Great Deal on Video Card!!

Thinking of upgrading your video card?

NewEgg is running this killer sale on the Radeon 5870 right now. I've already got the 5850 Overclocked to a 5870, otherwise I'd jump on this one myself.

Check it out:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102888

I am looking to upgrade again in the next few months, but have always used
EVGA nVidia cards. Have heard of driver and setup problems when using ATI,
which makes me a little leary. Is this the best choice or should I stick with nVidia?

-L2- wrote:

I am looking to upgrade again in the next few months, but have always used
EVGA nVidia cards. Have heard of driver and setup problems when using ATI,
which makes me a little leary. Is this the best choice or should I stick with nVidia?

my new 6870 has no issues what so ever, in fact Wildman has to use 2 460 SLI to get what I get

if you are going to upgrade your cpu as well I would get an ATI, if not stick with Nvidia, I have had no driver issues, yet... but I am not doing crossfire and I think that is where most of the issues are with drivers.

I have a 4870 if someone is interested!

From experience, I've never had any driver or other issues with ATI. I had a friend that bought a 5870 from new egg (it was a different brand than this one I posted), and his MoBo didn't like it for some reason; he just simply returned it to new egg and exchanged it for a different brand and it's fine now. That's the only issue I can think of.

The 5870 was THE card to have until they recently came out with the 6800 series. It depends on the money you want to spend. 5870 will give you awesome frame rates with all the current games. ATI is ahead of the game right now on vid cards, to be honest, and it used to be the other way around. Like Yonni said, it takes 2 NVidea Cards to match ATI's best cards.

Well, it looks like it's back to original sale price.....I guess that was just a One Day special. Maybe they'll run it again soon.

Poor and late driver support from ATI is why i ultimately switched to Nvidia. But that was a long time ago. Their driver support was like that for so many years that, years afterwards, that reputation still haunts them to this day. People became extremely frustrated because ATI basically snubbed the complaints arrogantly. After losing enough market share over the years, they had to clean up their act. I doubt you will have to worry too much about ATI's driver support anymore. But it's amazing how tarnished a reputation can become from one generation.

One thing I always noted because I used to switch back and forth and run two PC's with both chipsets is, ATI always seemed to have a richer more colorful look, but Nvidia always out-performed them.. Not sure if thats the case still but it was very noticeable in the past.

Yonni wrote:

-L2- wrote:

I am looking to upgrade again in the next few months, but have always used
EVGA nVidia cards. Have heard of driver and setup problems when using ATI,
which makes me a little leary. Is this the best choice or should I stick with nVidia?

my new 6870 has no issues what so ever, in fact Wildman has to use 2 460 SLI to get what I get

if you are going to upgrade your cpu as well I would get an ATI, if not stick with Nvidia, I have had no driver issues, yet... but I am not doing crossfire and I think that is where most of the issues are with drivers.

I have a 4870 if someone is interested!

lets be very clear here:

Both Nvidia and ATI cards kick ass hardware wise.
Ati tends to make cooler running cards
Both Nvidia and ATi DUAL card driver team have serious issues.
Nvidia mutli card driver team is much better than Ati Mutli card driver team.
Nvidia release drivers when games are released.
Ati releases driver WHQLs and Betas once a month.
ATI single card driver team is PERFECT.


Try by all means to run a single card, dont plan or build a system with ("oh i can buy another card down the road")

Dont listen to the hype if you are using a single card use ATI

6970 2g will basically run every game almost maxed out dx11 1920x1200

Anything above 1920x1200 including eyefinity and you start seeing slowdown.

FYI I am running a 2560x1600 on (1) 5870 that I bought over a year ago.
It slows down on BC2 2560x1600 (4 MP) dx11 8xaa everything maxed only on complex explosions, and thats only if your close to them.

I have (1) 5870 for sale best offer.

STEELHED wrote:

Poor and late driver support from ATI is why i ultimately switched to Nvidia. But that was a long time ago. Their driver support was like that for so many years that, years afterwards, that reputation still haunts them to this day. People became extremely frustrated because ATI basically snubbed the complaints arrogantly. After losing enough market share over the years, they had to clean up their act. I doubt you will have to worry too much about ATI's driver support anymore. But it's amazing how tarnished a reputation can become from one generation.

One thing I always noted because I used to switch back and forth and run two PC's with both chipsets is, ATI always seemed to have a richer more colorful look, but Nvidia always out-performed them.. Not sure if thats the case still but it was very noticeable in the past.

Actually steel they still do have issues, TMakedon was moved internally in ATI but most people think its the shitty driver support why he was moved. All or most of the issues are mutli card and x2 variants now.

Rage3d
Guru3d
Hard OCP
and many more forums are filled with x2 and xfire issues.

JermWar wrote:

Well, it looks like it's back to original sale price.....I guess that was just a One Day special. Maybe they'll run it again soon.

Yeah it was a Shellshocker deal. Newegg runs these daily. They will usually have 2 or 3 different items everyday but they only last a few hours. There is generally 1 that runs in the early am, 1 midday, and 1 in the evening.

McKilla76

BTW: You can signup through Newegg and they will email the daily Shellshocker deals plus other specials. Man I love Newegg.

Nimmer wrote:

Yonni wrote:

-L2- wrote:

I am looking to upgrade again in the next few months, but have always used
EVGA nVidia cards. Have heard of driver and setup problems when using ATI,
which makes me a little leary. Is this the best choice or should I stick with nVidia?

my new 6870 has no issues what so ever, in fact Wildman has to use 2 460 SLI to get what I get

if you are going to upgrade your cpu as well I would get an ATI, if not stick with Nvidia, I have had no driver issues, yet... but I am not doing crossfire and I think that is where most of the issues are with drivers.

I have a 4870 if someone is interested!

lets be very clear here:

Both Nvidia and ATI cards kick ass hardware wise.
Ati tends to make cooler running cards
Both Nvidia and ATi DUAL card driver team have serious issues.
Nvidia mutli card driver team is much better than Ati Mutli card driver team.
Nvidia release drivers when games are released.
Ati releases driver WHQLs and Betas once a month.
ATI single card driver team is PERFECT.


Try by all means to run a single card, dont plan or build a system with ("oh i can buy another card down the road")

Dont listen to the hype if you are using a single card use ATI

6970 2g will basically run every game almost maxed out dx11 1920x1200

Anything above 1920x1200 including eyefinity and you start seeing slowdown.

FYI I am running a 2560x1600 on (1) 5870 that I bought over a year ago.
It slows down on BC2 2560x1600 (4 MP) dx11 8xaa everything maxed only on complex explosions, and thats only if your close to them.

I have (1) 5870 for sale best offer.

I have a ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series running at max output and I'm having no problems whats so ever. Its never really the card its more over if your computer can support it. If you have an out of date motherboard then you are to expect technical difficulties regardless what video card you have in. Both Nvidia and ATI have shared a good amount of errors on their cards. But on my end i have never had any problems with ATI. In my opinion I believe its how well is you motherboard built up and how well your processor can support all that power going at it, at a maximum output.