Looking for a NVidia card suggestion

[Kohta]

Hey guys,
I have been a ATi fan for a long long time, my last Nvidia card was a Geforce FX 5200 512MB made by XFX (and my worst experience with a video card in history).

Well since then iv'e had a Radeon HD 4770, 4870, 4870x2, 5770, 5870, 5970 and 6870, The 5970 has been overclocked for about or over a year and now i'm getting artifacts in just about every game, it's dying unfortunately, it's not heat, it's had AS5 on it since i bought it and stayed under 70C under all of its loads (max: 100c) I actually just ripped it apart again to try replacing the thermal pads and paste but it gave me artifacts shortly into a Furmark/DX11 render FFXIV, APB to name a few so it's really on it's way out, but i did have it under a harsh OC.

On to the topic, I need some convincing to buy a Nvidia card, i have ran into nothing but Nvidia 'fan-bois' and there attitude has left a bad taste in my mouth, not to mention my experience with the 5200, long story short, it overheated playing FFXI back in 2005 or 2006 and XFX ignored my phone calls and website tickets. My ticket is still pending today in my email notifications.

I'm not looking to drop a ton of money and i won't hesitate to get a Radeon HD 6870 like my wife is currently using since it's proven to do what we want. The entire reason i am looking at Nvidia is to try them out, like i did with Intel's Sandybridge, and love it!

My budget is going to sit around $200 and no more than that, this Nvidia card needs to have a performance equal to or greater than the 6870, and i'm not talking about tessellation and that crap i'm talking pure performance, Final Fantasy XIV is my main stay and i need to know said Nvidia will pull this game at 60fps (mostly maxed out) like the 6870.

I know nothing i buy is going to match the 5970 i have/had for a $200 price range, considering i have over $1000 in this card with shipping.

My 5970 could go at any minute, so it would be appreciated if i could get some valuable insight within a few hours so i can get my order in this morning.

**EDIT: Let me see if i can speed this up a tiny bit, I don't know really anything about Nvidia's performance vs AMD since most benchmarks are stupid line-ups to make the newest card look better, What's wrong with this card? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130685 the Core clock looks alittle slow coming from the ATi line up (The 6870 hits about 1050mhz core with no voltage tweeks) If i can OC that card without voltage increases to atleast 950 Core i'd be happy with it, and as long as it isn't crap. Also what does the "Ti" stand for next to some of these cards?

 

[Krazy931]

i was going to point out the gtx 560 ti would prolly be your best bet for a 200 dollar range my buddy plays on it and has no problems for high fps but idk bout final fantasy i would suggest the msi twin frozr tho they seem to have lower temps

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127565 cost a little more but all in all i think its a much better card and stays cooler but that just might be personal preference

main thing ive notice theres probably more to it but the ti versions run with about 50 more processing cores

 

[EarthDog]

Well, dont let 'fanboys' dissueade you from fact first of all, be it AMD or Nvidia. With that said, it would be incredibly helpful if you listed the resolution you played games at...Assuming 1920x1080+:

A 560 ti, the cheapest one, is $210, over your budget (but a hair better than a 6870 in most games). A 6950 which is a better card by far than the others, is $230...also over your budget. Looks like if thats your hard limit, you should get a 6870.

The 550ti offering is terrible and the 460 1gb loses to 6870.

 

[Kohta]

i was going to point out the gtx 560 ti would prolly be your best bet for a 200 dollar range my buddy plays on it and has no problems for high fps but idk bout final fantasy i would suggest the msi twin frozr tho they seem to have lower temps

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127565 cost a little more but all in all i think its a much better card and stays cooler but that just might be personal preference

Thanks for the input, i had already placed my order earlier this morning since my time was running slim before i had to head to work, so i will recieve it in a couple days, rather than 4-5 (iv'e noticed ording from newegg if i order in the morning i get it MUCH faster sometimes in 1 day.)

I decided to try this card
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500196

It is a 560 ti, i know Zotac isn't exactly the Porsche of the competition from what iv'e read, and i am diving into this OC version knowing of the extremely high heat it produces, but remember i am coming from a Radeon HD 5970 - I don't think heat is going to slow me down, if it proves to be to hot, i will either decide to RMA-Refund and try MSi or looking into an alternate cooler for it, it has a 2 year warantee and the way i game, i will know if anything is wrong with it within a couple of months.

As far as overclocking this card, i will see how it performs first on my set of games, but it seems ideal for this card to reach 2000mhz Shader; 1000mhz Core & 1200 mhz Memory without moving any voltage 's, we will see if that is even necessary first, later down the road i may pick up a second one since my research has also showed these cards have a 95% scale which would put me right around where the 5970 was overclocked.

Here is hoping i made the right decision going with Nvidia after so many years.

