as some of you know i am building a computer soon but debating what to do reguards the GPU, i am currently watching the stock of the RADEON 6970 but is there another card that is as good as this which is cheaper or around the same price?
HD6950 for around £200 or GTX570 for around £240-250. Clocked at HD6970 clocks the HD6950 will be within 5% of the outright performance, or in other words no noticable difference in game.
At last check GTX 570's could happily keep up with it in most tests, and stock models are around £20-30 cheaper, especially the ridiculously overclockable MSI 570 TwinFrozrIII Others might advise differently. Personally i'd go for the FrozrIII first, 570 Phantom second.
are all 6070 series the same as i have seen some on line for £200 inc postage but they all kinds of makes, pny, msi, asus,xfx e.t.c?
The reason you get them from lots of different makes is because AMD design the GPUs and then license them out to other companies to produce. The same is true for NVIDIA. Certain makes are more reliable that others as with everything. The makes you have listed are all reputable and I wouldn't have a problem buying from any of them. Each make may produce a variety of different cards with the same GPU. That is why you see so many different 6970s or 570s. Some will be pre-overclocked and some will come with a variety of different cooling solutions. A pre-overclocked card will perform better, but you can always overclock a stock one yourself. A card with a custom cooling solution will often run cooler and quieter, allowing you to overclock further or just have a quieter, cooler system in general. Tundra was talking about to different GTX 570s. The Twin Frozr III and the Phantom. The Twin Frozr 3 is one of MSIs custom coolers and the Phantom is one of Gainwards. Both are rated highly. The Twin Frozr 3 looks like this. Whereas the Phantom looks like this. You can see the difference. Now onto the clocks part. Here we have a load of 6970s that vary in price greatly. The only brand I wouldn't buy in that list is Scan FX Some come with custom coolers as you can see in the pictures, but if you look at the 2 speeds in the middle, the ####Mhz GDDR5 and the GPU ###Mhz, you can see that these vary. The first part is the Memory Speed and the second part is the Core Speed. These are only comparable to other cards with the same GPU, in this case the 6970, as every GPU is designed differently. A higher core speed will mean that the card performs better, but may be hotter. You can see that the Gigabyte 3rd from the top has the highest core clock so in theory should perform better. Realistically that much wont make much of a difference. I hope I haven't confused you.
as you put the higher the better - which is reasonable but like the 6970's are on pre order most places. i know people are advising me to go for the 2 gb 6970 and the one i was looking at was the saphire (the one at £268) now as i play World of Warcraft and some other ganes (which arn't as graphicly demanding) as well as the usual day to day internet usage and some office programs, would it be worth my while getting a 2GB 6970 or should i lok at something a little lower down the spec list? say for examplre a 1GB card , a 6870, 6850, 560Ti cany you please advise thanks
I think we're nearing the end of 1gb cards for medium performance, even though I have a very good 1gb card I will not recommend it to you. Gaming at resolutions higher than 1920*1080 already prefers over 1gb memory. This will soon be the case for 1920*1080. It depends what games you play, and intend to play. If it's just WoW then get a 570 Twin Frozr III, or even a 560 Ti. If you think you're going to play Battlefield 3 or something like it then perhaps get the 6970.
I know that at the end of each of their "best GPU per budget" articles, toms hardware has a table ranking gpus.
not sure about battlefielfd 3 TBH, only game i play atm is WoW but thinking of getting Borderlands up and running again as well as sniper ghost warrior and red faction gurilla and those all work fine sabe better, like say if i upgraded to the 570 i should see some improvment
A 1Gig card should cover your requirements easily enough. If I were you I would probably go with a 570. If you mean the phantom it pulls through the rad so the fans are inside not outside.
I find the 6950 a better bet, cheaper than 6970 but can easily be clocked the same. Technically any of the cards mentionned are overkill for the games listed anyway lol.
