Every gamer needs more power and with a new wave of demanding games, including the highly anticipated Crysis 2 coming out soon, which
graphics cards should you think about buying?
AMD and NVIDIA both brought out new lines of DirectX 11 graphics cards aimed at high-end gaming in autumn 2010; let's see how they compare.
AMD dropped the new line of Radeon HD 6000 series cards onto the market in October 2010, starting with the 6870 and 6850 and followed with the more powerful 6970 and 6950. The series offers several new features that should appeal to gamers.
Firstly, Eyefinity multi-display technology, which combined with a Displayport 1.2 connection, allows you to run up to six high resolution monitors at different settings with high definition stereoscopic 3D support.
Secondly, Eye-definition, which provides new forms of anti-aliasing technology to prevent jagged lines appearing in images combined with EyeSpeed visual acceleration, giving hardware acceleration for the latest video codec formats. Finally, Dual-stream HD (1080p) playback support makes up the package. The AMD cards are also the most power efficient for their performance.
NVIDIA brought out the GTX400 series in March, 2010 and followed up with the new GTX570 and GTX580 cards in November. The NVIDIA card features include Physx graphics card accelerated physics; CUDA programmable parallel processing and 3D Vision technology, giving stereoscopic 3D. GTX cards can drive up to three monitors when used in parallel with SLI technology.
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| AMD Radeon HD 6990 |
There are two price points to choose between when considering a high-end gaming graphics card. The GTX460 and GTX470 and Radeon 6800 series cards come in at between £150 and £230 pounds and offer comparable performance and features with the cheaper GTX460 being the slowest of the four and the GTX470 and Radeon 6870 achieving similar 3D mark and FPS scores. NVIDIA's cards run hotter and use more power giving the Radeon cards the edge. For the cash conscious but power-hungry gamer the Radeon HD 6870 combines the price, performance and features to make it the best choice.
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| EVGA GTX 580 Hydrocopper II |
At the higher price point, ranging from £250 to £500 we have the GTX480, GTX570 and 580 and the two Radeon cards; 6950 and 6970. Again the feature set is very similar with AMD able to drive more displays and NVIDIA offering Physx and CUDA. The older GTX480 card is still expensive in the region of £300 to £450 pounds and while fast, its heat, cost and power issues make it lag behind the rest. NVIDIA wins in 3DMark and FPS measures with the GTX580 but you pay a premium for this level of power. Unless you must have every last frame the Radeon 6970 gives the best performance at the price. Both top end cards perform at least ten percent better in 3DMark and FPS measures over their lesser brethren making skimping at this level a bad idea.
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| Powercolor HD 6850 Silent |
Both companies continue to push the boundaries with an aggressive release of faster cards but AMD's Radeon series maintain the edge in price for performance. Of course once you have your perfect graphics card a real gamer needs to get everything else just right including the right monitor, speakers and surround sound for the ultimate gaming experience.
Source:
http://www.computerlover.com/computer-hardware/graphics-card/best-gaming-graphics-cards.php
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