Confused about video cards

X

Xebix

Gawd
Joined
Jun 29, 2001
Messages
905
My girlfriend's video card went out and I put my nvidia GT220 in it. I'm looking for a card to replace it with so I can have mine back. I was looking at the Radeon 5670, but I wasn't sure which would be better. The specs look pretty much the same to me except one has 512MB of RAM and the other has 1GB. The 512GB card is DDR5 while the 1GB card is DDR3. She mostly plays World of Warcraft, The Sims3, and she just got the new Alice game. All of these run fine on my GT220. Would either of these be better than what I currently have, or are they about the same?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...0535&cm_re=radeon_5670-_-14-150-535-_-Product

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...2871&cm_re=radeon_5670-_-14-102-871-_-Product
 
The HD5670 is much faster than the 220. The 220 is an entry level non-gaming card. The 5670 is a midrange gaming card. The amount of on board memory doesn't matter that much on these cards. Companies sometimes put on some extra as selling points to people who don't know any better saying "well this card has 1gb of memory, so it has to be better than this other card with 512mb of memory".
 
Yeah, I've been out of PC gaming for a while. It seems like the amount of memory isn't as important as it used to be. What are the things to look for these days?
 
That 5670 blows the GT220 out of the water. You can actually get some decent gaming done on the HD5670.

That being said a newer tech GDDR3 card will usually accompany a larger bit interface. Lower tech GDDR5 tech or older cards usually have a smaller bit interface to work with. It all equates to your total bandwith. All present high end video cards are GDDR5 with large interfaces.

You want to look for something with a high shader count, decent core speed with at least 1GB memory. The 5670 is a decent card for anything not 1080p and above.
 
Xebix said:
Yeah, I've been out of PC gaming for a while. It seems like the amount of memory isn't as important as it used to be. What are the things to look for these days?
Click to expand...

With the way the companies number their cards, there isn't much info to tell you if card A is better than card B. Your best bet is to just look up reviews on google.
 
And for good review sites, besides [H]ardOCP i would recommend Anandtech and TechPowerup.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2917/5

Scroll down to 1280x1024 and you will see the 5670 doing 49fps on Crysis: Warhead, while the GT220 does 28fps. It packs quite a mighty punch for a card that doesn't requires extra power connectors.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top