Its a great time to buy mid end graphics

With the GTX 560 announcement today and AMD announcing price reductions, its a great time to buy a mid end graphics card.

I haven't seen much pricing yet this morning on the GTX 560, so far a galexy card at 257 and MSI's Twin Frozr at 262, but that will likely put reference cards in the 240's.

AMD has announced these prices:
Radeon HD 6870 1 GB: 189.99€, $219
Radeon HD 6950 1 GB: 225.00€, $259
Radeon HD 6950 2 GB: 239.99€, $269~289


The GTX 560 is following the recent trend by nVidia and AMD to re release the previous generation parts with some minor tweaks. While AMD seemed to focus on power savings and efficiency by cutting out parts of the GPU, the leaked data so far shows that nVidia has pushed clock rates higher on its 114 core (which is basically a 104 core from the GTX 460, but with everything enabled and functioning), yeilding ~20% performance improvements.

AMD has released the HD 6950 1GB varient specifically to be compedative in the GTX 560 price range. I can't wait to see some in depth reviews and comparison of these cards.

If you've been waiting a while to buy a new graphics card like I have, the next week should be vary interesting as all the 3rd party manufactures get their cards on the market and reviews start popping up.

Do you know when these prices will be available? I almost click on purchase 2x6950 at $300, i would love to save $100.

Supposedly today. The GTX 560 cards are on newegg now. On the AMD cards the price drop will probably be via rebates, but after a while they should go away the selling price will drop.

I've been reading a bunch of reviews of the GTX 560 this morning and they all seem neither excited nor disapointed. Saying it is coming in right between the 6870 and 6950 both performance and price wise. I take that as a good thing though. There is a ton of competition in that market now where there wasn't a week ago and as a direct result AMD had to drop their prices. Competition is awesome.

Things may improve over the next couple days/week though since every manufacture has their GTX 560's out yet.

Cool, i'll wait then. What are u gonna get? Any recommendation for a 3 screens setup?

I have no recommendations for multicard setups. Currently I'm torn between the GTX560 and 6870. Whichever I choose I'll likely get either the Gigabyte OC or Asus DirectCu version. I'll probably wait a few more days for the dust to settle and more reviews to come out that compare some of the nonreference designs.

I just ordered the msi twinfrozr GTX 560. newegg.com and newegg.ca both have them for $249.99.

hUMANbEATbOX said:

I just ordered the msi twinfrozr GTX 560. newegg.com and newegg.ca both have them for $249.99.

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Do you know how do behave in a 3 display setup? I couldn't find any benchmarks running sli and 2d surround...

I have to admit that I have been waiting, not so patiently for the new cards to come out. I have been looking and looking but have no idea which is better. We have the 560, the 6950 and 6870 but none show any relevance to each other. I am not into graphics cards at all but I do feel like my 8800GT is getting a little dated. I don't know how to compare stream processors to processor cores and then there is the shader clock verses the memory clock. Even the reviews that try to show FPS's in different games can't really show a clear winner for all around best even just between the ones mentioned. I am going to find one somewhere in the two to three hundred dollar range but I get a headache every time I look and try to compare them. I like AMD and would prefer that they get my money but I don't want to get any less performance for my money either. I like the Gigabyte's fan designs but not the warranty. I can get any of the mentioned cards for about 30 dollars difference and all have varieties for 299.00, Imagine that.

Please post what you end up getting and why, so maybe I can make up my mind.

DaveHCYJ said:

I'll probably wait a few more days for the dust to settle and more reviews to come out that compare some of the nonreference designs.

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All the 560's I've seen to date, are all nonreference, unless nvidia stopped putting their logo on the boards.

shadowdr, i got the 560 because of the cuda and the video editing it can do in adobe premier. if i didn't care about that I probably would have gone with the 6950 2gb and flashed to a 6970.

that said, even without considering video editing, once overclocked the 560 can match a 570 in lots of cases, and beats out non-oc'ed 6970's for the most part. I really don't think you can go wrong with any of these cards so if you like AMD, grab something from them for an amount you are willing to spend and call it a day. GL!

anhikilator said:

Do you know how do behave in a 3 display setup? I couldn't find any benchmarks running sli and 2d surround...

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well one card won't do 3 displays on its own. you need 2 for that.

