GTX 470 vs 6870

Dreamcast · 2011-10-26, 12:53 AM

I need a Video card and these two got my eye.

My price range $200 or less.

Their alot of reviews giving mixed results with the 6870 winning most of the time, so Im just wondering.

Also black Friday is coming...Do you guys think the 560 ti and 6950 will go below $200?Thanks.

Goku · 2011-10-26, 07:29 AM

If I had to chose I would go for a 470. Make sure you have the proper psu is all. I bet you will see a 560 ti below $200 not so sure on the 6950 2gb.

Traak · 2011-10-26, 07:53 AM

Why settle for a 470 when you can have these:

GIGABYTE GV-N560UD-1G GeForce GTX 560 Ti (Fermi) 1GB $199.99 with mail-in rebate

GIGABYTE GV-R687SO-1GD Radeon HD 6870 $189.99 with mail-in rebate, and eyefinity by Radeon for multi-screen mayhem

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mh0e-...ayer_embedded#!

If it's 2GB of memory you are looking for, do your games need lots of memory or lots of processing power? The 6950 has more stream processing units *about 25 percent more* and higher clock speed than the 6870, for close to 200 bucks.

I found a GTX460 for less than two Benjies with 2GB RAM
ZOTAC ZT-40406-10P GeForce GTX 460 (Fermi) 2GB $199.99

The Youtube is AMD boasting about eyefinity.

Either one of the first cards will do three monitors. You can research this, but this will give you an idea of what's out there.

What do you think?

All are DirectX 11.

Goku · 2011-10-26, 08:26 AM

The GTX 460 2GB is not worthwhile. Mostly due to the card not having the actual processing power to handle the 2GB and it is way overpriced for being a 460 anyway.

Out of all those cards the 470 has the highest potential of performance. If you can overclock high enough it should wipe the floor with all those cards with ease. Not to mention it has more ram then the other comparable cards.

Traak · 2011-10-26, 09:22 AM

I compared five cards in Newegg.Com

560:
The 470 has:
more memory, 280MB more,
lower clock speeds
more memory clock speed, but DDR5 as opposed to GDDR5
lower overall memory bandwidth
more processor cores

Got any scores to show which is the winnah? I have to give up the comp for a while hehe

Goku · 2011-10-26, 11:23 AM

More cores with the higher clock on your own will out do all those cards. It has GDDR5 newegg is wrong and it has a bigger memory bus allowing for more bandwidth.

Traak · 2011-10-26, 01:17 PM

Originally Posted by Goku

More cores with the higher clock on your own will out do all those cards. It has GDDR5 newegg is wrong and it has a bigger memory bus allowing for more bandwidth.

The memory has higher clock, but lower data transfer rate.
The core clock is lower, though it has more of the units.

The following are for a 560, BTW, not a 560 Ti.

Core clock:
560: 860MHz
470: 607MHz

Shader clock:
560: 1720MHz
470: 1215MHz

Effective memory clock:
560: 4008MHz
470: 3348MHz

PCMag.com:
Even so, the Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti is in a bit of a tough position. Though a good replacement for the GTX 470 and reportedly a nice stepping stone between the GTX 460 and the GTX 570, the presence of overclocked GTX 460s in the market somewhat spoil the GTX 560 Ti's price advantage. We're looking forward to testing overclocked GTX 560 Ti cards from Nvidia's add-in partners—if their price and performance are in sync, they could make a good solution for PC gamers able to spend slightly more than $200 on a video card. But for now, overclocked GTX 460s like our EVGA card provide a slightly better value.

The magazine also stated that one of the big areas of improvement was lower power draw, a lot lower, idle and active.

I wouldn't buy any of the cards in this thread. I'd wait to see when the new generation of cards comes out, then go shopping.

Goku · 2011-10-26, 02:39 PM

We still do not know when the new cards are coming right now. Could be 6 months from now, so if people want a upgrade might as well do it. There is always something coming out around the corner that is better.

It doesn't matter if those units have faster clock rates. A user by overclocking the 470 to 750 MHz+ will see massive gains due to the stock clock being so low. For raw power the 470 has the most if clocked properly. If a user just wants something out the box a 560 Ti will likely perform as good given how high its already clocked. Thats the only advantage it holds nothing else. There is a side to me that cares about power requirements, but it does not out weigh performance.

Dreamcast · 2011-10-26, 06:26 PM

So Im thinking about buying the GTX 470.

I looked up the card I wanna buy, according to some benchmarks it loses to the 5870 and sometimes the 5850.

I saw a benchmark on it being oc and it doesnt beat the 5870.

Here is the link of the card I want OC

http://www.guru3d.com/article/kfa2-g...-470-review/20

So what do you guys think?

Also is it hard to overclock this card?...Since they overclocked it alot...I have overclocked before with my 9800 gx2 but it only was around 114 mhz....Should I be careful, any tips if I get it?

Goku · 2011-10-26, 06:37 PM

Dream what specific PSU do you have? The 470 I will admit is a power hog and is even more so overclocked. You need to make sure your PSU can handle that before even thinking of getting it.

In regards to the performance between the 5850 and 5870. The 470 is better then a 5850 and I would consider the 5870 the stronger card. When fully overclocked the 470 can pass it depending on the game. Some games out there just ran better on AMD or Nvidia hardware. Really depends on what the developer used to make the game on most of the time.

In regards to overclocking. You just have to bump up by about 10 MHz to 15 Mhz at a time and test for stability. Like with 3DMark11 or the games you play. Just watch out for graphical glitches and artifacts (looks like white snow on your screen).

Dreamcast · 2011-10-26, 06:45 PM

I got 650w...It handle my 9800 gx2 good and I believe that was a power hog as well I believe.

One last thing my Motherboard is PCI-e X16.....is not 2.0 like cards these days..how much will it bottle neck it?

Goku · 2011-10-26, 06:47 PM

Yeah PSU sounds good then if it handle that. Even PCI-e 1.0 x16 isn't a bottleneck yet, so don't worry. What CPU do you have at the moment?

Dreamcast · 2011-10-26, 06:53 PM

I have a Q6600, I can overclock it to 3ghz....I have DDR2 4gb of ram.

Goku · 2011-10-26, 07:23 PM

I recommend that. At stock that CPU is starting to get slow for todays games. Overclocking it to 3GHz will help out quite a bit. Have you tried getting to 3.6 GHz or is that not a G0?

Dreamcast · 2011-10-26, 07:28 PM

Originally Posted by Goku

I recommend that. At stock that CPU is starting to get slow for todays games. Overclocking it to 3GHz will help out quite a bit. Have you tried getting to 3.6 GHz or is that not a G0?

It is but I dont have alot of overclock experience.

The only overclocking I do is thru uguru which is a program from Abit. I don't into the bios screen and change the settings.

Perhaps I can make it faster thru uguru only but I honestly do know what to change, each time I try to put it above 3.0 ghz, it crashes.

I only change FSB btw from 272 mhz I believe to 334 mhz....I dont change anything else lol....I have alot of fans aswell, so I do believe I can overclock it more without it overheating.