GTX 260 to ATI 6 series?

nodle

nodle

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Apr 9, 2001
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So I think it's about time for an upgrade for me. Is the 6850 going to be a great upgrade for me? Should I spend the extra and move up to a 6870? I only game on a 22" wides creen so I don't really game at high resolutions. Think I should go 6850 or 6870? What would you do? Thanks for the help. :)
 
A 6xxx series card is going to be a pretty solid upgrade for you. A 6870 is a little less than double your current GTX260, and a 6850 is a bit less than that. You'll notice a pretty solid upgrade from either one of them, so it sorta comes down to your budget and whether you think the $60 is worth the improvement. For myself, on a 22" display, I would probably just go for the 6850 as I don't imagine you needing much more power for 1680x1050.
 
Ya I believe 1680x1050 is my max resolution. It's just tempting only being a little bit more for the 6870. Is it a big improvement over the 6850?
 
nodle said:
Ya I believe 1680x1050 is my max resolution. It's just tempting only being a little bit more for the 6870. Is it a big improvement over the 6850?
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Its not an noticeable l improvement at your resolution.
 
One last question, if you were going to get a 6850 would you go XFX, SAPPHIRE, or GIGABYTE? Newegg has them all and I plan on ordering today.
 
I would go with Sapphire or Gigabyte since they are $20 cheaper than the XFX. I don't find XFX support so spectacular that I would throw away an extra $20 to get it.
 
Ya I am thinking Gigabyte, Sorry to add this but do you think a GTX 460 would be better?
 
nodle said:
Ya I am thinking Gigabyte, Sorry to add this but do you think a GTX 460 would be better?
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Pros: brand new technology.

Cons: brand new technology.

460: known good performer. In that regard, I'd look at some reviews for that. The 6850 might be a little less,or even,if I recall, the 6870 a bit better? You know nvidia since you have a 260 so you are familiar with the drivers and performance. There is a little bit of a learning curve with AMD drivers but they are pretty good overall......especially with a single card.

side note: I've used Sapphire RMA and they were just fine, a little slow but just fine. I've owned several of their products and only had to RMA one well used HD 4890.....I think I've had two 4870X2s,a couple 4870-512MB,a 3870,and two 4890s.
 
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I have always been a Nvidia man, since I like the way their drivers are. But don't their cards use more power and run hotter? Man now I am torn. :(
 
460 does run hotter and uses more power. Its also more expensive ($199) for the same performance as a 6850 ($179).
 
nodle said:
Ya I am thinking Gigabyte, Sorry to add this but do you think a GTX 460 would be better?
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A 6850 will perform a bit faster in most games and use a little less power. There is no groundbreaking performance increase over the 460. You can find tons of review that compares the 6850 to a GTX 460 1GB card. I like Nvidia drivers a lot more than AMD, plus I fold once in a while, so I tend to stick with Nvidia cards.

Since you are gaming at a low(ish) resolution you could use a GTX 460 768MB card as well without much of a problem if money was tight. One of my friends went from a GTX 260 (192 cores) to a GTX 460 768MB card and he is really happy with it. He games at 1680x1050, and was stoked to turn on DX11 and play all of his games with max detail where the 260 was starting to drag.
 
Flyinfinni said:
460 does run hotter and uses more power. Its also more expensive ($199) for the same performance as a 6850 ($179).
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Where did you get this "runs hotter" from? My card maxes out @63 C after an hour of Furmark. I would be impressed if a 6850 beat that.
 
The eVGA 450 OCed at 850 MHz for $210-220 is your answer. It can keep up with the 6870 and runs cooler.
So if you need an Nvidia card, that's the one to go with.
 
Megalomaniac said:
The eVGA 450 OCed at 850 MHz for $210-220 is your answer. It can keep up with the 6870 and runs cooler.
So if you need an Nvidia card, that's the one to go with.
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uh.. what?? i hope u mean a 460 OC'd....

on topic, i personally would go with the 6850 as well. One thing no one mentions about the launch of cards, they don't care driver improvements. If i remember correctly, 4 months after the 5850 launched, the it was performing at the same speed as 5870 launch although the 5870 also saw the same improve. Just something to keep in mind.
 
ocellaris said:
Where did you get this "runs hotter" from? My card maxes out @63 C after an hour of Furmark. I would be impressed if a 6850 beat that.
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A 460 uses more power than a 6850, thus generates more heat. That is probably what he meant.
 
that is the 460 ftw edition with performance simailar to gtx470/ 5870
pretty impressive actually
for 250 dollars
 
nodle said:
lol, I meant will it outperform the 6850? I am thinking about sticking with Nvidia, because of their drivers.
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A 460 with a mild factory overlock comes damn close to a stock 6850 and manages to beat it in a few games.

