(i posted this in the nvidia forum as well, i'm curious as to the responses of the different 'communities'!) for me this is the big question of our times: GTX470 or 5850? my heart is telling me 470, but my head is saying 5850.. i keep reading that future driver releases will make 470 'run cooler' (idk how!) and 'perform better', so i've got this horrible feeling that as soon as i buy a 5850 this mythical driver release will make the 470 awesome.. ..but that if i buy a 470 it will never get better than what it is now, which is not that much better than a 5850 (performance wise only).. from what i can see a 470 is barely 10%-15% better performance than a 5850, which is NOT worth £100 extra! (almost 50% more expensive!) currently in uk, 5850s are hovering around £210 upwards, whereas the 470s are £310 upwards! hmmmz what to do :question:
I have just installed the HIS 5850 iCooler V Turbo. Honestly, its the best GPU I have ever had. Two of these in crossfire would most likely mince a 470, whereas the single 5850 is going to be outperformed by the 470. My recommendation would be go with the 5850 and then add another later if you can. That's is what I'm doing.
I'm leaning this way too. Read lots of reveiws on both. Nvidia does have better tesslation performance and a some bells and whistles. But, DX11 is just emerging and heavily teslated games are probably a year away. The 470 may game into the DX11 tesslation future a bit longer than the 5850. But the energy consumption when comaping CrossfireX 58050's versus SLI470's is a no brainer. The pricing from both companies is disapointing to say the least. But the 470 is a very appealing gpu given the current pricing. I will be getting a 5850 shortly and add a second later this year. Purchased 4850's when they were released and have a good experience with ATI over the last 18 months. Going to stick with the red team for a bit longer I guess.
By comparision I can tell you that when I bought the all-mighty GTX280 I also waited for a "mythical" driver that would unleash the card's true potential. This never happened My new 5850 is faster, cooler, has better designed drivers and is less power consuming. So maybe stick to something that works today instead of something that might work better in a few months or a year? I'll most definitly buy another 5850 and run them in CF. The only thing that scares me is how well that setup will work in games (both older and new).
I suggest buy ati HD5850, when new games release required more GPU power, you can just buy another one and running CrossfireX...the scaling was just unbelievable! even with trifire you will find the scaling are THAT good ...up to 2.81x over a single card . but if tessellation and physX is your main concern, then perhaps better go for GTX470...money wise, of course HD5850 is better choice with lots of OC headroom!
Get a GTX 470 ... try to get one with custom cooling like the new galaxy KFA2 and overclock it...you will get same performance as the gtx 480 which is more than the 5870.... if you can't find one with custom cooling then buy a normal one and in the near future buy a custom cooler ...i recommend buying one from Arctic Cooling
yes you can but out of ATI cards you don't get that much boost in performance as you get out of NVIDIA cards
Get a 5850 with heat pipe cooling then if u want physx u can use your 9800gtx for that but if you have the money get 5870
I am a big fan of nVidia though my little suggestion is 'go for red' .. The dark ages r gone and from 4*** serise ati proved that !! The green team need them to do more r&d in dx11, they r quite new in this arena , where ati is thinking abt the next generation dx11 cards !! So u wht will nVidia do ? R&D in drivers ? Or in new cards ? In both cases they r falling behind !! And stock cooler is very good in 58** cards too . So I think u should go for an ati card .. (sorry for my bad english) ..
im not a big fan of ati & sometimes got pissed of bcoz driver issues,but yet..ati offer such bargain (price/performance,power consumption) that i cant resist..driver issue,even nvidia got that one..nothing perfect,just need to find which is better..in wise...
here's what i think, if you can't get the galaxy gtx470 with custom cooling then don't get the gtx 470. get the radeon hd5850, the difference is small..