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Is a Radeon 6850 a worthy upgrade from a GTX260 Core 216?

B

Burner27

Diamond Member
Like the title says: Is a Radeon 6850 a worthy upgrade from a GTX260 Core 216? It's been a long time since I used ATI/AMD card and I DO NOT play games. What advantages will I see?

Thanks
 
If you don't play games, what do you want to "upgrade" for?
Only reasons would be more outputs/lower power/lower noise, in which case you might as well get a cheapo $50 card.
 
That generation of Nvidia cards has decent idle power features, so you don't save much even there.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3987/...enewing-competition-in-the-midrange-market/20
You get the ability of 3D blu ray, you can read about it here 6850/70 review.
33247.png
 
I think now is a good time to replace your card. You could still sell the 260 for a few bucks. Wait much longer and it might get totally worthless. The 6850 is as low as $130AR. Pretty good deal and I doubt that even the next gen will offer much more for the same price. You'll get more features, up to date features, better performance, new card warranty, etc... Why not?
 
They are updated monthly. I know this doesn't answer your question (I don't know!) but drivers for both companies are constantly being worked on so no neglect no matter which company you buy from.
 
Burner27 said:
Are the ATI/AMD drivers as good(stable) as the nVidia ones nowadays?
Click to expand...

It's a non issue. Both companies generally offer bug free performance for +90% of the people out there. There are a few who have major issues with either company. I think those people just have major issues themselves.
 
3DVagabond said:
It's a non issue. Both companies generally offer bug free performance for +90% of the people out there. There are a few who have major issues with either company. I think those people just have major issues themselves.
Click to expand...

Such a true statement. I laughed while reading this.. 🙂
 
Burner27 said:
I bought the GTX260 4 years ago when I did game. Now I don't have time to game.
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If I were you, and I did not want to do any gaming, I would not even go through the hassle of switching it out and buying another one. Just leave it as it is.
 
This. If you don't game, then what is the purpose of upgrading to a different gaming card?

I don't game, although at the time I purchased my pair of GTX460 1GB cards, I planned to, hence the purchase of the 1GB cards rather than the 768MB version. Both have the same number of shaders, so for running F@H or other CUDA-based distributed computing projects, it would have been cheaper to get the 768MB cards. Although the resale value of the 1GB cards should be better.

I have used them for F@H last Dec., and they worked really well.

If you don't game anymore, keep your 260, and try running F@H on it instead. Donate some electricity and compute time to science! Make it do something useful, before it becomes obsolete.

AMD is pretty pathetic, points-wise, for F@H, because of a different architecture, and lack of software updates for F@H to properly support that architecture.

Edit: Check out the Distributed Computing forum here on AT, they're a friendly bunch and will help you get set up to crunch with that GTX260.
 
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Burner27 said:
I bought the GTX260 4 years ago when I did game. Now I don't have time to game.
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hate to nitpick but the gtx260 216 has only been out 3 years as of just 3 weeks ago. so unless you you got one on launch then your card is well under 3 never mind 4 years old. 😉
 
toyota said:
hate to nitpick but the gtx260 216 has only been out 3 years as of just 3 weeks ago. so unless you you got one on launch then your card is well under 3 never mind 4 years old. 😉
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Catch up to the code. 😉

"Admiral, if we go BY THE BOOK, like Lieutenant Saavik, hours could seem like days."
 
If you don't game on your GTX 260 then you must sell it and purchase a workstation graphics card, either a GeForce Quadro or an AMD FireGL based card.

No, seriously, unless you want Bluray 3D or HDMI 1.4a support, along with bitstreaming Dolby TrueHD / DTS Master audio over said HDMI output, there is no need to ugprade to any newer video card.

Although, to directly answer your question, the HD 6850 supports DirectX 11 and is a "worthy" upgrade over a GTX 260 at a decent price point.
 
If you don't game, it might be prudent to DOWNGRADE your card. You could sell yours and buy like a 5450 or something similar (can't remember what the 6xxx equivalent is) for less than what your 260 fetches AND you will save electricity each month.
 
toyota said:
hate to nitpick but the gtx260 216 has only been out 3 years as of just 3 weeks ago. so unless you you got one on launch then your card is well under 3 never mind 4 years old. 😉
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Well I appreciate the clarification on the age of my card,but I looked at my invoice and although I was wrong about the age of my card - (Invoice is dated 8/13/2008) the card is over 3 years old like you said. But it is not 3 years old as of three weeks ago.
 
Burner27 said:
Well I appreciate the clarification on the age of my card,but I looked at my invoice and although I was wrong about the age of my card - (Invoice is dated 8/13/2008) the card is over 3 years old like you said. But it is not 3 years old as of three weeks ago.
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perhaps yours is not a 216sp model. I do not see how you bought the card a month before it even came out. the card was released on 9/16/2008 and the NDA was lifted at 12:00 AM on that day. it only takes a few seconds to google that and see that's what comes up. every review including from Anandtech is dated no earlier than 9/16/2008 and even gpureview shows the release as that date too. how you bought a card a month before it was even available for purchase is quite odd. 😕


http://www.anandtech.com/show/2619
 
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TemjinGold said:
If you don't game, it might be prudent to DOWNGRADE your card. You could sell yours and buy like a 5450 or something similar (can't remember what the 6xxx equivalent is) for less than what your 260 fetches AND you will save electricity each month.
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This. Or just leave well enough alone.

🙂
 
toyota said:
perhaps yours is not a 216sp model. I do not see how you bought the card a month before it even came out. the card was released on 9/16/2008 and the NDA was lifted at 12:00 AM on that day. it only takes a few seconds to google that and see that's what comes up. every review including from Anandtech is dated no earlier than 9/16/2008 and even gpureview shows the release as that date too. how you bought a card a month before it was even available for purchase is quite odd. 😕


http://www.anandtech.com/show/2619
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It's a core 216 and I purchased it on the date I indicated. Can't tell you much more than that. I think we beat this horse as much as we can and really isn't important. 😎
 
Burner27 said:
It's a core 216 and I purchased it on the date I indicated. Can't tell you much more than that. I think we beat this horse as much as we can and really isn't important. 😎
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might want to check that receipt again or maybe can you list the exact card? I am guessing yours is just being misreported as a 216sp model which was common right around launch of the 216 model. other than that unless you live in some alternate universe there is no way you bought a card over 1 month before it was even released.
 
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