New guy here looking for some input

[TRS]

Hi all, I'm going to be buying a new video card in Febuary.My price range is around $350usd. I have been looking at the radion 6970 cards to replace my EVGA 470. The 7000 gpus are just to much right now. So I have a few questions about the 6970 gpu. I play most game at 1600xxx

Whats a good brand. I have used EVGA and saphire. But never really did anything with HIS,MSI powercolor and such.

Is 2 fans or just one better on these 6970 gpus.

Is my antec TP 650 watt power supply ok.

If there are any other pros or cons about this gou please feel free to chat about it.

My PC>
core i7-975@4.2
ASUS sabertooth x58 mother board
6gb crucial ballistics at 1800+
antec TP 650 watt psu
windows 7
sound blaster titanium sound card
NXZT phantom case

If you need more info please feel free to ask..

Thank you very much

 

[Panopticon]

If you can wait until Feb as you stated then the 78xx series will be out or very close to release and fall within your budget. The 7870 will probably be a bit faster then a 6970 and have much more headroom to overclock. If you don't need the card until Feb waiting would be a great option. 6970 is a solid performer for $300ish but there will be a better option in that price range by the time you are ready to purchase. By Feb I would expect the 6970 to have a nice price drop as well.

 

[Arkadrel]

why are you replaceing a 470 with a 6970? its not a huge step up.

Its like ~30% going by techpowerup, after avging it out in the games he did tests with.

 

[digitaldurandal]

Get a second used 470 and upgrade your power supply. There are going to be a bunch of 470s for sale here for sure soon enough.

 

[96Firebird]

why are you replaceing a 470 with a 6970? its not a huge step up.

Its like ~30% going by techpowerup, after avging it out in the games he did tests with.

He'll probably see a larger improvement at his resolution due to the 2GB RAM on the 6970.

However, I would wait to see what February brings in terms of new graphics cards.

 

[TRS]

Thanks for the kind replies. I'm buying a new gpu for a few reasons. I have had some dislikes about it,with drivers. Plus I try to upgrade my PC each year (usally the gpu). Plus I want to go back to ati/amd/radion. I also will do some card swaping in a couple of pcs here in the house.

The info on the 7870 sounds like a solid plan. Its todays technology.

Do you think the power supply will work?

 

[BallaTheFeared]

He'll probably see a larger improvement at his resolution due to the 2GB RAM on the 6970.

However, I would wait to see what February brings in terms of new graphics cards.

I thought he said 1600x? If so 2GB won't mean anything.

 

[nitromullet]

Wait until Feb to see what's available/coming soon then. Tough to predict the best option at ~$350 that far out right now.

welcome to AT forums!

 

[Panopticon]

Your psu is plenty for a single 7870 prob even two.

 

[TRS]

Thank you all fine folks for the great help. I do have one last question,I should have asked befor hand. Right now I have a Dell ultra sharp 23" monitor 1600 max res. I plan on getting a new monitor/tv. I have a 36" HDMI TV that I play around with,but it does get a little laggy with this 470. By upgrading to a 6970 or 7870 would this improve performance on a TV like I mentiond.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Highest resolution for a TV is 1080p, which again the difference between a 470 overclocked and a 6970 would be minimal in most games. There are some games were the 6970 would excel, and others where the 470 would easily beat the 6970.


1080p doesn't need more than 1.28GB of vram for any game currently, not even in SLI would you need more than 1.28GB of vram.

Have you overclocked your card yet? 470's came with pathetically low factory clocks to make the 480 look better, many can hit 800 to 850 on air with proper case air flow.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I have a 36" HDMI TV that I play around with,but it does get a little laggy with this 470. By upgrading to a 6970 or 7870 would this improve performance on a TV like I mentiond.

By "laggy", are you referring to GPU performance, or input lag? A new card is unlikely to do anything for you if you are referring to input lag. That's just an intrinsic function of your display device and input signal type. Although some TVs have a "game mode", that turns off all display processing, to reduce input lag.

 

[96Firebird]

I thought he said 1600x? If so 2GB won't mean anything.

My bad, thought he meant 2560x1600, since people usually reference the vertical pixel number (ie 1080 or 1200).

 

[TRS]

Thanks you very much for much info on what I didn't know or understand. I am sorry to ask the questions. Now I'm not for sure really what to do. Not that you fine folks have me confused,but more educated. So I suppose what I need to do is exspain what I'm looking for and want to accomplish.

One of the reason I wanted to go back to ati gpus is a problem I'm having with (I'm pretty sure) Nvidea drivers and FSX. I used the 270.61 driver for a good while. As I tried the new drivers beta and regular I would get a stutter/ lag in DX9 mode. I could use the DX10 pevew and this would not happen. After much research It seem I was not the only one with this problem. I tried some fixes but no luck. So I went the other way and did research to see if ATI had this problem,but never found aany. I would go back to the 270.61 driver but the new games like BF3 require the newer drivers.

The second situation that I would like to resolve is with BF3 its self. With my system I run on ultra and I think its 4x aa at 1680x1050 res. (max res. for this monitor). But it seen that the lighting is off some how. Shadows makes it dark in corner and light seems to be to bright. I also (maybe just me) it seems to dusty or partical in the air. I was told this was because my video card was to low in perfomance.

Maybe you nice folks could shed some light on this,about if I should go with a PC upgrade of some sort or new monitor.