Rur0ni said:
The 4870 is better than the GTX 260 I believe in most scenarios
I absolutely disagree with this, but I can understand how people got caught up in the ATI hype train (and please don't post reviews from back in June, before the 177.41 drivers hit, to prove your point).
As it stands now, the GTX 260 and 4870 trade blows, depending on the game and resolution. I personally believe the 260 has the edge due to more ram, which will be very useful in future titles, but AMD fans will quickly point out that the 4870 excels past the 260 in high resolution situations (think 1920 x 1080 and above) where 8x AA is applied. Fair enough, even though I'd like to point out that your average pc gamer won't be playing at that resolution and probably doesn't even have a rig that compares to whatever rig Anandtech (or Toms or Guru3D) was using when doing the benchmarks.
On a similar note, it never ceases to amaze me how these sites get by without doing in depth CPU scaling tests, and how consumers make their purchasing decisions based on a review which very likely uses a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT system than what they have at home.
"But, Chiggs, using an extremely high end CPU really shows what the card is capable of!" Okay, great? Why should I care when my system is entirely different and won't yield the same results? Should I purchase a 4870 HD because it gets 23FPS in Assassin's Creed @ 2500 X 1600 with 8x AA, whereas the 260 only gets 17fps, on a system that I don't have? I don't think so, and I think people that factor their decision on something like that are pretty naive. They probably think they'll get those extra 5fps on their systems, too. Sorry, folks, that's not how it works.
"Gee, Tom is showing that the 4870 outperforms the 260 on his QX9770 system at 2500 X 1600 by a margin of 23FPS to 17FPS. Since I have a Core 2 Duo E6400 and a monitor that maxes out at 1680 X 1050, I'll buy a 4870."
WTF?
"But I'm future proofing!"
:lol
Anyway, back on point. Here are two excellent reasons why someone should consider a GTX 260 over an 4870HD: Overclockability and acceptable thermals. My GTX 260 overclocks like a beast, easily pushing past GTX 280 ranges. And the highest I've seen it go during a game of Crysis was 75 C. Sure, the 4870HD can overclock too, but without a decent aftermarket cooler (and possibly a bios flash), there's a very good chance your thermals will be out of control. Heck, some of the idle temps on the 4870 make me cringe.
Okay, so if you haven't figured it out yet, I would definitely recommend a GTX 260 over a 4870; in fact, it's the only Nvidia card I would recommend right now (that would change if they started selling 1GB 4870's and they were actually available in wide quantities and they didn't cost more than $319.99). For everything else, AMD is the way to go,
