Nvidia geforce gtx 550 ti or Gigabyte radeon 6850?

[Enragedernesto]

Hi guys, I have been researching cards for my build for a while now and I am starting to get impatient these cards are around my price range, and from what i have seen in the reviews they seem like a pretty good bang for the buck. I cannot decide between these two cards. I do not know a lot about nvidia and would like to see if someone could tell me which of these would be better for playing higher end gaming (maybe bf3 on a respectable high/ultra). Thanks for any input, If you know any other cards in this price range that could beat these feel free to say it. However, I would prefer if you could stick to these two. Thanks Again 😀 O yea and I probably will get windows 7 in the near future, but i would like to know if there is any way that these could be compatible with any form of linux in the meantime (as I am installing this i am downloading slax killbill to play around with it on my new build. That would be great if these cards could work with it (or any other form of linux) However, I am more interested in just finding out which card is better i dont really care that much about the linux compatibility.

 

[gamerkila57]

an HD 6850 is better than an GTX 550 TI by a good margin ?

 

[Enragedernesto]

Do you know the best website to purchase a 6850 from?

 

[gamerkila57]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102908

 

[motorneuron]

Yes, the 6850 is definitely the better choice. See benchmarks here: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/539?vs=541

I note however that the 6850 is going for about $135 post-rebate. For $15 extra post-rebate, you can get a 6870, which is a substantial upgrade, especially for a game like BF3. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150521 and http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161389 . See benchmarks here: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/539?vs=540 .

You could also consider the GTX 560, which is about $145 post-rebate for some models. It will have slightly better BF3 performance than the 6870 and significantly better than the 6850, though I still think the 6870 is the better overall card.

 

[Enragedernesto]

Wow thanks for the info, that is a really good website to view benchmark comparisons 😀

 

[verbalizer]

spend the extra coin for the HD 6870..

 

[motorneuron]

Wow thanks for the info, that is a really good website to view benchmark comparisons 😀

Yeah, it's a good site for benchmarks, although they can be off by a fair amount for more recent cards because of driver updates.