 

[Kohta]

Well, dont let 'fanboys' dissueade you from fact first of all, be it AMD or Nvidia. With that said, it would be incredibly helpful if you listed the resolution you played games at...Assuming 1920x1080+:

A 560 ti, the cheapest one, is $210, over your budget (but a hair better than a 6870 in most games). A 6950 which is a better card by far than the others, is $230...also over your budget. Looks like if thats your hard limit, you should get a 6870.

The 550ti offering is terrible and the 460 1gb loses to 6870.

I play at 1920x1080, iv'e downclocked my 2600k from 5.2ghz to 5.0ghz because of heat issues (i felt 80c was alittle to high under a load for my comfort) Most of the games i enjoy or are looking for are built upon the Unreal Engine 3, Nvidia is known to be best at this engine because of it's "CUDA Cores"? or what not since the unreal engine was supposadly designed with this technology in mind.

And having PhysX on board was one other thing that kind of pushed the sell on me, unless i'm mistaken.

 

[EarthDog]

PhysX is fine... saying you play the few games that use it... If thats the case, than 560ti and a slight bump in budget would have to happen (I know you said no more, but just pointing that out. )

 

[Kohta]

PhysX is fine... saying you play the few games that use it... If thats the case, than 560ti and a slight bump in budget would have to happen (I know you said no more, but just pointing that out. )

Final Fantasy XIV, Crysis 2, BFBC2, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, Oblivion -Looking forward to Skyrim, All of these use PhysX either in clothes, movements or the environment, as far as i know, taking some fo the tax off of my processor could have an impact, especially since i will sacrifice some eye candy for AA. I cannot stand see'ing jagged lines.

 

[Krazy931]

all in all that zotac seems like a good card still if you do seem to have heat issues you can always buy aftermarket coolers for it and as for playing anything with unreal engine "big epic fan" they build with nvidia tech and UE3 was built using the gtx 500 series cards

 

[Kohta]

all in all that zotac seems like a good card still if you do seem to have heat issues you can always buy aftermarket coolers for it and as for playing anything with unreal engine "big epic fan" they build with nvidia tech and UE3 was built using the gtx 500 series cards

Great, glad to hear that confirmation. How do you guys feel about the Zotac brand? In the ATi world are they somewhere around the Sapphire or HIS quality? Aboutt he only thing iv'e read is "It's not my first choice" or "They use 'ok' parts but to pricey for what they are" more or less, and that makes me uneasy, i didn't have much choice and the Ti seemed like a good $20 more investment.

 

[Krazy931]

personally ive never used zotac in my life reason being people say they get pretty hot under load but again if you like the card and it does go above you comfort zone in heat they do sell aftermarket vga coolers or you can liquid cool the whole system

 

[Theocnoob]

Final Fantasy XIV, Crysis 2, BFBC2, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, Oblivion -Looking forward to Skyrim, All of these use PhysX either in clothes, movements or the environment, as far as i know, taking some fo the tax off of my processor could have an impact, especially since i will sacrifice some eye candy for AA. I cannot stand see'ing jagged lines.

Oblivion? Oblivion uses Havok. 100% for sure. Almost 100% certain that BFBC2 uses Havok also.

personally ive never used zotac in my life reason being people say they get pretty hot under load but again if you like the card and it does go above you comfort zone in heat they do sell aftermarket vga coolers or you can liquid cool the whole system

Brand makes no difference in temp. It depends on the cooler. A reference Zotac card of type X (say 560Ti) is the same as any other reference card.

 

[Bobnova]

Why not RMA the 5970?

 

[EarthDog]

I dont think any of those games use PhysX... Here is the hardware PhysX support list from Nvidia...

http://developer.nvidia.com/physx-games

 

[Kohta]

Why not RMA the 5970?

Because not only have i changed the BIOS several times on it and i don't have the original BIOS, but i have overclocked the crap out of it (1000mhz/1400mhz) and i have opened it, i could find the original BIOS and what not, but i'm not the type to abuse RMA services, beyond that i have had it for a long time so i would have to go through Sapphire to RMA it, it's just way to many jumps and hoops to go through for a card that could get to them and they see AS5 all over it and send it back wasting both of our time.

I'm not sure what to say about that list of games featuring "PhysX" because there are options for some of the games i listed to turn PhysX on or Off, in FFXIV for example, the clothing, hair and movement will no longer sway or be as smooth, Metro 2033 on the other hand i owned but i really dislike that game, it looks great but far to scripted for my pleasure. Lastly, the BFBC2 game is ran with the Frostbite Engine, which also has a PhysX in buildings breaking apart and items int he environment effected by explosions and such.

 

[EarthDog]

Frostbite engine does not support PhysX.

