overwhelmed by choices....

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Weaksauce
Joined
Nov 5, 2005
Messages
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Ive been out of the hardware loop for a bit thanks to WoW. I'm looking to upgrade my 8800gts 320mb card for something that can play dx11 games. There seems to be a million choices though that all seem somewhat comparable between nvidia and amd and each generation. Ive been mostly looking at the amd cards and trying to figure out whats a good deal. Nvidias comparable cards look like theyre generally more expensive. Seems like alot of the cards can be easily flashed to a better card too. Im not sure if over looking some system compatibility thing with new pcie slots or not. Im thinking about getting a 6950 and flashing it to a 6970. Ill be using one monitor so a 1gb card should be fine? Right now the monitor I have is 1280x1024...this is one of my next upgrades. My system is q6600, abit ip35 mobo 2gb ram and a antec tp2 550w psu. And if anyone knows which brand comes with a lifetime warrantly that' d be a plus. Evga's warranty with my 8800 right now has been a life saver.
 
You can't flash the 1GB 6950 to 6970-spec, only the 2GB will do this, so I'd say go with the 2GB 6950. It isn't much more expensive, and in that sector of the market is one of the best value cards out there. XFX cards come with a lifetime warranty, so I recommend those. If you're only going to be using 1280x1024 though frankly you may as well get a 1GB 6850 instead. They don't unlock to anything, but they do overclock quite well, and are still very fast (almost 4 times as powerful as your 8800GTS).
 
If you are set on AMD, then my suggestions are going to be moot.

But, what the hell......

The biggest advantage of the AMD card is 2GB memory, which is a great value in this price segment.
Also the AMD offering uses less power.

You might want to look at the GTX 560 Ti from nvidia just for comparison's sake.
Palait does make a 2GB model, but I've never bought one of their cards.

All that said, it's really hard to argue against the AMD cards at the momment, especially since they are equiped with more video memory.:D
 
thanks for the replies. Seems like its a choice between the two types of 6950s for me. Some of the reviews I looked at showed the 560 getting beat by a little bit pretty consistently in most tests. Also looked like from the research Ive been doing 1gb of ram doesn't seem worth it until you start using resolutions higher than 1920x1200ish. Unlocking the shaders on the 2gb model only looks to give a 2fps increase really too. Idk if an extra ~$50 is worth it for a chance at a tiny fps increase. Hmm maybe I'll grab a 1g model...do I have some sound reasoning?overlooking something maybe?
 
Yeah the 560 is almost never superior to the 6950, usually it's inferior, sometimes equal, hence the 6950 recommendation. The 560Ti is of course slightly cheaper, by about $20.
 
sounds good. I'm looking at some 1920x1080 monitors. 1gb model should be enough to power that and play games on high settings. thanks for the help
 
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