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4890 XXX vs 6950

D

deadman_uk

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jun 30, 2003
Messages
2,036
I own an XFX Radeon HD4890 XXX video card and game at 1920x1200 resolution. I am looking now to upgrade my card and was thinking of the XFX 6950 (it's £50 cheaper than the 6970). Is this a wise move? considering the soon to be VAT increase in 2011? Will my PSU be man enough to run this card? How large is this card compared to the 4890? and how hot does it run?

Opinions are welcome
 
If your PSU can run a 4890 then you'll have no problems running a 6950. The card is around 10.5 inches long, with 2 PCI-E connectors on the side.

My 6950s are stacked right on top of each other, so heat is a concern. The top/bottom cards idle 75C/51 and load at 96/80. If you're going Crossfire you WILL want to space them. I'm looking for a new mobo where there is more space between the PCI-Express ports, but right now options are limited for us Micro ATX owners. I'm waiting for Sandy bridge.

At idle the cards are very quiet. I can't hear them over my Noctua case fans, and those are already really quiet. The fans do start getting quite audible at around 35% fan speed. At 45% it's too loud for me and I have to use headphones. At 100% it's even louder than my vacuum.

As for performance the 5870 wasn't double the 4870, and while the 6950 is generally 10-15% faster than a 5870 (and more like another 40-50% when using higher AA/Tesselation) the 6950 doesn't double the 4890. Comparing a friend's stock 4890 to mine in the same games we play it is much, much smoother with the 6950.
 
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Thanks rUmX, I appreciate your reply,

I have no interesting running in Crossfire, just the 1 card will do. The heat is a concern but the size is more so. My 4890 only just fits in my case, I will have to measure it and see how it compares to the 10.5 inches long 6950. I'm guessing from what you say, the 6950 is around 60% faster than my 4890?
 
deadman_uk said:
I'm guessing from what you say, the 6950 is around 60% faster than my 4890?
Click to expand...

ATI Radeon HD 4890 - 850MHz/3800MHz
vs
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 - 700MHz/1401MHz/3696MHz

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/175?vs=158

Looking at benchmarks the 6950 is slightly slower than a 480. Maybe shave 5% off those 480 numbers. /shrug

But I'm talking real world gaming and not FPS numbers. The 6950 will be a very good upgrade.
 
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