At your resolution, it won't be much of a difference anyway regardless of the game. Its not a stupid decision to buy a GTX 460 as long as you keep the price under $200.
 
ocellaris said:
Where did you get this "runs hotter" from? My card maxes out @63 C after an hour of Furmark. I would be impressed if a 6850 beat that.
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Alright, you don't get a hotter GPU temp due to a better cooler, but it produces more heat as it uses more power, thus dissipating more watts of heat into the cooler--> air.
 
ocellaris said:
A 460 with a mild factory overlock comes damn close to a stock 6850 and manages to beat it in a few games.

At your resolution, it won't be much of a difference anyway regardless of the game. Its not a stupid decision to buy a GTX 460 as long as you keep the price under $200.
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So the stock 6850 is still faster than a GTX460?
 
nodle said:
So the stock 6850 is still faster than a GTX460?
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its pretty damn close, really depends on what games you play and who you ask. overall benchmarks show the 6850 is a few % faster than a 460 with a light factory oc (710 to 725). you can't go wrong with either card.
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At that price, I think you're paying too much for a GTX460 compared to a 6850. $35 more and probably not enough of a speed difference to even notice.
 
nodle said:
Sorry to bump this but one last question, would I be better going with this card over the ati 6850?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127534
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I'd get the cheapest GTX 460 1GB you can find. Your resolution is too low to really take advantage of the high factory overclock on that card. You can get a Zotac card for $170 (after rebate). That is $45 less and will perform nearly identical to the MSI Hawk in your situation. Plus you can always overclock yourself and save money.
 
Ok thanks guys, ya not really into overclocking just like to run at default speeds. I'll look inot a cheaper model then.
 
Am I missing something here? The 6850 doesn't seem to be any faster than the GTX 275, which is maybe 20-30% faster than the GTX 260. A little less than 'nearly double' seems to be a bit of a stretch.

As for the MSI Hawk...it could be worth it if you value having a quiet and very overclockable card. Though...if you're going for quiet and cheap, I'd probably just get the Gigabyte 6850.

edit: that earlier bench (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/HIS/Radeon_HD_6870/29.html) shows the 6850 as being only about 28% faster, relative to the GTX 260. That doesn't seem worth paying $180 for. I say wait, or save up for a higher end card.

The 6870 may be only a little faster than the 6850 in most people's eyes, but it's not about relative performance, it's about relative performance gain. What you want to do is find the best performance gain for the money.

GTX 260 -> 6850 = 28% performance gain -> $180 -> 0.155% gain per dollar
GTX 260 -> 6870 = 47% performance gain -> $240 -> 0.195% gain per dollar

The 6870 is therefore a much higher gain for the money you're spending. Keep that in mind.

edit2: if you're set on upgrading now for under $200, and aren't keen on overclocking, then you definitely want a 6850. The GTX 460 seems to shine when it comes to overclocking, but the 6850 seems to be a more attractive option at stock speeds (lower power reqs, lower temps, MLAA drivers).
 
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I was just worried about the drivers, last time I used ATI drivers they were terrible. But That was a couple of years ago.
 
ex0du5 said:
Am I missing something here? The 6850 doesn't seem to be any faster than the GTX 275, which is maybe 20-30% faster than the GTX 260. A little less than 'nearly double' seems to be a bit of a stretch.

As for the MSI Hawk...it could be worth it if you value having a quiet and very overclockable card. Though...if you're going for quiet and cheap, I'd probably just get the Gigabyte 6850.

edit: that earlier bench (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/HIS/Radeon_HD_6870/29.html) shows the 6850 as being only about 28% faster, relative to the GTX 260. That doesn't seem worth paying $180 for. I say wait, or save up for a higher end card.

The 6870 may be only a little faster than the 6850 in most people's eyes, but it's not about relative performance, it's about relative performance gain. What you want to do is find the best performance gain for the money.

GTX 260 -> 6850 = 28% performance gain -> $180 -> 0.155% gain per dollar
GTX 260 -> 6870 = 47% performance gain -> $240 -> 0.195% gain per dollar

The 6870 is therefore a much higher gain for the money you're spending. Keep that in mind.
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Thanks man that makes alot of sense! :cool:
 
nodle said:
I was just worried about the drivers, last time I used ATI drivers they were terrible. But That was a couple of years ago.
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Although I have no experience with ATi (I've always owned an NVidia card), let me just say that NVidia drivers have been awful for the past year and a half. They've lost features, broken profile support, caused overheating (first run of 196 drivers), messed up resolutions for HDTVs (25x drivers). QA has been very poor for their drivers, and I'm really disappointed with them.

