New graphics card

[Deleted]

My graphics card just died, but i'm unsure what to get as a replacement, an AMD 6850 with 2GB of GRAM, or the 6870 with 1GB of GRAM
What are peoples thoughts on the matter?

[Deleted]

It depends - what resolution are you running at? The 6870 will be faster overall and will handle 1920x1200 just fine.

[coldfiredragon]

I don't like AMD cards. I would recomend a Geforce 550Ti

[Deleted]

I'm running at 1920x1080.
Would the 6870 perform better overall?

[Milkshake86]

My graphics card just died, but i'm unsure what to get as a replacement, an AMD 6850 with 2GB of GRAM, or the 6870 with 1GB of GRAM
What are peoples thoughts on the matter?

6870 is plain and simple a more powerful card than a 6850. Now if your in excess of 1920x1080 or playing like battlefield 3 you may want more Vram.

I don't like AMD cards. I would recomend a Geforce 550Ti

Your opinion in the I like and dislike are unfounded, I personally doubt you have any experience w/ AMD and probably very little w/ Nvidia. 550ti is a subpar card for gaming and I do not mean like a little behind the 550 ti is a propped up movie card.

[Deleted]

According to this, the 6870 is quite a bit faster than the 6850.

Other more specific charts are available here.

[CookiesRawr]

6870 is plain and simple a more powerful card than a 6850. Now if your in excess of 1920x1080 or playing like battlefield 3 you may want more Vram.



Your opinion in the I like and dislike are unfounded, I personally doubt you have any experience w/ AMD and probably very little w/ Nvidia. 550ti is a subpar card for gaming and I do not mean like a little behind the 550 ti is a propped up movie card.

The fact is he's right. AMDs driver situation has just gotten worse and worse. Saints Row 3 was released as 'Optimised for ATI' they didn't have crossfire drivers out for a couple of weeks post launch. They're still having problems with Skyrim crossfire. ATI were good once but now It's just becoming sad.

[Milkshake86]

The fact is he's right. AMDs driver situation has just gotten worse and worse. Saints Row 3 was released as 'Optimised for ATI' they didn't have crossfire drivers out for a couple of weeks post launch. They're still having problems with Skyrim crossfire. ATI were good once but now It's just becoming sad.

Your fact's are in correct. In fact your fact's are one sided. Neither sli nor cfx are perfect both have severe issue's with some games and none in others. At the 1 to 1 level nvidia and amd are fairly even. 580 trumps the 6970 as the best single gpu card but not by enough to say ATI is shit, and the 7970 crush's everything out atm. It literally takes a dual gpu or dual card setup to take down a 7970.

[CookiesRawr]

Your fact's are in correct. In fact your fact's are one sided. Neither sli nor cfx are perfect both have severe issue's with some games and none in others. At the 1 to 1 level nvidia and amd are fairly even. 580 trumps the 6970 as the best single gpu card but not by enough to say ATI is shit, and the 7970 crush's everything out atm. It literally takes a dual gpu or dual card setup to take down a 7970.

Comparing ATI's top end, new generation card to anything Nvidia has out at the moment doesn't even make sense. When Nvidia's 600 series comes out you can do your comparing. I never said SLI, Infact I run Crossfire myself, It's a total nightmare at times. You can not, in all honesty, say that ATIs performance this year with driver updates and the speed at which they were delivered (And the fact most of them never seem to do what they are meant to do) is comparable to Nvidia's.

Your house will burn down with a Nvidia card but you won't be able to play any games at release on an ATI one.

[Milkshake86]

Comparing ATI's top end, new generation card to anything Nvidia has out at the moment doesn't even make sense. When Nvidia's 600 series comes out you can do your comparing. I never said SLI, Infact I run Crossfire myself, It's a total nightmare at times. You can not, in all honesty, say that ATIs performance this year with driver updates and the speed at which they were delivered (And the fact most of them never seem to do what they are meant to do) is comparable to Nvidia's.

Your house will burn down with a Nvidia card but you won't be able to play any games at release on an ATI one.

YOUR ONE SIDED. The problems w/ Nvidia are unknown to you because you don't own one. They have the same amount of issue's, BF3 had more nvidia issue's than AMD. Just stop your clearly not knowledged in this department. Just google Nvidia driver problems, then google ATI driver issue's. It is very clear that the 2 companies are in the same boat. Nvidia can have even more problems because of Physx on the few games that do have it.

