NVIDIA or AMD graphics card

Ap0calyps3

Ap0calyps3

New member
My budget: None

Taking out of life-savings: up to R3000

Dilemma: Stick with nvidia, or go amd

Choices:
EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1024MB Price:R2611
or
Club3D Radeon HD 6950 2GB Price: R2782

Now, I currently have an EVGA Nvidia geforce 9600gt ko card, never gave any problems. And might even still be able to run games in the future, but slowly over the past few years, I'm choosing lower and lower settings. It helps to not have a full HD screen, Res of 1680x1050.

Im looking at buying soon. Any reason I should go with the slightly more expensive amd card that has 2gb(im looking at getting a new screen, hd this time, ie 1920x1080 so the extra ram of the 6950 will help for high quality games.)

Im just concerned about the club3d, anyone have opinions of the brand, its not that its an unknown brand, its just that i havnt had any contact with anyone who owns one. Id be happy to settle with the evga, as personal experience shows its excellent quality

Also, any suggestions to go for other cards? The prices of those cards are really my max/ceiling.
Thanks
 
Say the names "NVidia" and "ATi" 3 times each.
Whichever one makes you feel shinier than the other, get that one.

Seriously, nothing wrong with either of those cards.
 
The best would be to do some homework around the performance differences.
I have always been a Nvidia Fan, but AMD is Just as good, better in some aspects.

Look at features vs speed vs ram vs price.
e.g. The AMD has more RAM, but the NVidia has proper PhysX Support.

As for the Branding, I cant say much around the Club3D but eVGA has a very good name and as far as I understand brilliant after sales support.

just my 5c
 
I was in exactly the same situation as you man.

Did a whole bunch of searching (Pricecheck.co.za helped to be honest) before arriving at this solution:

I got a VTX ATI Radeon 6970 for R2954

It's just a teeny bit more expensive than a 6950 AND...
VTX (if you are unsure about the brand) is a rebranded Powercolor product.

PS: Card works like a charm!
PPS: I used to have an NVidia MSI 8800gt <<<Nothing against NVidia, awesome product, just too hot and noisy
 
Nobody can give you a right or wrong answer here. Both cards are decent on their own right and I don't think you'd be disappointed with either. Me, I like my ATI/AMD cards, but have absolutely nothing against Nvidia either. Should you go the Nvidia route, you can keep that 9600 and use it as a physX card! In fact, you could even do that even if your primary card is a ATI as far as I know.

I say determine what the absolute most you can spend and get the biggest card you can.
 
Ap0calyps3 said:
My budget: None

Taking out of life-savings: up to R3000

Dilemma: Stick with nvidia, or go amd

Choices:
EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1024MB Price:R2611
or
Club3D Radeon HD 6950 2GB Price: R2782

Now, I currently have an EVGA Nvidia geforce 9600gt ko card, never gave any problems. And might even still be able to run games in the future, but slowly over the past few years, I'm choosing lower and lower settings. It helps to not have a full HD screen, Res of 1680x1050.

Im looking at buying soon. Any reason I should go with the slightly more expensive amd card that has 2gb(im looking at getting a new screen, hd this time, ie 1920x1080 so the extra ram of the 6950 will help for high quality games.)

Im just concerned about the club3d, anyone have opinions of the brand, its not that its an unknown brand, its just that i havnt had any contact with anyone who owns one. Id be happy to settle with the evga, as personal experience shows its excellent quality

Also, any suggestions to go for other cards? The prices of those cards are really my max/ceiling.
Thanks
Click to expand...


Both are excellent cards for the money realistically they're good for a number of years still.

However they being what they are, there's a more than fair chance that prices may drop further if you're willing to wait another season (that being two or so months). I've always advocated patience and keeping an eye out for that odd special bargain / once-off sale where you can score a still decent card for a lot less.

That said though on the technical front: The GTX 560 Ti can be had for a lot less than ZAR2800 but of course at the standard factory clocks but the word on the street is that it's apparently quite an over-clockable beast and a lot of value can be "unlocked" if you're willing to do so. That said at standard OEM speeds it's not too shabby at all.
Let us not be deluded here, at standard clock rates (not over-clocked) the GTX 560 Ti is about as quick as the much respected Radeon 5870 2GB. Which is NOT something to be sneezed at. Not at all.

The only thing negative thing I have against the the GTX 560 Ti is the huge variety of different clock-speeds and memory speeds that are all sold as much the same thing namely: GTX 560 Ti.
So you have to be careful about which variant you do buy and ensure through research and careful shopping that it's a good mixture of high-speed rated RAMS and upper-binned GPU chips that's actually tangibly faster than the bog standard one. For an example from the same maker (Gigabyte):

There's the more standard clock Gigabyte one: http://www.sybaritic.co.za/store/product_info.php?products_id=54356
Then on the other side of the spectrum there's the Gigabyte Windforce GTX 560 Ti: http://www.sybaritic.co.za/store/product_info.php?products_id=54848

As you can see there' is a "slight" variation in pricing.

and all and everything in between like (for comparison) a more standard OEM variant: EVGA (http://www.sybaritic.co.za/store/product_info.php?products_id=56341)

Whereas with the Radeon HD6950: There's really only one variant at one clock speed and compared to the 560 Ti, the 6950 2GB is performance comparable more to over-clocked variants of the 560Ti than the standard clock-speed variants.

Plus if you keep an eye out, and get the HD6950 2GB version,
(http://www.sybaritic.co.za/store/product_info.php?products_id=56590), you can apparently upgrade the BIOS with an HD6970 BIOS and gain ... oh 90% the performance of the HD6970 as the GPU chip is identical but the RAM is clocked slightly slower:
Google: BIOS upgrade HD6950 to HD6970
(Tech powerup is a good site)


Secondarily the only other issue I see with moving to ATi (AMD whateva) is changing all your drivers from nVidia to AMD/ATi... the time when I made the migration was with WIndows XP x64 (SP1) and in changing my video card I had to basically re-install windows ... twice. Including all games .. Twice. I don't know how it is with Windows 7 / Vista (spit) these days but be aware you might need to prepare for a complete system re-install if you go from nVidia to AMD/ATi or even if you jump so many generations from the nVidia NV90 series chips to the Fermi / GF114 chips.
 
Last edited:
EffKay said:
you can apparently upgrade the BIOS with an HD6970 BIOS and gain ... oh 90% the performance of the HD6970 as the GPU chip is identical but the RAM is clocked slightly slower:
Google: BIOS upgrade HD6950 to HD6970
Click to expand...


Yes can be done

But you had best know what your doing and be willing to risk the fact if the card fails and is damaged down the line you will lose your warranty, so just keep that in mind.

I'd go for the 6950, its a brilliant card with an excellent price, you will not be dissapointed at all
 
I would also go with the 6950, I don't know much about the differences in performance but the extra 1gb video memory won't hurt.
PhysX will only be beneficial if you really care a lot about the graphics as not all games support it.
 
Thanks all for your responses. I have decided to go with the 6950, as it has twice the memory, also, I've been wanting to try out an amd gfx card, and had my eyes on whats happening for years now. Seeing as its time for an upgrade, this is where I will pitch in.

Also, I don't mind the format/reinstall, I used to do it allot(almost monthly) due to lanning allot back in highschool.

On another note, I can't believe I didn't think of using the 9600 as a dedicated physics card, will definitely look into it, meaning I also need to make sure I have 2 pci-e slots for my next cpu/mobo/ram upgrade. It wont hurt, until then, to have it waiting in my old rig stuffed in a cupboard to turn it into a spare lan machine.
 
Use DriverSweeper to remove the old nVidia drivers.

Install -> Reboot into Safe Mode -> Click nVidia -> Clean -> Reboot PC -> Install ATI Drivers -> Reboot -> Done.
 
The cards are very close...

1298503442cm6y73vrSf_2_1.gif


That said, in different games they perform quite differently... the radeon usually achieving nice maximums but min and averages are usuallly lower...

At this level card, the ram on the card doesn't make any difference really... you would need eyefinity/3d surround to see any problems with ram.
 
Hey Apoc

Got something really snazzy for you

If your card has a dual Bios liek the one in this vid i suggest you flash that 6950 to a 6970 and unlock those shaders

with a dual bois you run little to no risk

here's the vid, check it out

 
correct

if you have a dual bios then its really worth the risk....

that and a tiny bit of oc'ing and you'll have a full blown 6970

Personally i would only risk it if the card indeed does have a dual bios...
 
although physx is rarely used and while it's nice i don't see the benefit.

nvidia user here btw
 
I have used both and must say they all the same, it just depends what is out at the time of my purchase for the best bang for my buck.
 
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