AMD has now added MLAA support in their drivers, which is a nice alternative to MSAA when the performance hit of MSAA cannot be afforded, or when transparency sampling is needed without a big performance hit (like in Crysis). They're seeming very tempting at the moment.
 
ex0du5 said:
Am I missing something here? The 6850 doesn't seem to be any faster than the GTX 275, which is maybe 20-30% faster than the GTX 260. A little less than 'nearly double' seems to be a bit of a stretch.

As for the MSI Hawk...it could be worth it if you value having a quiet and very overclockable card. Though...if you're going for quiet and cheap, I'd probably just get the Gigabyte 6850.

edit: that earlier bench (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/HIS/Radeon_HD_6870/29.html) shows the 6850 as being only about 28% faster, relative to the GTX 260. That doesn't seem worth paying $180 for. I say wait, or save up for a higher end card.

The 6870 may be only a little faster than the 6850 in most people's eyes, but it's not about relative performance, it's about relative performance gain. What you want to do is find the best performance gain for the money.

GTX 260 -> 6850 = 28% performance gain -> $180 -> 0.155% gain per dollar
GTX 260 -> 6870 = 47% performance gain -> $240 -> 0.195% gain per dollar

The 6870 is therefore a much higher gain for the money you're spending. Keep that in mind.

edit2: if you're set on upgrading now for under $200, and aren't keen on overclocking, then you definitely want a 6850. The GTX 460 seems to shine when it comes to overclocking, but the 6850 seems to be a more attractive option at stock speeds (lower power reqs, lower temps, MLAA drivers).
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This is the type of indecision and information overload people get from staring at benchmarks too much. The OP would absolutely NOT be better off spending more money on a 6870 First up, the OP is gaming at too low of a resolution for many of those benchmarks to even apply. Second the GTX260 cannot do DX11 at all so its getting long in the tooth, you can't run some games at max details in DX10.

Like I noted earlier, a friend went from a GTX260 to a 460 768MB and he was really happy with the upgrade. He plays everything maxed out now, in DX11 when available, and doesn't run benchmarks all day.
 
Siryak said:
Personally I know nothing about this card yet, but one card to keep in mind is this one. ---> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...cm_re=gtx_460_gigabyte-_-14-125-345-_-Product

It is factory overclocked if you are not into overclocking, and it still carries the same 3 year warranty. The only thing is you might want to wait and see what the reviews say about the custom cooler.(Although it looks fantastic to me)
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The cooler is most likely fine. The only flaw you might expect is poor VRM cooling, though that's not a given. If you're not overclocking, it won't matter anyways. That type of cooler will certainly cool better than a stock cooler, though the open design will dump hot air into the case, which means you need decent airflow for them to work properly.

If you're looking for reviews on the cooling, make sure the reviews also indicate the sound that the coolers are producing. It doesn't matter than a cooler is running 10 degrees cooler than another if it's producing 10dB more sound.

Sadly, most reviewers only show temperatures when benching these cards, which as I said, is a completely useless metric on its own.
 
ocellaris said:
This is the type of indecision and information overload people get from staring at benchmarks too much. The OP would absolutely NOT be better off spending more money on a 6870 First up, the OP is gaming at too low of a resolution for many of those benchmarks to even apply. Second the GTX260 cannot do DX11 at all so its getting long in the tooth, you can't run some games at max details in DX10.

Like I noted earlier, a friend went from a GTX260 to a 460 768MB and he was really happy with the upgrade. He plays everything maxed out now, in DX11 when available, and doesn't run benchmarks all day.
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Sorry to say, but anecdotal evidence is useless. I'd attribute his happiness more to a placebo effect. The GTX 460 768MB is barely faster than a GTX 260. All you'll get is the ability to run DX 11, which to me is not worth the investment at this point. You're likely not going to be pushing tesselation when the card can't hold a solid 60fps with it on.

Now, if your friend was targetting a specific game, and the GTX 460 made the difference in between him getting rock solid 60fps and him not getting rock solid 60fps, then you might say it's worth it. Otherwise...that's quite the premium to pay for a 17% performance gain.
 
ex0du5 said:
Sorry to say, but anecdotal evidence is useless. I'd attribute his happiness more to a placebo effect. The GTX 460 768MB is no faster than a GTX 260. All you'll get is the ability to run DX 11, which to me is not worth the investment at this point. You're likely not going to be pushing tesselation when the card can't hold a solid 60fps with it on.
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He plays a lot of Civ 5 which is rather pokey maxed out on a 260 and runs awesome on a 460, even with DX11 on. The game was most definitely rendering a lot faster on the 460.
 
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