Best $200-225 videocard in this price point?

Ultima99 said:
With careful shopping
6870
470
or the upcoming 560
Click to expand...

Can't go wrong with the 6870 or the 470. The 470 does produce quite a lot of heat compared to the 6870 and does take more power to run. If you want the card now, grab the 6870. If you can wait a while, I'd wait to see what Nvidia does with the 560. If the performance-to-price value is anything like the 460 was, you may want to hold out for it.
 
The 6870's marginally faster than the GTX470, so is a better buy at the moment considering it uses barely more than half the power, runs about 30 degrees cooler and puts out almost no noise.

The GTX560 should be interesting, I expect it to sit right between the 6850 and 6870 for performance, pricewise I'm thinking $210-$220, which would also match up with AMD's pricing. It should also compare quite favourably for efficiency, using a similar amount of power to the 6870.
 
I would say the 470 beats the 6870 but by only a few percent. throw in the heat, power and noise and the 6870 wins out. Not to mention the 6870 supports the new AA formats which does wonders for video quality.

Haven't seen much about the 560.
 
I'd prefer a 6850 with decent third party heatsink, like the Gigabyte model. The 6870 is pretty loud for such a low power card.
 
470 clocked up to 800Mhz allowed for a higher framerate than 6870 @ 1000Mhz.

In addition to that, 470 ran w/ HBAO on and 2x Supersampling Transparency AA, whereas 6870 could not do this and keep 60 minimum framerate.

470 almost blowed up my power supply. :(
 
I disagree, I place the HD6870 above the GTX470 stock/stock. The 470 will overclock better and has a little bit more memory but for 70% more power, 20C higher load temps and about 25dB more noise, it hardly seems worth it, when they're about the same price.
Agreed on the 560 though, it's due in a fortnight's time, and could be a gamechanger.
 
Have you used both?

I've only had the 6870 for a few days. Seems ok, but there's some noticeable flicker and AA breakup that I'm not used to seeing on the 470. I'd like 470 OC performance from a 560 OC. That would be golden.
 
BC2's the only thing I've really played on the 6870. I had been playing Alien Swarm on the 470, but its a disaster with 6870. I'm pleased with the heat output and its pretty snappy. But the inconsistencies of image quality between games and feature breaking have always driven me nuts. Yes, Nvidia has them too, but it doesn't seem to happen as frequently.
 
We don't know for certain about the GTX560 yet. It's pretty much a given in this price point, but I'd never suggest someone buy one without researching the release benchmarks first.
 
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