Please help me decide between a 6870 and a GTX 570

GTX 570 would definitely be my choice between the two as it's faster and has far better drivers IMO.

 

gtx 570

 

The 6970 is generally a little faster in games that aren't better optimised for nvidia, it's generally pretty close though but nvidia do also seem to get drivers out faster for newer games so in a lot of reviews you get nvidia cards using better optimised drivers for that game while the 6970 seems to get reviewed with older drivers. A good example is crysis 2, when all the game performance reviews came out nvidia had already released drivers while amd hadn't, though within a couple of driver updates the 6970 saw a performance improvement for that game of 20%.

On the other hand the 570 has physx and the 6970 has 2gb vram, you might want to see whether you prefer physx based games or if you play at 1080p and above and like higher levels of AA then the 6970 would be the better choice.

the 570 also seems to give higher gains when overclocking and has better tesselation performance, from a benchmarking/overclocking point of view the 570 might edge the 6970 but if it's just gaming then the 6970 stays ahead.

 

[smartass]
Cool story bro! Too bad that he wasn't talking about HD 6870. [/smartass]

 

neither was I? he already said he meant the 6970 in his last post.

 

I don't generally like using the andtech chart due to some strange anomolies I've noticed with their charts, but fir the sake of simplicity (and because the 6970 is generally ahead ) I'll post a direct comparison:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/292?vs=306

 

Just keep your 5850 until the new Radeon HD 7000 is released in December or January. Buying a 6970 for 20 to 30% improvement is not worth it. Just overclock your card to get some more frames out of it until the new ones are out.

Some internet rumors saying AMD will double the speed in their new generation. If that is true you would be buying a new card now and some weeks ahead the new ones come out for about the same price and with double performance.

 

By the looks of the Skyrim benches above the, the shining star is.... Nvidias last gen gtx480.

 

yeah... if you don't mind much higher power usage, temps and noise.

 

The custom cooled 4xx series are still great!

 

that benchmark is so wrong and weird in many ways lol


I wonder at what spot did they get those results, maybe staring at the wall or the sky? xD

 

This

 

Your card vs 6870...>http://www.hwcompare.com/6024/radeon-hd-5850-vs-radeon-hd-6870/
About the same...

Your card vs GTX 570...>http://www.hwcompare.com/9049/geforce-gtx-570-vs-radeon-hd-5850/
About 20% improvement...With 45% more power usage @Max TDP...