put a crimp on either the price or the sales of it successor.