[CookiesRawr]

I found it humorous that you know that I've never owned a Nvidia GPU, This is just one machine, I've owned SLI configurations, Nvidia Single GPU configurations and you have to be in absolute denial to say that there is less hassle driver wise with an ATI card. I think you're making it abundantly clear yourself that you have little to none knowledge in this field. It doesn't take an expert to tell you ATI is lacking motivation in driver department. You say BF3 "had" problems with Nvidia, Yes it did, But Nvidia worked fast to resolve these problems while ATI snail paced behind and have yet to reach Nvidia performance in that game.

Let's have a look at some release notes from the latest drivers for each companies.
Nvidia:
Up to 4% in Bulletstorm
Up to 5% in Battlefield: Bad Company 2 with SLI
Up to 11% in Battlefield 3
Up to 6% in Call of Duty: Black Ops
Up to 5% in Crysis 2 DX11 with SLI
Up to 7% in Dragon Age 2 with SLI
Up to 7% in F1 2010 with SLI
Up to 5% in Just Cause 2 with SLI
Up to 5% in Lost Planet 2 with SLI
Up to 4% in Mafia 2 with SLI
Up to 7% in Metro 2033 with SLI
Up to 11% in STALKER: Call of Pripyat with SLI
Up to 7% in StarCraft 2

They've managed to optimise their drivers to get an extra 11% performance out of them. Let's see what AMD have been doing
All required PAL formats are now correctly listed in the Vision Control Center on the HDTV support page.
Playing Dirt2, Dirt3 and Portal2 in DirectX 9 mode no longer causes a random system hang.
Portal 2 no longer displays random screen tearing when run in DirectX 9.
Total War Shogun 2 no longer displays random corruption when played at low in game settings and 2x1 and 3x1 Eyefinity modes.
Playing Lost Planet 2 in Eyefinity mode and Crossfire enable no longer randomly crashes.
Portal 2 will no longer randomly crash when the GPU is switched to Low Power mode.
Running Stalker Clear Sky in DirectX 10 mode in a Tri-Crossfire configuration no longer randomly hangs when in-game settings are set to high.
Tom Clancy Endwar no longer randomly hangs with a pinstripe display.
Playing Enemy Territory Quake Wars no longer generates a random system hang.
Graphics corruption is no longer randomly exhibited while playing video clips using Windows Media Center.
Doom 3 no longer experiences random corruption when Anti Aliasing is enabled.
Crysis 2 no longer displays random flickering when run in DirectX9 mode.
Far Cry2, Dragon 2, Homefront, Stalker: Metro 2033 and Bioshock 2 no longer display random flashing textures.
Left 4 Dead 2 no longer experiences random hangs.
HAWX2 no longer experiences random hangs when navigating in game menus.
Lost Planet 2 and Dragon Age 2 no longer display random flickering when run in DirectX 9 mode.

Oh yes! I love me some DIRECT X 9 FIXES. Seriously, There is still problems in Rage, Skyrim, BF3, Saints Row 3 and they have decided to release some DX9 hang fixes.

I'm not saying ATI is bad in anyway but the fact you are getting your panties in a twisted because I'm being "ONE SIDED" I'm going to blunt here but you have to be dumb to believe ATI are living up to Nvidia driver wise. Although ATI is still giving you the best Price/Performance and their cards and genuinely nice pieces of equipment - They lack in the driver department.

[Masterec]

Why would anyone even try to compare the 550ti vs 6850 or even 6870?
Even the 6850 is 20% faster than the 550ti, not to talk about the 6870.
The drivers may be better on nvidias side, but at this budget ATI clearly wins.

[Milkshake86]

Funny how you list this stuff and I run a 6950 and have never had a driver issue in battlefield 3, nor skyrim Mw3 Mw2 WoW etc etc etc. Always up to date on my Catalyst drivers.

[CookiesRawr]

Funny how you list this stuff and I run a 6950 and have never had a driver issue in battlefield 3, nor skyrim Mw3 Mw2 WoW etc etc etc. Always up to date on my Catalyst drivers.

Are you seriously implying that "LOLS IT WORKS ON MIEN ITS MUST BE FINE FOR EVERY1!!!"?

[Masterec]

Are you seriously implying that "LOLS IT WORKS ON MIEN ITS MUST BE FINE FOR EVERY1!!!"?

Uncalled for and now you just look like a jackass...

[Kaosbringer]

OP: 6870 hands down. 1 GB of GRAM will generally be more then enough and more then that doesn't necessarily offer better graphics.

My preference is to AMD cards purely cause I know how to tweak my drivers so that issue generally isn't a problem. Nvidia has some descent cards, not usually as powerful as current gen AMD ones but have easier to manage drivers. Basically if you want then best get a AMD card and learn how to set it up or plug and play with a Nvidia card, at the expense of some (again not to much) performance.

[shimerra]

Uncalled for and now you just look like a jackass...

