Alright, I've been planing on building a PC for some time now and I think I'm about to get enough money to make it happen. But I just can't decide on what graphics card to get. I was set on an AMD Radeon HD 6950 from Sapphire but I saw this rating thing the other day and it had a bunch of Nvidia cards ranked higher than it.

So should I stick with the 6950 or is there a Nvidia card that performs better for a similar price? (~$280)

From my experience, there isn't too much difference between similar ATI or Nvidia cards. You won't really run into a scenario where you bought one card and two weeks later you're like "Crap, I wish I'd gotten the Nvidia/ATI instead".

To answer your question though, if it's a better card for the same price then yeah, get the Nvidia.

Does not matter. You'll find benchmarks where ATI is ahead and benchmarks where Nvidia is ahead.
ATI 6950 HD costs and performs pretty much identical to the Geforce 560 TI
ATI 6970 HD costs and performs pretty much identical to the Geforce 570

You can't go wrong with any of those cards. Just pay attention that whatever card you get has a good and quiet cooler.

I was looking at http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102929 card since the generic sapphire 6950 is out of stock

With a 6950 I'd personally go with a 1GB version and save some money. That additional video memory isn't going to make a huge difference.

This one has a dual-fan cooler, which would probably be nice and quiet:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131389&cm_re=6950-_-14-131-389-_-Product

So the extra GB of memory wouldn't help out when trying to play a game like ME 3 or Crysis 2 on max settings?

EDIT: also should I get a CPU heat sink/fan for a AMD 965 Black Edition 3.4GHz processor? The case I'm getting has two 250mm fans and a few 120's.

It might give you a couple of extra FPS, but it's not going to be a huge difference. The problem is that at some point the GPU can only crunch so much data regardless of how much video memory you have. It's up to you, really, but what it comes down to is that you're getting less bang for your buck by going with the 2GB, IMO. The biggest reason that people have been buying the 2GB version is that many of them can be "unlocked" to being 6970's by flashing a 6970 BIOS. It's a little risky, though.

The flex series are great and worth a purchase.


Actually I personally wouldn't recommend that card. I had exactly that one (but with 2gb memory) and found the cooler to be obnoxiously loud and returned it for a 6970 instead.


If you wanna nickel and dime it, then you might want to go a with a 1gb card. There really only are a handful of games right now that will profit from 2gb, like the Crysis and Metro games.
Personally I did get a 2gb version though, it does make your card a bit more future proof.

Interesting. The coolers on the PowerColor cards have a really good reputation. I'm surprised it was that loud.


It might be. It depends on whether or not the ability to cache more in video memory actually nets you a big FPS boost. Depending on the game most GPUs have a ceiling beyond which they don't benefit much from more video memory. The way I look at it it's about $30 more and it's not going to get you a 10% performance increase in most cases. By the time I hit the $280 point I'd just start looking at 6970's, personally, unless you're going to try to shader-unlock it (which you can't do with the card the OP posted anyway). Really a matter of preference, though. You could get a 6950 with a really nice cooler and 2GB of RAM or drop another $30-$50 and get a 6970. The 6970 is going to get you the most FPS, obviously.

You can't unlock the Flex card, that's why I was originally going to get Sapphires normal 6950 card (the one everyone's buying) and unlock it to a 6970.

I don't think any of you caught my other question up there but should I get a CPU heat/sink fan if the case I'm getting has a ton of air flow (two 250mm fans and a few 120mm fans)?

Me too, I always had Powercolor cards in the past, but was really dissapointed this time around.


Absolutly true, it won't get you anywhere a 10% peformance.



Unlocking to a 6970 isn't possible anymore on the 6950 cards that have been manufactured in the last few months, even on the normal 6950s. You'd have to get lucky to get a card now that is still unlockable.


You mean a fan aside of the stock CPU fan? That's only necessary for overclocking or if you want a silent solution.

Oh alright. And another thing (sorry for all the questions ) but I'm having trouble finding the right motherboard. I pretty much have it narrowed down to http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007625%20600007943%204802%20600007977&IsNodeId=1&name=2600MHz%20Hyper%20Transport%20%285200%20MT%2fs%29, however I cant really tell the difference between most of them.

