Tom's Graphics Card Guide: 32 Mid-Range Cards Benchmarked

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Come on TOM's this is not a good review at all. A couple years back when I was in the market for a new Grafix card I look at you reviews and the GTS 250 came out to be the best choice and that was a fair review between Nvidia and ATI, but now I am in the market again and this review does not help me at all. Please fix this asap.
 
[citation][nom]scrumworks[/nom]Geforces dominate benchmarks because we have used 10 variants of overclocked 560Ti cards against stock clocked few Radeons (6950) here and there. And also, we don't show which drivers and control panel settings we have used because that would reveal our trickery. Why is Tom always hating AMD/ATI?[/citation]

Scrum,

The cards that were tested are what our German office has available to them. They don't get NV-based reference cards because Nvidia's Euro group apparently won't sample them. As a result, all of the cards are aftermarket/overclocked boards. AMD, on the other hand, is must better about this.

Now, if you actually read the story, and you actually get to the Efficiency charts, you'll see how poorly the 560 Ti really fares compared to the AMD cards. The power consumption is pretty ridiculous, overall.

So, yes, there are overclocked retail boards here. However, their attractive performance is still tarnished by the pricing and power usage data that we also include here.

Best,
Chris
 
[citation][nom]cangelini[/nom]Scrum,The cards that were tested are what our German office has available to them. They don't get NV-based reference cards because Nvidia's Euro group apparently won't sample them. As a result, all of the cards are aftermarket/overclocked boards. AMD, on the other hand, is must better about this.Now, if you actually read the story, and you actually get to the Efficiency charts, you'll see how poorly the 560 Ti really fares compared to the AMD cards. The power consumption is pretty ridiculous, overall.So, yes, there are overclocked retail boards here. However, their attractive performance is still tarnished by the pricing and power usage data that we also include here.Best,Chris[/citation]

Why there is no performance/price chart ?
 
About the only mid-range graphics cards you tested here are the Radeon HD 6790 and the GTX 550 Ti. You're reviewers, you should know this. Anything from the Radeon HD 6850 and up and the GTX 560 and up is in the Performance market (6850, 6870, 560, 560 Ti) or the Enthusiast market (6950). There's no "Gamers" category, only Performance and Enthusiast.

Disregarding that, good and informative article.
 
[citation][nom]hardcore_gamer[/nom]Why there is no performance/price chart ?[/citation]
I think it would be useless... Prices change pretty much all the time based on the exchange rate. What is now a 30 euro gap, tomorrow may be 15 or it may be 40. Especially the more expensive the card is, the more variance in the price gap will be.

Plus, I find performance per watt is much more interesting.
 
Won't a better GPU imply in higher CPU usage, thus meaning higher CPU power draw? Which would mean higher system power draw, which could mask the results, increasing the best gpus consumption accordingly?
 
When I saw the first benchmark show with those non-reference GTX50 Ti, I stop reading it as I can tell this review is going to be nonsense. And I was right! THG used to be a good site where I come here to read on items I would like to buy. Now it's a bunch of kissing asses just to make the manufacture happy.
Overall it's a bunch of bullshit. No seriously it really is as the stock GTX 560Ti never made it to the recommended charts. A uneducated person will follow your advice, get a standard GTX 560Ti and wonder why the f*ck the card they buy does not perform like they're suppose to.
 
I wonder if HD 5770/6770 is better than GTX 550 Ti. The hierarchy chart from the July "Best Graphics Card for the Money" article says they're on the same tier.
 
Those b@$t@rd$ at nVidia keep becoming bigger and bigger fat peaces of meat from selling their card becoz of cr@p reviews like this one.
They probably paid this guy or He's one old,ugly nV fanboy.
realisticly how can you only put 2 refernce hd 6950 boards gainst
5 non-refernce , overclocked gtx 560 ti's!!!
Tom's should fire you,!!
 
I have to agree that this is a pretty biased review, for a mid-ranged review why is there no price/performance chart. Surely the reason why someone buys mid-ranged cards is for the best price/performance.
Also why only include reference 6950 seeing as the aftermarket 6950 are around the same price.
Shame on you Igor
 
If they'd have overclocked the ATI cards then they would have topped the charts; AMD owns ATI and so Toms doesn't do that. Instead, we get overclocked nVidia cards (and likely unstable after hours of gaming) at the top of most of the charts, actually losing to the stock 6950 in some of the benchmarks, and an artificial result that makes nVidia look good, when really, the truth of it is that they have to be overclocked to compete!
 
This is an informative article if you actually read the content 😛

But yes, I agree that it could be done a bit better. For the price of the frozr hawk 560 ti, you could easily find various overclocked 6950 versions which would be right up there in competing, at least in the US market. A price comparison could be nice too but again, prices change daily and even a $5 difference could be huge. I would more welcome overclocking results.

But in my view, the main thing to get out of this is that the twin frozr cards are excellent in general if you can pay the premium, with smart engineering that actually works. If they had a bit more robust warranties, it would be a no-brainer.
 
Not all of the MSI twin Frozr cards are good. There are several versions for the 6950 and for the 560 Ti and you have check the reviews of the various versions to find the better cards. Some of the different variants of the Frozr are not that great and some of the Frozr cards are ridiculously expensive.

For example, one Frozr 6950 costs nearly as much as a 6970. Now as good as the 6950 is, the 6970 still kicks its ass.
 
It will take me some time to digest all of this, and figure out where the various data is most relevant. I don't think I could choose a card based on this article alone, but I could rule out the HD6790 and GTX550Ti as general disappointments.
I would like to have seen the 1GB GTX460 included, as it is still available, and is a solid mid-range card. At the lower end, I also always welcome more data on cards like the HD6670 and HD6770.
 
Also, I'd like to see at least two more resolution/settings combinations tested, as I believe they'd be common: 720p at the highest possible settings (for those wishing to play games on their HDTVs), and 1920x1080 with "Gamer" settings (for those with larg[er] monitors, possible for work, who also want to play games and are willing to lower their settings.
 
Good comparison. Personally I'd spring for an Nvidia card since you're not under full load all the time; for an infrequent game player like me, a card with efficient idle usage is much more important.
 
So I find this benchmark interesting that I have a 6950 with an AMD cpu and in mafia with max settings I can get a 67 AVG on the benchmark. Now I do have my card OC so thats part of it but it seems that at least for that game the sandy bridge does not have an advantage?
 
Chris please tell me the point of a video card review like this. You have chosen a very narrow scope of cards....I have always said that you all need to show a better range of cards and include previous generation cards for comparison. To me this is an ok review but not really that great. You all can do better.
 
wow this site is very bias. I thought it was a rumor but its true.
32 cards tested and no overclocked/unlocked 6950's? Also, what drivers did you use, because I did not see them on the setup page. WTF?
Did you guys see the "Radeon HD 6970 OC." wtf is that about?! Reference overclocked??

Bye Tom's, you are free from my bookmark bar. Just can't trust you anymore.
 
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