Actually it was pretty spot on in what had proven to be a "no you're more biased" argument.

[Milkshake86]

Actually it was pretty spot on in what had proven to be a "no you're more biased" argument.

Accept I have repeatedly said both companies have issue's. Neither is ahead of the other on drivers if you go by a year to year basis. Clearly today AMD could have the worst Drivers out and 2 months ago nvidia could have had the worst neither of these are accurate or researched examples but examples none the less. If im not mistaken it was driver updates that put the 6870 and 6950 ahead of nvidia cards of the same bracket not to recently. How far head well that is a wishy washy argument but at the pricepoint of a 6950 to a 560 ti the performance is quite noticable. That being said a 550ti like brought up is not even in the same category as the OP's question.

[Cows For Life]

That's just your personal bias. I haven't been in the market for a GPU (but I still read about them) and I recall seeing articles about ATI drivers increasing performance quite a bit in games with each revision. You're just being obtuse.

I found it humorous that you know that I've never owned a Nvidia GPU, This is just one machine, I've owned SLI configurations, Nvidia Single GPU configurations and you have to be in absolute denial to say that there is less hassle driver wise with an ATI card. I think you're making it abundantly clear yourself that you have little to none knowledge in this field. It doesn't take an expert to tell you ATI is lacking motivation in driver department. You say BF3 "had" problems with Nvidia, Yes it did, But Nvidia worked fast to resolve these problems while ATI snail paced behind and have yet to reach Nvidia performance in that game.

Let's have a look at some release notes from the latest drivers for each companies.
Nvidia:
Up to 4% in Bulletstorm
Up to 5% in Battlefield: Bad Company 2 with SLI
Up to 11% in Battlefield 3
Up to 6% in Call of Duty: Black Ops
Up to 5% in Crysis 2 DX11 with SLI
Up to 7% in Dragon Age 2 with SLI
Up to 7% in F1 2010 with SLI
Up to 5% in Just Cause 2 with SLI
Up to 5% in Lost Planet 2 with SLI
Up to 4% in Mafia 2 with SLI
Up to 7% in Metro 2033 with SLI
Up to 11% in STALKER: Call of Pripyat with SLI
Up to 7% in StarCraft 2

They've managed to optimise their drivers to get an extra 11% performance out of them. Let's see what AMD have been doing
All required PAL formats are now correctly listed in the Vision Control Center on the HDTV support page.
Playing Dirt2, Dirt3 and Portal2 in DirectX 9 mode no longer causes a random system hang.
Portal 2 no longer displays random screen tearing when run in DirectX 9.
Total War Shogun 2 no longer displays random corruption when played at low in game settings and 2x1 and 3x1 Eyefinity modes.
Playing Lost Planet 2 in Eyefinity mode and Crossfire enable no longer randomly crashes.
Portal 2 will no longer randomly crash when the GPU is switched to Low Power mode.
Running Stalker Clear Sky in DirectX 10 mode in a Tri-Crossfire configuration no longer randomly hangs when in-game settings are set to high.
Tom Clancy Endwar no longer randomly hangs with a pinstripe display.
Playing Enemy Territory Quake Wars no longer generates a random system hang.
Graphics corruption is no longer randomly exhibited while playing video clips using Windows Media Center.
Doom 3 no longer experiences random corruption when Anti Aliasing is enabled.
Crysis 2 no longer displays random flickering when run in DirectX9 mode.
Far Cry2, Dragon 2, Homefront, Stalker: Metro 2033 and Bioshock 2 no longer display random flashing textures.
Left 4 Dead 2 no longer experiences random hangs.
HAWX2 no longer experiences random hangs when navigating in game menus.
Lost Planet 2 and Dragon Age 2 no longer display random flickering when run in DirectX 9 mode.

Oh yes! I love me some DIRECT X 9 FIXES. Seriously, There is still problems in Rage, Skyrim, BF3, Saints Row 3 and they have decided to release some DX9 hang fixes.

I'm not saying ATI is bad in anyway but the fact you are getting your panties in a twisted because I'm being "ONE SIDED" I'm going to blunt here but you have to be dumb to believe ATI are living up to Nvidia driver wise. Although ATI is still giving you the best Price/Performance and their cards and genuinely nice pieces of equipment - They lack in the driver department.

[Mybuddyphil]

My graphics card just died, but i'm unsure what to get as a replacement, an AMD 6850 with 2GB of GRAM, or the 6870 with 1GB of GRAM
What are peoples thoughts on the matter?

Wait until the next set of 7xxx cards are released and save some $$, in my opinion. What do you plan on using the card for? If games, what type? What does the rest of your rig consist of?