Radeon 4870 VS Geforce GTX 260

[w0tness]

Hi guys! Like many people out there, I would like to know once and for all which card is the best.

Now seeing that you can take price/performance stats and all that stuff into concideration, most people reccomend the Radeon 4870, because its just that much cheaper. Now the question is, if I had the money for the 260, which card must I buy?

I'm especially looking to draw a comparison between the ASUS 'EAH4870/HTDI/512M and the XFX GX-260N-ADD9.
Now the Radeon is quite cheaper than the Geforce, by about $100 - $150, but I hear that the Radeon's performance isnt that much lower than that of the 260 or even the 280.

Another thing that puzzles me, is this GDDR5 AND GDDR3. As we all know, the Radeon has GDDR5 and the Geforce has GDDR3. Now what does this mean exactly? Does it mean that the Radeon will perform better in the long run with games getting more and more graphics intensive? What is GDDR?

Then another factor that is troubling, is that the Radeon is only 256-bit whereas the Geforce is 512-bit. What is the difference between these two factors exactly?

One other thing is, what PSU will I require for each Graphics Card?

So guys, basicly my question to you is, what card would you reccomend if you took into account all the nice and brilliant games thats coming out this year, like FEAR 2,etc.

Thank you very much and I hope you guys can help me and some other people come to an conclusion.

W0tness

 

[hsetir]

Taking into account 'All the nice and brilliant games coming' , I'd say 4870. In few specific games gtx260 leads and in others 4870. The memory type, bandwidth and speed are not comparable for different architectures. Performace benchmarks should be the ultimate criterion for chosing and the majority goes to 4870.
BTW, FEAR 2 is not heavy graphics game and would run maxed out on any mainsteam card of modern generation at medium resolutions.

 

[L1qu1d]

^yup

It uses, the fear 1 engine with updates

 

[avericia]

O the deal with the gddr5 and gddr3 is that ddr5 memory is a newer data rate that can pass more data then the older ddr3 and ddr2. GDDR3 stands for Graphics Double Data Rate 3 that has to do with which part of the clock cycle that the memory uses for a total effective speed.

So the thing with ATI is that they use a faster gddr5 memory on a smaller 256-bit bus (4870-4890) and achieve around the same throughput that NVIDIA gets with gddr3 memory and a 448-bit (gtx260-275) or 512-bit bus (gtx280-285). In the end both techniques achieve around the same throughput, so you can get the speed you need with either faster ddr5 and a smaller memory bus or slower ddr3 memory with a larger memory bus.

Either way I wouldn't worry too much about getting GDDR5 or GDDR3 because the graphics cards makers do a pretty good job at matching up the right amount of memory speed to match what the card needs and as hsetir said "Benchmarks should be the ultimate criterion for chosing"

and i run sli 260 core 216 @666 on a 780iftw with a q9550 and i love the performance at 1920x1200, so my vote goes to the sli 280 if you want really smooth game play and high fps.

Interesting side note

Radeon HD 4350 512MB GDDR2
Radeon HD 4550 512MB GDDR3
Radeon HD 4870 512MB GDDR5

All of these ati models use the same gpu core and the same amount of video memory but on the more expensive models the gpu is clocked higher and they use faster memory to go along with it.

Hopefully this was helpful