Wanting to buy a new graphics card for gaming looking at around the £200 mark. There are two i have taken a liking to and thats the saphire 6950 2gb model or the msi n560gtx I no custom pc and bit tech second the 560 but the 6950 is still good and can be turned into a 6970. What do you guys think thankyou for reading and any help or advice is welcome.
I've said this recently to someone else with the same dilemer as you, so a couple of questions basically it all depends on what you want, do you want triple monitor eyefinity setup? If so then the amd is the far superior card or do you want, nvidia's 3d thingy? (I know amd have it to, but to my knowledge nvidia's seems more polished, just like amd's multimonitor technology is over nvidia's 3d vision) also do you play or might you intend on playing games that run physx? If so then nvidia. Also go look at some benchmarks, reviews see if they have tested any of the games that you play and base your decision also on that, in some games the gtx 560 could trade blows with a 6970 (obviously you can unlock the 6950 to a 6970) while in others the 6970 (or unlocked 6950) would beat it. Hope that helps and good luck
i had the same question, and i ended up going with a gtx560ti. it's the first nvidia card i've chosen since the fx5000 days. i've been a ati user since the 9600 series. while i think ati / amd does an excellent job on thier hardware, their driver support leaves a lot to be desired. nvidia's drivers seem a little more stable and polished. also theres some cuda stuff that i had been interested in trying out. i don't use multi monitors and i was curious about the novelty that is phys-x.
Cheers well I'm going to be buying a new monitor after this anyway but atm its 1680 x 1050 I don't like 3some so that's not a problem and I have no plans on going for 3 screens not got enough room haha. With physx not really but cheers trash
Compared at stock speeds, the 560 just edges out the 6950 in most games. It's also slightly cheaper - I personally bought mine because it was available at £180. Sent from my GT-I9000 using Tapatalk
The only thing is to take into account the 6950 can be flashed to a 6970, the powercolour one even come with the 6970 bios preloaded.
Cheers guys still not sure which to get going to think about it feel free to still give advice thanks
There are also some games that have Nvidia only features like Physx (Arkham Asylum, Metro 2033) Apex (Mafia 2) Just Cause 2 also has advanced GPU water simulation and Bokeh filter. There are others but these are the most mentionable. The 2GB 6950 will be better for higher resolutions though.
Nvidia tend to have better driver support and have game devs in their back pocket so games tend to work better upon release with Nvidia compared to AMD. Driver support and more reliable performance in games is the reason I tend to go Nvidia when it comes to two cards at similar price and performance. The only reason I would consider the 6950 is because it can be turned into a 6970 and that is a tempting arguement. However, given that a GTX 560 offers alot of performance at 1920 x 1080, at your resolution it is plenty of power. I personally went GTX 560 and have no regrets.
Not sure if this may sway your decision but a selection of 560's are on today only (for the weekend ) at scan http://www.scan.co.uk/todayonly/index.aspx
Amd drivers are the main issue of an amd card its not even about performance, nvidia drivers are just stable forever no fuss no wierd bios hacks. 5970 turned me off amd gpus, they are usualy quieter and more power frugal but they don't always work correctly
Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) it's hard to choose between either card. If you're prepared to flash the bios, the 6950's the best option, but IIRC an overclocked 560 can match the 6970. You're not going multimonitor, so Eyefinity is a low priority. You're probably not going to 3D game either, right? So, the only argument I can come up with is buying the 560 as it supports PhysX. Some will probably say that this is a worthless feature (usually ATI/AMD card owners ) but at least you have it ready if you want to use it.
heres the deal. Do you want multi monitor? Then get 6950, u want 3d? get the 560. If you dont care about them, then get the 560. Reason is nvidia are much more reliable and also u can overclock the 560 to 1ghz probably which will be near a 570 and will beat the 6950 easily. Yes u can flash or overclock the 6950 too BUT flashing is risky and its yield when fully overclocked/flashed is not as high as the 560, 560 beats it by a significant margin. Im sure u wont regret getting the 560 but with the 6950 its a little riskier+ less performance when both overclocked. And yes, most games work better with nvidia cards. and ps that multi monitor thing wont be good enough with just 1 card.
Cheers guys think I will go with the 560 it seems the better option plus I just read about flashing the 6950 doesn't give that much better performance than at stock . Thanks again
