Upgrading from HD4870, considering GTX 460

thanks for the quick response, my main reason for going with the GTX460 is because it's a Directx 11 card, and I found one cheap... the 4870 is only 10.1 (which Crysis 3 doesn't support)

...but as you said... when googling benchmarks for the 4870 vs gtx460 the performance is only marginally better ... ~14%

I doubt I could find a better card for 50$ to play Crysis 3 on, but maybe I'll just have to save some more

Well, if it's just to get DirectX 11, that is a pretty cheap way to go. A GTX650Ti isn't too pricey though, just $140-$150.
A good game will still be a good game, even on lowered settings; if the GTX460 has the performance you need, it certainly is the cheapest solution.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crysis_3

Save your money. "Upgrading" to a card two generations behind in order to meet minimum requirements for a game is not worth it.

Agreed what is your current budget? What resolution do you play at? And what settings would you like to play? Playing Crysis 3 I would aim for a 7870 or 660Ti to start if you want really good respectable frames.

$50 just to play isn't so bad, but if you can manage it, a significant upgrade as bigshootr8 suggests would make a huge difference in visual quality and frame rates.

If $50 isn't too much for you I would buy it for a few reasons:

I used to own a gtx460 before giving it to my friend, it overclocked extremely easily from stock 675 mhz to 920... a massive performance boost was seen as a result bringing it close to a gtx 470 in some games.

You can probably sell the 4870 for ~$30 pretty easily... hell if you were in toronto I'd pick it up for my second PC ...

EDIT: is it the 1gb or the 768 mb OR the SE version of the GTX 460?

I would only buy it if it is the standard 1gb GTX 460 (NON-SE which was the slowest I believe)

Also I forgot to mention, the gtx 460 is equivalent to the gtx 560 (the 560 is just running at a higher clock rate, which I can say with confidence can be achieved by every gtx 460 with slight overclocking...they had a massive OC potential)

Here is a comparison between a 4870 and a gtx 560 ...

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/543?vs=513

If you look at the benchmarks there is a fairly significant difference between the two...for only $50. In some cases the 4870 is unplayable and the 560 (a 460 OC to 810 mhz) is playable.

So again to reiterate, if $50 isnt too much for you, you can sell the 4870 for ~$30, and it is the 1gb version of the Gtx 460 then I would buy it personally.

Hey guys, sorry about disappearing, I was out of town enjoying the last bit of my 'reading week' .... although I tried to get my hands on the 460 before I left and got "kijiji'd" ... the guy totally flaked out.

since then, I've been looking at other video cards (mostly the ones you guys recommended) as well as comparing them to the crysis 3 benchmarks, and also the bit mining hardware comparison board.

....I recently started bitmining with my 4870 (for fun, I know it's not going to be very profitable anymore, with ASIC's and FPGA's becoming popular)... however I don't pay for electricity and it seems like a good way to recover some costs of the video card.

with the 4870 i was able to do ~90 MH/s ...in two days I got about 60 cents US, haha...


I'm quite interested in the 7870... I can find it for $229, and most people say it can do over 400MH/s...which should be good for at least $45 in bit coins a month... and I know the games are going to be much more impressive.


I'm planning to go pickup the 7870 now, thanks for all the advice everyone gave me!

Best answer selected by quartapound.

Thanks. Yeah, bitmining only makes sense on AMD cards. Maybe I should consider trying that again. Anyway, good luck and have fun.