GPU hierarchy

[erh]

firstly, something new and exciting for this forum, im building myself a new computer and its really needed because mine is from 10 years ago from the time of single core processors.. and run wow on all low settings at under 10fps in towns:P
ive decided to go for an i5 2500k build.. now to my question, i have been doing a bit of research and am getting a bit confused with all the number naming of the graphics cards because they dont always go in order (i.e. bigger number dont always mean better cards, for example radeon 4870>5750) so i was wondering if someone could make a list of good nvidia and radeon cars in terms of how good they are for gaming and then maybe recommend me one that matches the processor well (dont want one bottlenecking the other).. i was thinking of the 5850.. im not on a very large budget but it is flexible (thinking around the equivalent of $1000 maybe a one ore two hundred more)

[DeltrusDisc]

Question is how much can you afford to spend on the video card itself?

[Deleted]

This is pretty much the market right now, Nvidia's offerings are much more conveniently priced I reckon.

[aggs]

Check out the Narwhal build on the first page, imo it is what you are looking for, although myself I would look at getting a dif case as I'm not a huge fan of that one in particular.

[erh]

what Yahiki posted is perfect, just what i was looking for thanks a lot!

edit: is it safe to assume that a nvidia and amd card of the same price are offer the same gaming quality? so is the gtx 460 as good as the hd 6850 for example?

[Thornal]

Here's a list of benchmarks for GPUs:
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/

Higher is better, and you can cross-reference the performance with prices online with newegg, or shopping.google.com, or wherever you're getting your parts from.

[Cantii]

what Yahiki posted is perfect, just what i was looking for thanks a lot!

edit: is it safe to assume that a nvidia and amd card of the same price are offer the same gaming quality? so is the gtx 460 as good as the hd 6850 for example?

It's give and take, really. In the example of GTX 460 1GB vs HD6850, the GTX 460 performs a little better than the HD6850 in some games, while the HD6850 performs a little better than the GTX 460 1GB in other games. Honestly, you can't go wrong with either. However, the 6850 and 6870 perform better than the GTX 460 where DirectX 11 is concerned, as their architecture is newer and more refined.

Also, if you plan on using multiple monitors, then AMD GPUs are the way to go, EyeFinity is just way too good to pass up if you're doing multi-monitor setups.

As far as recommended cards, I generally go by branding. NVidia brands: EVGA, MSI, ASUS. AMD brands: XFX, MSI, ASUS, Sapphire. Though with NVidia, Galaxy (or KFA2 in Europe) has come a very long way in quality and are getting better with every iteration, so they're becoming a contender as well. The others listed all have superb warranties (EVGA and XFX especially), great customer service and some offer some of the best cooling solutions.

[erh]

thanks a lot cantii! that helped a lot! im gona go with a MSI ATI Radeon 5850! its cheaper where im from and i would like to tinker with directX11

i just noticed that radeon has more than 1 type of card with the same number, they have some with a prefix HD to the number and some with a prefix R? is there any difference? the R5850 is about $50 cheaper than the HD5850 so i guess it means something?

[Cantii]

thanks a lot cantii! that helped a lot! im gona go with a MSI ATI Radeon 5850! its cheaper where im from and i would like to tinker with directX11

i just noticed that radeon has more than 1 type of card with the same number, they have some with a prefix HD to the number and some with a prefix R? is there any difference? the R5850 is about $50 cheaper than the HD5850 so i guess it means something?

I'm not entirely too sure what the difference is, as the R stands for Radeon, but honestly if you're going with the 5850, the 6870 is around the same price and is meant to replace the 5850. It's faster and has better DirectX 11 support.

[Swagula]

I really like this website a lot when comparing GPU's http://www.hwcompare.com/

I just got my XFX Radeon 5870 on thursday, and so for i'm extremely happy with it, runs so much better than my 5570.

[Jurwi]

thanks a lot cantii! that helped a lot! im gona go with a MSI ATI Radeon 5850! its cheaper where im from and i would like to tinker with directX11

i just noticed that radeon has more than 1 type of card with the same number, they have some with a prefix HD to the number and some with a prefix R? is there any difference? the R5850 is about $50 cheaper than the HD5850 so i guess it means something?

5850 has poor dx11 support compared to the 6xxx series. Tesselation performance is just awful. You'd really be better off with a Radeon 6870 or so.

[Deleted]

thanks a lot cantii! that helped a lot! im gona go with a MSI ATI Radeon 5850! its cheaper where im from and i would like to tinker with directX11

i just noticed that radeon has more than 1 type of card with the same number, they have some with a prefix HD to the number and some with a prefix R? is there any difference? the R5850 is about $50 cheaper than the HD5850 so i guess it means something?

R5850 and HD5850 are the same, only thing different here is how people write the names.
Full name is Radeon HD5850 but when you put R5850 or HD5850 most people with enough hardware knowledge should know what it is.

I also have to agree with Hinaaja, 6870 is a better choice in terms of performance, temperature & noise. Only downside is that it costs a little bit more than the 5850 but for good reasons

[Deleted]

Here's a ranking of a lot of GPU's:
overclock dot net slash graphics-cards-general/54675-graphics-card-ranking dot net

Edit; can not post links, LF kind person to fix the link