No idea on FFXIV... though a quick google search shows, like BFBC2 it uses its own type of Physics calcs.

Please note PhysX is nivida hardware while Physics is something different.

 

[Kohta]

Frostbite engine does not support PhysX.

No idea on FFXIV... though a quick google search shows, like BFBC2 it uses its own type of Physics calcs.

Please note PhysX is nivida hardware while Physics is something different.

Ok, i think i understand, basically a simulated effect? "Turn left, flow right/resistance" type of thing? Like vindictus and it's Source engine, but what confuses me is the results from games like Final fantasy XIV and Vindictus, breaking barrels or flowing hair and clothes all have different reactions under the same pretense, let me try to make sense of that.

If you move left, the hair flows right and is effected by each movement, but the hair will never flow the same twice (Such as in FFXIV)/ or / Vindictus, breaking things within the stages, they never land in the same place, or break in exactly the same way.

Don't get me wrong, i'm not trying to argue, i'm just trying to understand it so i can explain this to someone someday, because as far as i'm concerned the CPU rendering PhysX and the Nvidia cards rendering PhysX are identical.

Update- Also the card was shipped 1 hour ago - that's what i was talking about, it will most likely be here tomorrow or the day after coming from TN (i live in North Carolina) - Once i get it i can use this thread to post benchmarks and my unbiased "review" of the card against the 6870 i am currently using, for those interested. The 6870 is running at the same clocks 950/1150mhz as the Nvidia card that is on the way.

 

[jameseboy]

For the longest time i too was an ati fan, so much so that my last nvidia card was a geforce 6600gt, which i had to rma not once, not twice, but three bloody times! so after that i only bought ati cards, i owned an x1400 Series, an x1950 PRO, a 3850, a 4850 and worked with 4870's often. It wasnt untill i burned my 4850 out and had no money that i bought a 2nd hand MSI GTX460 from a member on OCF, and it was the best move ive made, sure i only game on a 1280 X 1024 resolution, but when it comes to games such as Modern Warfare 2 and BFBC2, the 460 is just amazing.

It has changed my mind for sure about Nvidia cards.

I will add, that if you plan to fold, then Nvidia cards will destroy ati cards. Seen as according to an article i read, the gtx460 can produce more PPD than the ati radeon hd 6990.

 

[EarthDog]

Ok, i think i understand, basically a simulated effect? "Turn left, flow right/resistance" type of thing? Like vindictus and it's Source engine, but what confuses me is the results from games like Final fantasy XIV and Vindictus, breaking barrels or flowing hair and clothes all have different reactions under the same pretense, let me try to make sense of that.

If you move left, the hair flows right and is effected by each movement, but the hair will never flow the same twice (Such as in FFXIV)/ or / Vindictus, breaking things within the stages, they never land in the same place, or break in exactly the same way.

Don't get me wrong, i'm not trying to argue, i'm just trying to understand it so i can explain this to someone someday, because as far as i'm concerned the CPU rendering PhysX and the Nvidia cards rendering PhysX are identical.

Update- Also the card was shipped 1 hour ago - that's what i was talking about, it will most likely be here tomorrow or the day after coming from TN (i live in North Carolina) - Once i get it i can use this thread to post benchmarks and my unbiased "review" of the card against the 6870 i am currently using, for those interested. The 6870 is running at the same clocks 950/1150mhz as the Nvidia card that is on the way.

PhysX = Nvidia

Physics effects NOT PhysX supported are handled by the CPU and appear the same.

You cannot compare an Nvidia card to an ATI card by clocks, there is sooooooo much different that its apples and peas its so different.

 

[Kohta]

PhysX = Nvidia

Physics effects NOT PhysX supported are handled by the CPU and appear the same.

You cannot compare an Nvidia card to an ATI card by clocks, there is sooooooo much different that its apples and peas its so different.

That's what i'm not understanding as a whole i guess, why is Nvidia's 950mhz differant from ATi's 950mhz?, when a program begins to demand something to be done in xxx amount of speed, to the program a mhz is a mhz, let's say apple's and oranges, they both look and taste different yes, but they are both round and nearly the same in size, what my assumption is, they will also roll when pushed at about the same speed since they have the same mass and equal force, the orange (being the Nvidia) may roll slightly longer over a course plain because it has assistance (PhysX cores).

 

[EarthDog]

Thats a bad assumption... like I said apples and peas.. not even in the same ballpark. HOW AMD and Nvidia cards get things done are different. Look at the number of CUDA cores on Nvidia is MUCH lower than the Stream Processors on AMD cards.

PhysX is handled with the same CUDA cores that graphics use on Nvidia cores so it wont roll slightly longer as you put it.

Fermi architecture.

AMD architecture.