AMD and Nvidia each have their advantages. If you're planning on playing games that support PhysX, or happen to Fold a lot, or want to make use of NVidia's 3D Vision then NVidia has the advantage. If you want multiple monitor setups (Eyefinity), excellent bang for buck cards, then AMD has the edge.



Finding a reference design card that can unlock these days can be difficult. I have one myself and have done the 6950 BIOS flash to unlock the shaders then overclocked it. The Radeon 6970 BIOS flash method is a risk to me due to different memory timings. The difference is about 5-10% only though. A card like the MSI Radeon 6950 Twin Frozr can actually be overclocked to achieve Radeon 6970 performance these days:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127588&cm_re=radeon_6950-_-14-127-588-_-Product

The 2GB version is very useful at high resolutions...at the very least 1080p resolution (1920x1080). For lower res, you can settle for the 1GB version although it will be fine for 1080p as well.

AS mentioned, CPU HSF if you plan to overclock...otherwise stock fan will be fine.




AMD Phenom chip? Should have went for Intel's Sandybridge if you're builkding a PC at this moment. The 2500K and 2600K destroy everything on AMD's front atm...at least until Bulldozer releases.

Differences between those boards are the features. Number of PCI-E slots, SATA ports, USB ports, VRM phases (matters for OCing), PCI slots, crossfire support, etc. Don't bother with the overpriced Asus Maximus board. The 880G and 890 series chipsets are decent enough. 870 for budget and basic boards. Comes down to the features you want. Again though, you're looking at old technology here....AMD is moving on. Intel is where it's at right now.

Yeah but intel is so expensive

I'm really just trying to pack as much of a punch as I can without going over $1400 and with everything I have now it's going to be about $1350.

I have an ATI Radeon 5870 that I got a couple years ago and its performed great for me. The only thing though, ATI cards with later catalyst drivers have some issue with openGL. In most modern games this shouldn't be a problem but in older games it might. A great example is Duke Nukem 3D running eduke3D - the polymer lighting engine does not work properly due to a wierd memory leak caused by the driver and has terrible performance, and if you try playing with AA enabled the menu screens are white. The same thing happens when trying to play Doom, at least one of the open source engines does that. Maybe they fixed it finally with 10.6, have not installed yet but I doubt it, will be interesting to see how Rage performs since I believe that is being written with openGL.

Honestly, I think you'd get better bang for your buck going with an i5 2500k Intel CPU than springing for the extra 1GB of video memory. It's $30 difference either way between the Phenom II X4 980 vs. i5 2500k or the 1GB vs. 2GB video cards. Spending that $30 ($20 if you don't go with the 'K' version of the i5) on your CPU nets you a newer platform chipset (Sandy Bridge) that dissipates less power and http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/42974-amd-phenom-ii-x4-980-black-edition-processor-review-11.html than you're going to get from the extra video memory...not to mention better overall system performance. Really, though, I think it's worth it just to build your system around a newer platform that's going to be supported longer.

Wait what? You have that much to spend and you're going for the inferior CPU setup?! I've suggested plenty of Sandybridge builds for $700 and up. Just built a $1K setup for my boss that included monitor and SSD and it can max almost all games at 1080p.

You should list the parts you're getting because it sounds like you're overpaying for this AMD build unless you're getting two GTX 580s or some expensive monitor or something. Seriously, with that budget you REALLY should be getting a Sandybridge setup...not a Phenom II one. For the going price of the 2500K, the performance is astounding. Fry's and Microcenter carry them for $180 if you got those stores nearby. Online is low $200s....http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?afsrc=http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/topic/1205585-amd-radeon-or-nvidia/1&EdpNo=7073161&sku=I69-2500K&cm_re=Homepage-_-Spot+08-_-CatId_22_I69-2500K&SRCCODE=LINKSHARE&cm_mmc_o=-ddCjC1bELltzywCjC-d2CjCdwwp&AffiliateID=lw9MynSeamY-a8qrDx6s9gU8CUkS45.7SA has them for $189.99 right now after promo code: AYC33238

As you can probably tell I svck at building computers

http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=14038431 my wishlist with pretty much everything on it. I was wrong about the price though, it's at a little over $1200 right now. But I'm trying to keep it as low as possible as I still need to make a down payment on a car.