I'm not sure what you mean by 2d surround, if you just mean desktop stuff, ie no gaming, then you don't need SLI for that. you could grab a 560 and any other card, or one of the AMD cards. i think they will do 3 displays with one card, someone correct me if i am wrong.

shadowdr said:

I have to admit that I have been waiting, not so patiently for the new cards to come out. I have been looking and looking but have no idea which is better. We have the 560, the 6950 and 6870 but none show any relevance to each other. I am not into graphics cards at all but I do feel like my 8800GT is getting a little dated. I don't know how to compare stream processors to processor cores and then there is the shader clock verses the memory clock. Even the reviews that try to show FPS's in different games can't really show a clear winner for all around best even just between the ones mentioned. I am going to find one somewhere in the two to three hundred dollar range but I get a headache every time I look and try to compare them. I like AMD and would prefer that they get my money but I don't want to get any less performance for my money either. I like the Gigabyte's fan designs but not the warranty. I can get any of the mentioned cards for about 30 dollars difference and all have varieties for 299.00, Imagine that.

Please post what you end up getting and why, so maybe I can make up my mind.

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Like you said the cards sort of trade blows in FPS depending on the application, but really blows isn't the best word because the differences aren't huge. The price differences aren't huge either. Really any card at any price is a good choice, because the competion between AMD and nVidia is so strong right now. If you're looking for a good warrenty then look at the EVGA 560. EVGA has an outstanding warrenty policy; I believe it has the reference cooler, but fortunately the reference cooler has gotten pretty good reviews for being quiet and the 560 in general doesn't run very hot. If you're an AMD fan then go with XFX for their lifetime warrenty and just pick a price point (6870 or 6950).

DaveHCYJ said:

Like you said the cards sort of trade blows in FPS depending on the application, but really blows isn't the best word because the differences aren't huge. The price differences aren't huge either. Really any card at any price is a good choice, because the competion between AMD and nVidia is so strong right now. If you're looking for a good warrenty then look at the EVGA 560. EVGA has an outstanding warrenty policy; I believe it has the reference cooler, but fortunately the reference cooler has gotten pretty good reviews for being quiet and the 560 in general doesn't run very hot. If you're an AMD fan then go with XFX for their lifetime warrenty and just pick a price point (6870 or 6950).

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Currently, the only company using the reference 460 coolers, is Zotac. This card:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500190


The EVGA is a "redesigned" cooler, for memory and vreg, if I'm not mistaken, and is similar to the reference 460 coolers.


I've yet to see a "reference" 560 yet.

It might not be, but it sure looked a heck of a lot like it.



I thought the majority of the cards evga made were reference designs, maybe with small tweaks.

It might just be.. but I thought all reference boards had to say "nvidia" on them.. ?

The EVGA does use, what appears to be, the same 560 reference cooler:

Well I think a true reference board would say nvidia on it, but manufactures are free to pick and choose what they want to use from the reference design. Some use it exactly and slap on their own sticker, some might replace just the cooler, some add extra power phases. Its an R&D trade off cost for everything they want to disign on their own vs just using a "reference design".

hUMANbEATbOX said:

well one card won't do 3 displays on its own. you need 2 for that.

I'm not sure what you mean by 2d surround, if you just mean desktop stuff, ie no gaming, then you don't need SLI for that. you could grab a 560 and any other card, or one of the AMD cards. i think they will do 3 displays with one card, someone correct me if i am wrong.

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It is my understanding that 2d surround is when you play video games on 3 screens with resolutions like 5760x1080 or 5760x1200 but I might be naming it wrong, anyways, like eyefinity in ATI world.

Knowing that, I was trying to ask... how can I compare 2 x 560 (2gb) in SLI vs 2 x 6950/6970 to get a good frame rate in the previous mentioned resolutions?

I need to buy 2 video cards soon (heading back to argentina and it's really expensive down there) so I'm trying to get the best I can afford and trying to make it last between 1.5 and 2 years as my 295gtx did.

ahh, that would be 3d surround as nvidia calls it or eyefinity in the AMD world.

2d means two dimensional, so that'd be desktop stuff.

i don't know a whole lot about those setups to be honest. i do know with NV, you need 2 cards, with AMD it might be different. hopefully someone else with more knowledge on the matter can chime in.

hUMANbEATbOX said:

ahh, that would be 3d surround as nvidia calls it or eyefinity in the AMD world.

2d means two dimensional, so that'd be desktop stuff.

i don't know a whole lot about those setups to be honest. i do know with NV, you need 2 cards, with AMD it might be different. hopefully someone else with more knowledge on the matter can chime in.

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I know i will need 2 cards but I will buy 2 anyways being that nvidia or ati.

I was confused with the 3d terminology since I won't be playing in 3d, but i think that's called 3d vision (maybe).

Anyways, I want the most of my money so waiting for some ppl to comment...

if you aren't playing 3d games, what are you going to be doing with the 3 monitors? any games at all? if not, you can get just basic cards if it is just photo editing/video editing, web browsing etc.