Hiya, Im currently watching out for a semi decent GPU to turn up in the market place, and an finding it difficult because ive never really known much about the ATI cards Hierarchy. I can pretty much fathom the Nvidia bunch, as thats what im used too. Would some kind soul be nice enough to show me how the ATI cards rank lowest to highest? Or perhaps point me in the direction of a website that explains it? Many thanks!
As they stand at the moment: 5970 <- dual-GPU 5870 6870 <- 5770 replacement 5850 6850 <- 5750 replacement 5830 5770 5750 5670 5650 5450 It's all straightforward as long as you understand the 6870 and 6850 are the replacements for the 57xx cards but perform just shy of the 58xx cards (IIRC, it's around 10% drop between the 5870/5850 and 6870/6850), and the replacements for the 58xx cards will be the 69xx series (due out next month, IIRC). The 5970 (and upcoming 6990) are dual-GPU cards, in the same vein as the Geforce GTX295/9800GX2. As far as the nVidia line-up goes, if I remember, it's like this: GTX480 GTX470 GTX460 GTX465 GTS450 Simply because the original Fermi designs were hot (as has been published MANY times, over the vast expanse of the internet), the re-jig for the GTX460 allowed nVidia to provide better performance than the old-designed GTX465. If you're interested in buying new, the current mid-range (£150-200) pecking order appears to be: (nVidia GTX470) AMD 6870 nVidia GTX460 AMD 6850 I include the GTX470 at the top, because it's possible to get a reference card for around £200, but you wouldn't want to. Without custom cooling and tweaking, the 470's a hot, noisy flop. You'll be looking at the £230+ point for custom designs (for a point of reference, the Zotac GTX470 AMP! is £244 from Scan, and not in stock at that price).
It's pretty much the same as Nvidia. The first number indicates the generation, the rest is the card's place in that generation's lineup. The higher the better usually.
You'll probably be lining up a standard 4870 with a 5770, if you were talking pure performance. Obviously, the 5770 has extra features (DirectX 11 etc), and uses less power, but certainly no slouch. What games are you going to be playing, and at what resolution?
1680 x 1050 max. Possibly 1440 x 900. BF:BC2, Dragon Age, TF2, Starcraft II, Civ 5, Fallout New vegas Budget is between £60 - £90 second hand atm
Save for more and get a GTX460, that'll be fine, I'm playing BC2 at around 60fps (droping to about 30 in heavy fights) at I'm at 1920x1080.
This chart will show you where all the cards are in relation to each other: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/graphics-card-geforce-radeon,review-32014-7.html.
You *could* also spring for a Gtx 260/280 second hand, although I'm always cautious about buying second hand, they should be cheap as chips if you're on a mega-budget.
The reason im going 2nd hand is a) my budget is tight, and b) i had a 9600 GT 512mb prior to my GTX460 and it ran all those games no problem, so i know that there will be something in that price range that will fit the bill. Its just waiting for something decent to turn up. thanks for link fingers, il have a nose
I use THIS It doesn't have every single graphics card on it but it gives a very good general power rating between the graphics cards. Any card that's not on it you can probably guess the place on the hierarchy chart for by the cards around it. Toms Hardware updates this chart monthly so it's always nice and up to date (November's coming soon so when they update for November the 6850 and 6870 will get added probably).
