What to keep MSI GTX 470 or Saphire 5870?

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Limp Gawd
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Nov 1, 2005
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Picked up both graphics cards at recent sale prices and paid for them roughly the same.

I'm tending to keep the 470 because of better tessellation performance and drivers plus Physix support. I thought that heat would be a problem, but I'm running it in my small LianLi PCA05B case. It is showing 46C at idle and around 90 under Furmark.

I have been seeing some posts on hotdeals thread that the 5870 is faster than the 470, but I can't find any benchmarks that proves that that use current drivers. Is the 5870 really faster than the 5870 at stock clocks? Should I keep the 5870 instead of the 470?
 
The 5870 is faster at stock, they both run hot, the 470 has better drivers and can pretty easily catch a 5870 in real world performance via overclocking, 5870 overclocking is somewhat less certain but possible, either card will give you great a gameplay experience but if you fancy less driver hassles then the 470 should be your new gaming card. It's awesome.
 
I'd rather have the GTX470.

That review above is kind of old. Latest drivers are out.
 
requiem99 said:
The 5870 is faster at stock, they both run hot, the 470 has better drivers and can pretty easily catch a 5870 in real world performance via overclocking, 5870 overclocking is somewhat less certain but possible, either card will give you great a gameplay experience but if you fancy less driver hassles then the 470 should be your new gaming card. It's awesome.
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So what trouble did you have with the drivers for HD5870? I am curious, because I just got one.
 
nakedhand said:
So what trouble did you have with the drivers for HD5870? I am curious, because I just got one.
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I had the 6870 but some of the issues I had affect the 5000 series too. KOTOR/KOTOR2 hard crashes and CTDs, bad GTA IV stuttering (supposedly -memrestrict helps a lot of people with ATI but it didn't help me), couldn't run IL2 at all (more on that below), and there were a lot more but having a heavily OC'd 480 means I spend a lot more time playing games now than posting on [H]... a few more:

This one:

http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm?catid=279&threadid=124481
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1328769

and this one:

http://forums.ubi.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/49310655/m/5531028448

That one caused half my squad to sell their Radeons in disgust after it wasnt fixed for god knows how many months. We couldn't even get an acknowledgment of the issue for like two entire months and it affected everybody I knew. Total nonsense.

All that said I do like MLAA an awful lot (I even made a huge thread involving high res pictures showing it off, it's beautiful and totally game changing) and the games the 6870 ran well were beautiful and problem free.

~S
 
I haven't owned either one, but I would prefer the overclocked 470 over an overclocked 5870 because Eyefinity isn't something I can use and I feel that the 470 will provide a better gameplay experience more often (It also has more RAM in case I want to run a higher resolution).

I really wouldn't want either one, however, if they don't overclock well.

Thus I'll wait around a bit longer to decide...
 
5870 is going to be faster than the 470 in ATI favored games and 470 faster in Nvidia favored games. In neutral games the 5870 will be faster. So overall the 5870 is faster than the 470.

It's not even worth discussing OC because you can OC both cards. And most 5870s unless they are the gimped nonreference kind can get between 900-1000mhz core easily.

In any case you need to ask yourself what games you like to play best and check out the benchmarks to see which card performs better for those games.
 
vjcsmoke said:
5870 is going to be faster than the 470 in ATI favored games and 470 faster in Nvidia favored games. In neutral games the 5870 will be faster. So overall the 5870 is faster than the 470.

It's not even worth discussing OC because you can OC both cards. And most 5870s unless they are the gimped nonreference kind can get between 900-1000mhz core easily.

In any case you need to ask yourself what games you like to play best and check out the benchmarks to see which card performs better for those games.
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+1 listen to this one
 
flexcore said:
+1 listen to this one
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vjcsmoke said:
5870 is going to be faster than the 470 in ATI favored games and 470 faster in Nvidia favored games. In neutral games the 5870 will be faster. So overall the 5870 is faster than the 470.

It's not even worth discussing OC because you can OC both cards. And most 5870s unless they are the gimped nonreference kind can get between 900-1000mhz core easily.

In any case you need to ask yourself what games you like to play best and check out the benchmarks to see which card performs better for those games.
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Yup, agree also. My 5870 can hit 1000mhz and probably more (I stopped there) stable.
.
One thing with my 5870, the 10.10e drivers were really a game changer for me. The performance boost & stability were the biggest increase I've ever seen in any driver revision when it comes to gaming. MLAA is nice

People seem to like the 470 too... so ... Goodluck!


Y.
 
