A Graphics Card question...

[KaosuHamoni]

Which is better? The Sapphire HD 5850 vapor-x or EVGA NVIDIA GTX 470 SC
They both are about the same price, the 470 has 1.2GB of VRAM, while the HD 5850 has 1GB.

Here are some links:

HD 5850:
http://www.sapphiretech.com/presentation/product/?leg=&psn=000101&pid=320

GTX 470:
http://www.evga.com/products/moreInfo.asp?pn=012-P3-1472-AR&family=GeForce%20400%20Series%20Family&sw=

 

[Cpt. Red]

According to Toms Hardware the GTX 470 outperforms on almost every benchmark test.

 

[Zacharine]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-5850,2433.html

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-480,2585.html

Based on these, I'd say the GTX 470 is slightly somewhat more powerful, but also likely more expensive of the two. Not that big of a surprise, the GTX 470 is based on architecture more recent than the powerhouse called HD 5850 is.

Besides, It's not like you need to spend even half of their nominal price to get top of the line graphics in any game currently out there. So either way, you'll definately be future-proof for 3-5 years at least. Both cards are definately good.

Snip

 

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

I would say Radeon, less prone to heating, and less power hungry from what I hear.

Seriously though, put alot of consideration into the warrantees being offered by each(this will vary from brand to brand, as well as from model to model), GPU's often die...

 

[Signa]

I'm coming to the end of the life of my first Nvidia card, and I have to say I have no desire to go back to AMD/ATI. The few times I've used PCs with ATI cards since I've been disappointed with some of the visual issues that have cropped up. It was only a few weeks ago where I went to a friend's house and played a marathon of Borderlands, and the guy with an ATI card starting having some weird issues. It was like the haze shader on the screen had some square holes cut in it, and the edges of those squares glowed weird. His was a top of the line card too, so it wasn't some knock-off piece of junk. It was actually a known issue with ATI cards and long sessions of Borderlands.

I'm starting to see ATI as the high-powered budget card that may have some problems when you least expect it to. If you can find the 470 (which is the next card I hope to upgrade to) for the same price as the ATI card, go for it. However, I have seen often in the past where the ATI is far more powerful for a lower cost and I find it hard to recommend against that when that is the case. Bottom line is that both work and both work well.