Any major difference to these video cards?

[livejamie]

Mine is in its last throes and I'm looking to replace

I have Amazon Prime so I was going to order from there.

I've made this short list:

GTX 480
http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-GeForce-GTX480-Graphics-015-P3-1480-KR/dp/B004EHWMP6/ref=sr_1_22?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1337119870&sr=1-22
$229.99

GTX 560 TI
http://www.amazon.com/GeForce-Express-Displayport-Graphics-ZT-50302-10M/dp/B004LX3MQQ/ref=sr_1_38?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1337120262&sr=1-38 $209.99

HD 6950
http://www.amazon.com/Sapphire-DL-DVI-I-SL-DVI-D-PCI-Express-100312-3L/dp/B005X64QAG/ref=sr_1_16?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1337120398&sr=1-16
$229.99

GTX 560
http://www.amazon.com/PNY-PCI-Express-Graphics-Output-VCGGTX560XPB/dp/B00519HJWW/ref=sr_1_22?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1337120453&sr=1-22
$179.97

HD 6870
http://www.amazon.com/HIS-Radeon-DisplayPort-Express-H687FN1GD/dp/B005JXACYC/ref=sr_1_22?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1337120549&sr=1-22
$169.99

I'm not sure what the major differences here, Do any of these cards particularly shine over one another? Anything to keep in mind when ordering? Should I stay away from any of these brands?

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[blazorthon]

The 480 is the fastest, but also the most power hungry. The 560 TI and 6950 are very close to each other and are right behind the 480. The 6870 and 560 are very close and are right behind the 560 TI and 6950.

All of them are older gen cards, and thus are very energy inefficient compared to similarly performing cards of the current generation. The 7850 would be about as fast as the 480, but it uses about half the power and has more VRAM. Get the 7850 if this is the performance range that you want a card from.

 

[xXmjzXx]

this is the first 2 the 480 is better in almost every way.
http://www.hwcompare.com/8867/geforce-gtx-480-vs-geforce-gtx-560-ti/

and the last to the hd 6970 is better
http://www.hwcompare.com/11005/geforce-gtx-560-vs-radeon-hd-6870/


and the 2 good ones
http://www.hwcompare.com/8758/geforce-gtx-480-vs-radeon-hd-6870/

so i would buy this

http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-GeForce-GTX480-Graphics-015-P3-1480-KR/dp/B004EHWMP6/ref=sr_1_22?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1337119870&sr=1-22&tag=vglnk-c1001-20

 

[blazorthon]

hwcompare.com shows you the specifications for cards, must cards don't have real world benchmarks done by them and those that don't, do not even have any benchmarks, just theoretical performance based on doing a little math.

hwcompare.com does not do good comparisons for gaming performance and their theoretical comparisons are not representative of real-world performance. Also, using TDP to measure power usage is wrong. For example, the Radeon 7950 has a 200w TDP and the GTX 680 has a 195w TDP, the 680 still uses more power when their real-world power usage is compared. Tom's proved this. Even the GTX 670, which has a 175w TDP, uses more power than the Radeon 7950, although only slightly.

 

[livejamie]

Wow, really amazing responses thank you.

If it matters, the board in my system now is a Biostar A780L3L
http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/mb/introduction.php?S_ID=495&tab=3

@blazorthon

With all due respect, as I'm not familiar with computer hardware: Why do I care how much power my card is using?

I can find a 7850 with 2 DVI ports for ~$230 so that's probably something I'd feel comfortable doing.

But everybody else in the thread seems to recommend the 480.

Thanks so much, I truly appreciate it- all of you.

 

[blazorthon]

The 480's huge power usage will actually make a sizable increase in your power bill, compared to the 7850. Yes, the difference is that big. The 7850 is also a little faster than the 480 and has more VRAM, so why not get it anyway? It will only take two to three months for the difference in the power bill to cover the difference in price anyway.

 

[xXmjzXx]

hwcompare.com shows you the specifications for cards, must cards don't have real world benchmarks done by them and those that don't, do not even have any benchmarks, just theoretical performance based on doing a little math.

hwcompare.com does not do good comparisons for gaming performance and their theoretical comparisons are not representative of real-world performance. Also, using TDP to measure power usage is wrong. For example, the Radeon 7950 has a 200w TDP and the GTX 680 has a 195w TDP, the 680 still uses more power when their real-world power usage is compared. Tom's proved this. Even the GTX 670, which has a 175w TDP, uses more power than the Radeon 7950, although only slightly.

lol oh really go tell someone else that cause i don't wanna here your bull$hit tell me a better site to compare anything and no one was comparing gaming performance dip just seeing which one is better.....

 

[livejamie]

The 480's huge power usage will actually make a sizable increase in your power bill, compared to the 7850. Yes, the difference is that big. The 7850 is also a little faster than the 480 and has more VRAM, so why not get it anyway? It will only take two to four months for the difference in the power bill to cover the difference in price anyway.

Cool, thanks so much for your answers.

Is there anything better than the 7850 in the <$300 range, or is that my best bet?

Also why is it hard to find a 2x DVI port AMD card? Do most people running dual monitors just get an HDMI -> DVI converter? Will I even notice?

 

[blazorthon]

lol oh really go tell someone else that cause i don't wanna here your bull$hit tell me a better site to compare anything and no one was comparing gaming performance dip just seeing which one is better.....

My bullshit info is right on their site, on every page of their site.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Happy with yourself there? The best sites to compare different cards would be looking through Tom's benchmarks or Anand's benchmarks. A great example of how their benchmarks don't help much would be this one

http://www.hwcompare.com/12205/radeon-hd-5970-vs-radeon-hd-7870/

That would make you think that the 5970 is far faster than the 7870, when the two cards are actually equals in gaming performance. In fact, the 7870 2GB beats the 5970 2GB because the 5970 has half the VRAM per GPU and 1GB of VRAM per GPU is not enough for 1080p in some games at very high settings and AA, let alone in higher resolutions and/or with CF. The more expensive 5970 4GB and the 7870 are nearly identical in performance even more because they both have 2GB of VRAM per GPU.

 

[blazorthon]

Cool, thanks so much for your answers.

Is there anything better than the 7850 in the <$300 range, or is that my best bet?

Also why is it hard to find a 2x DVI port AMD card? Do most people running dual monitors just get an HDMI -> DVI converter? Will I even notice?

Unlike Displayport or VGA to HDMI/DVI-D connectors, HDMI and DVI-D use the same signalling, so there is no problem when you use an HDMI to DVI-D adapter. In fact, some cables have both HDMI and DVI-D connectors because of this. DVI has the pins arranged differently and HDMI can carry audio in addition to video, whereas DVI can only carry video data. Two DVI ports really aren't important, except some older HDMI ports couln't handle as high of a bit rate as DVI, so DVI was often used more than once. The new HDMI ports remedy this, so their's little reason to not use HDMI instead of DVI because the HDMI ports then have full compatibility with DVI (and no penalty for adapters), have audio, and they are smaller ports.

The 7850 is the best buy in it's price range.

 

[livejamie]

Best answer selected by livejamie.