GTX 660 vs. HD 6950 vs. HD 7850?

[Shadow12347]

Hello!

I am looking into upgrading my HD 4890 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127439) to a better graphics card. I was looking around and I think I have narrowed it down to 3 cards that I like. I have always been a fan of ATI cards in the past, but after this card had some driver issues with battlefield 3, guild wars 2, and a few other games, I think I am willing to give NVIDIA a shot again. Here are the three cards I am looking at:

The GTX 660
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130826

The HD 6950
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150549

The HD 7850
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150608

The games I play mainly are Borderlands (maybe the second one soon ), League of Legends, MW3, Battlefield 3 and Guild Wars 2. Which graphics card do you think I should get? If you have other better suggestions as well, they would be appreciated, but I am looking for the best performance I can get for these games with this price range ($230ish).

 

[Deemo13]

If you get Borderlands 2, look at this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWFkDrKvBRU

The 6950 uses alot of power.

The 7850 is going to excel at higher resolutions.

 

[Ironslice]

The GTX 660 would be the best choice out of the three, especially since it's the EVGA Superclocked version, which should have around the same performance of an HD 7870. Not to mention that you can use PhysX on Borderlands 2 and Battlefield 3 also prefers nVidia cards over AMD cards.

 

[viridiancrystal]

I vote for the 7850. I just can't trust the 660 or 660ti with their heavy memory limitations. Also, the overclocking potential of the 7850 is immense.

 

[stant1rm]

I vote for the 7850. I just can't trust the 660 or 660ti with their heavy memory limitations. Also, the overclocking potential of the 7850 is immense.

You're still on this? Really? The bottleneck isn't really there on the GTX 660 (None ti). If you just look at almost all of the benchmarks out there, the GTX 660 runs right over the HD 7850 http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/660?vs=549&i=372.373.375.376.378.379.381.382.384.383.387.388.390.392.394.396.400.398.401.403.404.457.456.460.391.426.406.424.407.411.410.422.423.409.413.412.414.415.416.417.418.419.420.421 .

Also the GTX 660 is far faster in both Battlefield 3 and Borderlands 2.

 

[Deemo13]

I'd say you're about right.

 

[stant1rm]

I do my best.

 

[Shadow12347]

Wow so many replies so quickly :O. Well thank you all for the feedback. I kind of wanted to give nvidia another shot anyways since I never really had a "higher end" nvidia card before. It just seemed like the ATI cards would be better with the more streaming processors, faster core clocks, and etc. However, the fps is much better on the nvidia card so I think I will go for that one.

Thank you everyone for your responses!

 

[Shadow12347]

Best answer selected by Shadow12347.

 

[blazorthon]

You're still on this? Really? The bottleneck isn't really there on the GTX 660 (None ti). If you just look at almost all of the benchmarks out there, the GTX 660 runs right over the HD 7850 http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/660?vs=549&i=372.373.375.376.378.379.381.382.384.383.387.388.390.392.394.396.400.398.401.403.404.457.456.460.391.426.406.424.407.411.410.422.423.409.413.412.414.415.416.417.418.419.420.421 .

Also the GTX 660 is far faster in both Battlefield 3 and Borderlands 2.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-660-ti-memory-bandwidth-anti-aliasing,3283-13.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-670-review,3200.html

Heavy MSAA, tessellation, and a few other settings hammer the 660 and 660 Ti whereas the GCN cards have no such trouble. Anyone who wants serious graphics quality should either step up to a 670 or get an AMD card unless PhysX on the 192-bit Kepler cards is more important to you than AA, tessellation, and more. The 660 and 660 Ti also have very poor minimum frame rates.

 

[Shadow12347]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-660-ti-memory-bandwidth-anti-aliasing,3283-13.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-670-review,3200.html

http://media.bestofmicro.com/H/T/349265/original/Framerate 1920x1080 Percent.png

http://media.bestofmicro.com/U/P/336769/original/tessellation scaling.png

Heavy MSAA, tessellation, and a few other settings hammer the 660 and 660 Ti whereas the GCN cards have no such trouble. Anyone who wants serious graphics quality should either step up to a 670 or get an AMD card unless PhysX on the 192-bit Kepler cards is more important to you than AA, tessellation, and more. The 660 and 660 Ti also have very poor minimum frame rates.

Well even though those cards might be better, I would have to stay in the $230 dollar range, and that is pretty much a max. Those cards listed were mainly 3gb/4gb cards with the 2gb ones at the end. I can really only afford the 2gb ones, and so I think that between the ones I was looking at, the 660 would be the best. But thank you for this information. If I get enough money at some point to get one the higher ones, I will keep that in mind

 

[blazorthon]

Well even though those cards might be better, I would have to stay in the $230 dollar range, and that is pretty much a max. Those cards listed were mainly 3gb/4gb cards with the 2gb ones at the end. I can really only afford the 2gb ones, and so I think that between the ones I was looking at, the 660 would be the best. But thank you for this information. If I get enough money at some point to get one the higher ones, I will keep that in mind

A 7850 should fit in your price range (heck, some 7870s would fit in your budget) and would have similar efficiency to a 7870 (a 660 should be similar to the 660 Ti in those tests, but the 660's GPU has a good head-start on the 7850's Pitcairn Pro, so it takes at least 4x MSAA and some tessellation or better for the 7850 to catch the 660 unless you overclock it) and has incredible overclocking headroom, but I'm not trying to tell you to not buy what you want to buy, just making sure that you're aware of your options. Glad to help.

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey