Can't decide...

P

Proteos

Gawd
Joined
May 28, 2008
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I am in the process of putting together a new build and cannot decide on what card to get. I intend to game on 1920 by 1200. I certainly don't want to drop 650 on a GTX 280, so the 260 looked like a good buy. Now the 4870s are out. Price wise the 4870 is obviously a better buy But in terms of quality... well, I feel that the companies that manufacture nVidia cards are much more reliable, not to mention BFG and eVGA offer step-up programs.

Can anyone offer some insight? Would you personally buy a 260 or a 4870... and why?
 
4870.
Why? Because it's faster. And it's cheaper.

The "lack of quality" you mentioned is just a state of mind because ATI has made shit products for so long. In terms of reliability and build, the cards are fine.
 
That's a good question. I tend to favor customer service"extras" like lifetime warranties and step up programs especially since the performance of the upper end cards such as the GTX 280, GTX 260 and the 4780 are pretty close to one another in most games. This time, since I have extra money to burn (and a step up :) ), I am going for a GTX 280!
 
The step-up programs are pretty nice (provided you upgrade fairly often, they usually have time limits). I don't think the ATi cards really have any worse reliability than Nvidia cards overall though (there are always certain manufacturers/partners who are bad of course). I haven't had any reliability problems with my 8500LE, 9700PRO, X850XT, or my new 3870.

My brother had problems with Sapphire (Radeon 9700s) cards in the past though (one card died, he RMAed it and the new cards fan died). A friend of mine also had problems with his MSI Geforce4 Ti4600, but none of my other friends had any Nvidia (or ATI for that matter) cards die.

I think a lot of ATIs "poor reliability" reputation comes from their past. Awhile back (like 7+ years ago) they did have some major reliability problems, but it was more driver problems than hardware. Certain games would flat out crash your computer because of their crappy drivers, but they have greatly improved their drivers since then.

I'd personally go with the 4870 over the 260 (at least at current prices), but I don't upgrade often enough to make use of a step-up program. The 4870 is $100 cheaper too, and I'm not sure how much more than $100 you'd get towards a step-up later on? Also, it'll depend what games you play. The 260 is better in certain games, and the 4870 is better in others, so try to keep that in mind as well (the 4870 does seem to be faster in most games though, except at 2560x1600, but even then it's about even)

/RANT
 
It is true that ATI has not performed as well as expected lately, but the latest 48xx is a different beast alltogether. Just got 4850 and it smokes my old 3870, Iam very happy with the upgrade.

About the realibility, I think this is just a attitude/mind matter as I have been using ATI cards in home machine for over 6 years or so and not single one has failed on me. Both companies have bad apples so to speak, but generally they build equally reliable cards imho. Then there are some series that have been found to fail more often than others, but thats a discussion for other topic.
 
Proteos said:
I am in the process of putting together a new build and cannot decide on what card to get. I intend to game on 1920 by 1200. I certainly don't want to drop 650 on a GTX 280, so the 260 looked like a good buy. Now the 4870s are out. Price wise the 4870 is obviously a better buy But in terms of quality... well, I feel that the companies that manufacture nVidia cards are much more reliable, not to mention BFG and eVGA offer step-up programs.

Can anyone offer some insight? Would you personally buy a 260 or a 4870... and why?
Click to expand...

Damn man, I'm interested in responses to this thread. I'm heavily in the same boat.

I'm kind of a nVidia fanboi...mostly had nVidia cards. And eVGA rocks, everybody knows that.

But the 4870 is basically equivalent except in AoC.

4870 runs way hot at idle, but at load it's about the same.

4870 should overclock OK, so should the GTX 260.

Who knows about drivers for either card and where those will end up.


So where does that leave us? LOL. I guess maybe we should really buy a 4870 unless you play AoC.
 
I onaly had 1 ati card die out of all of the following

Radeon LE
Radeon 8500 (had a bad cap ATi repired it within a week and sent it back, fine ever since)
Radeon 9500Pro
Radeon X1800XL
Radeon 1950Pro
Radeon 3870

4870 is unknown at this time
 
SystematicDestroyer said:
Damn man, I'm interested in responses to this thread. I'm heavily in the same boat.

I'm kind of a nVidia fanboi...mostly had nVidia cards. And eVGA rocks, everybody knows that.

But the 4870 is basically equivalent except in AoC.

4870 runs way hot at idle, but at load it's about the same.

4870 should overclock OK, so should the GTX 260.

Who knows about drivers for either card and where those will end up.


So where does that leave us? LOL. I guess maybe we should really buy a 4870 unless you play AoC.
Click to expand...

Well, there seems to be a new bios out for MSI cards that fixes powerplay ( heat and powerconsumption in idle ):

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=192421&page=12


As for different manufacturers, i think most cards are actually made by the same company, probably flextronics, as long as it is the reference design that is.
Means the sticker on the card, warranty and bundled software are the only things to worry about ;)
 
Price per performance the 4870 looks like a better buy. Either way, I think you would be happy with either one. Both are great GPU's.
 
Strictly "price : performance" the 4870 is clearly not the winner.
That said, the 4870 is still an amazing performer for only $300.
 
UtopiA said:
Strictly "price : performance" the 4870 is clearly not the winner.
That said, the 4870 is still an amazing performer for only $300.
Click to expand...

Uh, in the context of 4870 vs. GTX 260, the 4870 is clearly the price:performance winner.
 
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