You're looking at a tug of war battle between a couple fps between the cards. Either one will work just fine. The things to look at are what the cards offer. Nvidia has PhysX and arguably better Tesslelation while ATi has MLAA and the potetenial for single card eyefinity.
 
vjcsmoke said:
5870 is going to be faster than the 470 in ATI favored games and 470 faster in Nvidia favored games. In neutral games the 5870 will be faster. So overall the 5870 is faster than the 470.

It's not even worth discussing OC because you can OC both cards. And most 5870s unless they are the gimped nonreference kind can get between 900-1000mhz core easily.

In any case you need to ask yourself what games you like to play best and check out the benchmarks to see which card performs better for those games.
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Indeed.
5870 -- 900-1000Mhz O/C (+150-250MHz over stock)
470 -- 750-850MHz O/C (+150-250MHz over stock)
Pretty much overclock the same amount in terms of clock speed, and it's not really worth comparing them.

I'd just roam around an check out benchmarks and make your own opinion on which is the better card for you.
 
I've owned both and if heat power and noise mean anything to you then hang on to the 5870. (performance is about the same on both cards from my own experience) Although I do favor NVIDIA drivers over ATI.
 
Keep the GTX470. Why? It's slightly slower than the 5870 but its nearly $100 cheaper which means you can sell the 5870 for more.

You likely wont notice the frame rate difference but you will notice the extra $75 in your pocket. ;)
 
Gym Rat said:
Keep the GTX470. Why? It's slightly slower than the 5870 but its nearly $100 cheaper which means you can sell the 5870 for more.

You likely wont notice the frame rate difference but you will notice the extra $75 in your pocket. ;)
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Yeah I see 5870's going for upwards $300 in the For Sale forum.
It makes me want to buy all of NewEgg's stock for $215 and then profit, profit, profit.

If both cards are still sealed, then even better.

edit;
Let's take it a step further, sell both cards over-priced (Something like $300+) on H or Ebay.
Save all the money, and buy a brand new high-end card in a few weeks. Should come close to breaking even with the overhead (profit) you make.

I'm guessing you got the ~$180 470 deal on Black Friday...
 
drivers for ati with 10.10e are pretty good for me. depends on what games you want to play, if phsyx and the like are your cup of tea then get the nvidia card otherwise you can't go wrong with the 5870 OC'd besides you could probably get another 5870 for cfx.
 
If you fold, then 470, if not both are great cards and depends on the game.

If you want to do triple screen, then 5870, if not both are great cards and depends on the game.
 
I say go with the 470 because that's what I own and it makes me feel more validated about my purchase. :)
 
Thanks for all the feedback. This is what I was looking for and my tendenacy is to keep the 470 for the following reasons:

  1. 470 performance close to 5870 and better for DX10/11. At 1920x1080 resolution either card should be sufficient.
  2. Temperature is not an issue for me
  3. Less hassle with Nvidia drivers
  4. Physix is important plus the support for Nvidia CUDA for Adobe Premiere and Photoshop. I didn't mention this earlier because I wanted to get a fair comparison of performance before considering other factors
  5. Like the idea of being able to sell the 5870 for more money
 
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Is the 5870 the sapphire that was on sale for $215?

If so, reviews looked like it didn't get much past 900mhz. Though I could be wrong.

I also ended up with the 470, but only because I got it for $158 after MIR.

Both seemed very even from what I read. I've always used ATi and figured I'd give nvidia a shot. I tend to dislike ati drivers now days anyway.
 
vjcsmoke said:
5870 is going to be faster than the 470 in ATI favored games and 470 faster in Nvidia favored games. In neutral games the 5870 will be faster. So overall the 5870 is faster than the 470.

It's not even worth discussing OC because you can OC both cards. And most 5870s unless they are the gimped nonreference kind can get between 900-1000mhz core easily.

In any case you need to ask yourself what games you like to play best and check out the benchmarks to see which card performs better for those games.
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This but I refuse to buy another ATI card seeing as their drivers are consistently shi*.
 
Sherloc said:
This but I refuse to buy another ATI card seeing as their drivers are consistently shi*.
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I refuse to buy Nvidia because their drivers are complete shit.
Pink video playback? Why do I have to MANUALLY color balance my videos every time I install a new driver?
HDMI incompatability? Why is half of my screen missing, and why do I have to custom edit every driver ini?

And why does the fan refuse to spin when I play StarCraft 2? Herp derp.
Why are all these G80's failing after 2 years?
Why were there so many overheating issues in the first line of GTX 280's?

No thanks.
But I see where you're coming from.
 
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