WHY!?!?!?!

[Mrrawesomesauce]

Ok well awile ago i was looking at graphics card and comparing price For Performance, and see it doesnt make sence to me what makes a better graphics card because... k well, for example when u buy a processor you would mainly look at Cores, Threads, and speed and features, but the thing is with graphics cards lets Say u have a radeon 6950 the Core Speed is 810 right? well on my old 6770
it was 850 and obs the 6950 is the better card even tho it has a lower speed....

Please elaborate , and i do relize that there other Things to point out such as mem clock and how much vram and fan noise but even then i still see examples of slower cards performing much better then faster Once !?

Thx in advance

[stroyal]

You are right, you can't tell by any of those things.

You pretty much have to check the bench marks, and know the different chip lines.

I can't keep up like Shyguy can, but with a little research, I generally come close to the same conclusion.

First I go to Passmark, for the big picture, then after I get a general idea, I Google for gaming bench marks.

Last I Google for power supply requirements, looking for the Nvidia, or AMDs specs.


PassMark Software - Video Card Benchmark Charts

Passmark is only close, and can be wrong for cards very close to each other, but it is the only big picture, I know of, and it is close enough, to start your search.

[stroyal]

For fan noise, I look for 2 or more fans, and read the reviews.
Look for high performance coolers, instead of reference, coolers.

The New Egg reviews, generally, will have comments, on the noise.

[ShyguyXPC]

its pretty much the same as CPU's. Cores, Clock Speeds, Memory Bandwidth, etc.


---->> Video Card Comparison - GPUReview.com

for the most part.

256bit memory vs 128bit memory, Number of cores vs number of cores (when comparing Radeon to Radeon or Geforce to Geforce)

It gets more confusing when comparing Nvidia vs AMD/ATI cards.

as they build their shaders/cores differently, resulting in vastly more needed for Radeon cards to match Nvidia ones.

[Mrrawesomesauce]

ahhh i see i see, although There sometimes arent an easy way to compare graphics cards i was leaving stuff out when i was looking for reviews,

Anyways thx guys for the Clarification :P

[ShyguyXPC]

its even confusing with in the brand names themselves, Radeon vs Radeon.

take for example the new Radeon 7750,

Video Card Comparison - GPUReview.com

Technically the 6770 beats it at almost everything, but in the few benchmarks I've read the 7750 comes very close and in some cases matches the 6770, all while using half as much power.

Then there's the 7770, which in benchmarks clearly beat the 6770, still uses less power, and actually competes in some cases to the Radeon 6850.

Video Card Comparison - GPUReview.com

again, looking at it "on paper" the 7770 is comparable if not in some cases slightly better than the 6770, except for Clock speeds, where its clearly faster. Move down to the Number of shader cores it has, and your sitting there scratching your head.

its because the HD 7000's are a new more efficient generation of GPU's from AMD, first started with the 5000's, then with the 6000's they boosted performance a little, but less shaders and less power consumption (with exception for 6700's which were rebadged 5700's with some minor feature improvements, nothing worth noting really). Now with the 7000's they have even MORE power reduction, along with massive performance increase despite even lesser "Specs" mainly the cores.

The Radeon HD 8000 series or whatever they plan on calling it will be their next reinvented GPU design in a year or two probably. I remember the whole series starting with the HD 5000's was supposed to be a 3 step process before moving on to the next great GPU design.

Nvidia is sort of doing the same thing, with the GTX 400, then the slightly reduced spec, significant power reduction and more efficient and better running 500 series, and then with the new 600 series yet to come out (some rumors say next month) they are supposedly going to be Significantly boosted in performance, though no idea on how much power reduction or increases it will have)