Building new Gaming PC / Need advice on Video Card.

I can't decide upon which Graphics Card should i choose... (willing to spend around 400 Euros) I was considering the GTX570 and HD6970 at the beginning but...while searching i saw that HD5970 probably exceeds both of those in performance..
Let me say that i mostly play World Of Warcraft.. but i m willing and going to play all the graphic demanding games most probably. I saw on some graphics card charts about world of warcraft that... 5870 is the best one by far (since HD5970 can't take advantage of its dual core system apparently for the specific game.)

Please throw in some elaborated advice. Thank you in advance...

I would say get a reference HD 6950 and unlock it to a HD6970. No matter which way you go though for WoW any of them will be more than enough and will keep you playing at max setting for a good amount of time. Gaming wise I'd recommend AMD for sheer FPS. If you're going to do any video rendering or anything along the lines of photoshop I'd recommend going the GTX570 route for CUDA.

Agree with the statement above, However What is the time frame of you going to other games??? I ask because if it is like next year or later this year you can get like a cheap 460 or something then get the new 28nm cards that will be out later this year to early next year. That would be a better buy IMO or by that time the 6950s will be significantly cheaper and you could get 2 and be set.

The 2 most graphic games i play are crysis and warhead. Crysis i get about 40FPS on Very High settings and 8x AA.

In Warhead i get about 60-65 FPS on Enthu. with 8xAA.


Both of mine are shader unlocked and clocked at 900/1375 (6970 speeds). They are absolutely AMAZING cards!

Well you just said it yourself that ATI CrossFire does not scale in WOW, right?
I personally would take HD5870 2 Gb version - should be faster than HD6950, judged by the quantity of processors, 1600 VS 1408, and higher core clock of 850 VS 800 MHz. HD6950 just has slightly more memory bandwidth.. Of course HD5870 should be cheaper also.

since cata came out and they overhauled the graphics system, Nvidia is actually the best choice for wow again. Nvidia put a bunch of time and money into improving the performance of there cards in wow.

Pre cata my 5870 was king. Post cata my 460gtx beats the pants off it. The 460 also does it with a much better texture quality at lower settings than the 5870 does. I have since sold my 5870 and only have access to a 5870m. But the difference in performance in 25man raids at 1920x1200 was huge. The 5870 would drop down to around 25fps sometimes on fights like maloriak and cho'gall. 460gtx tended to maintain 40fps or more through those same encounters. (if your unfamilure, Lots of aoe, lots of particle effects, Lots of mobs).

TsunamiJuan said:

since cata came out and they overhauled the graphics system...

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Your posting style is weird, was hard to understand what are you talking..
There are games in my rig, where a GTX280 can beat HD6950, but that does not change anything and your post is generally incorrect - HD5870 is a much better card than GTX460. If you encountered abnormalities, you should not judge by them the difference between HD5870 and GTX460.

Ok so..thanks for the elaboration so far...but let me ask a couple of things. Wouldn't it be better if i got the 6970 hence i m willing to pay the 345 euros it costs anyway...i mean..can't it be also overclocked just like 6950? and thus surpass an OCed 6950?
Also i've seen the latest charts of wow cataclysm (before the release of GTX590 + HD6990 at least) and HD6970 was the top one for wow cataclysm at least...even surpassed the GTX580. reference: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_6950_1_GB/17.html

Also i would prefer to get a new Graphics card now...and simply get a better one when it comes out and tag it along or the same Graphics card even, instead of the older versions u mention. I know and i agree especially on the 6950 part that when OCed it reaches the performance of the 6970 pretty much but well...i don't wanna repeat what i said above

I honestly can't say how well it will perform cause there benchmarks are misleading. They aren't saying where they are testing the cards in WOW.

In town like org on a high pop server and they way they have changed distance drawing and things like that the FPS's are alot higher than they where before. A good example was dalaran, pre cata patching you where doing good if you could maintain 40+ fps looking bank to bank. However you can't test like that anymore cause there is no longer a location that has that high of a amount of population all the time.

I personaly can hit numbers close to or higher than what they show for those cards on there bench marks. But i know that the only places i can do them are not the harshes tests of the game. Those are typicaly raids and or bg's these days. A city no longer pushes the cards to the max. Its the particle effects that use a large amount of pixel shaders that do the most damage to fps. Changing quality wont help the most either with fixing this problem.

So its obviously a big difference between the 100+ they are showing for the benchmark and the actual fps you get under a Raid/pvp condition when you really need/want the higher and more consistant fps. when you go from 100+ fps before a fight starts to 18-25 thats a huge difference.

I am gonna throw in some opinions here at the end. Personaly i have found that the texture quality even at lower settings is quite different between my 5870's and my 460gtx. Not just in wow. At the max settings in a game like Rift for example which can push a graphics card much hard than wow will. The Top end quality is EXTREMELY noticeable, the pixel shaders are vastly superior on the nvidia card, same with non antialiased texture quality and antialiased texture quality. I'll try to get some ss's off my other system for you so you can see this. I happen to like having a higher visual quality level at the same time as having the fps to back it.

Best test for the newer ATI card is really haveing a chance to play on one though. I personaly haven't had a chance to test any of the 6000 series cards yet. Or even a 580gtx at the game yet.

T.N.Tee said:

Ok so..thanks for the elaboration so far...but let me ask a couple of things. Wouldn't it be better if i got the 6970 hence i m willing to pay the 345 euros it costs anyway...i mean..can't it be also overclocked just like 6950? and thus surpass an OCed 6950?

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No one has still answered on this part yet (which i consider quite crucial for my budget ). Can someone please clearify this?