going from a 5450 to a gtx 460

[potato88]

how much improvement can i expect going from a 5450(http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3334)
to a gtx 460 (http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3531#sp) going from 1gb to 768mb of video memory.

[divine_skills]

Huge. The 5450 is more of a HTPC card, while the GTX 460 plays really well on 1920x1080 or below.

Make sure you have a decent PSU.

[imeem]

the 1 GB GTX 460 is alot better than than 768mb one.

[Mr.Guy]

And the HD6870 is quite a bit better than the GTX460 1GB for a couple $ more.

[madpistol]

What resolution are you planning on playing on? What monitor do you have currently?

[Undead]

Considering you're coming form a 5450, I'd hope you would have an adequate power supply unit and a PCI-e x16 slot to power up a GTX 460. I have a feeling you're running an old CPU too which can cause a bottleneck.

[Bad_Motha]

And the HD6870 is quite a bit better than the GTX460 1GB for a couple $ more.

Considering AMD still has some driver issues with 6000 series I would go NVIDIA GTX 460 1GB.

[Fatimmortal]

Considering AMD still has some driver issues with 6000 series I would go NVIDIA GTX 460 1GB.

This.

No, I don't worship either side. I'm on a 5470 on my laptop and I still get issues from time to time.

[borg_7_of_9]

I was a Nv fan now IDC AMD's driver for the 6xxx may suck big time but, if the performance was better with ♥♥♥♥ drivers what will it be like with good driver's..

for the few extra $$$ it may be worth the risk for better performance..
Also Cat 11.01 cant be far away..

[Psycho101]

Difference between a 5450 and a GTX 460 will be night and day.

Also agree with what others have said. The 1GB doesn't just have an extra 256MB of RAM, it has a wider memory bus (256bit on the 1GB vs 192bit on the 768MB) 32 ROPS compared to the 768MB's 24.

A 6870 will out perform the 460 in some games and loose out in others. From my own benches in the same system (a test bench running a i7 920@ 3.8GHz and 6GB of DDR3 @ 1866 in a res of 1920x1200), the 460 pulled ahead in Dirt2 and FarCry 2 and the 6870 beats it in AVP, Metro 2033 (by 1.7 FPS) and also pulls ahead in Warhead by ~4 FPS. It depends what games you play, what res you game at etc.

Also note where I am the 1GB 460 is £140 and the 6870 is £200. £60 for a difference in performance that isn't enough to make unplayable FPS on 460 playable on the 6870 wouldn't persuade me personally, but it's up to the individual. I can't find the results at the moment but the gap closed to the point where the 460 cards were leading in many previously 6870 dominated games when using SLI vs Crossfire. Scaling in both is pretty awesome, but SLI seems to have the edge in the games I tested.

[Undead]

Difference between a 5450 and a GTX 460 will be night and day.

Also agree with what others have said. The 1GB doesn't just have an extra 256MB of RAM, it has a wider memory bus (256bit on the 1GB vs 192bit on the 768MB) 32 ROPS compared to the 768MB's 24.

A 6870 will out perform the 460 in some games and loose out in others. From my own benches in the same system (a test bench running a i7 920@ 3.8GHz and 6GB of DDR3 @ 1866 in a res of 1920x1200), the 460 pulled ahead in Dirt2 and FarCry 2 and the 6870 beats it in AVP, Metro 2033 (by 1.7 FPS) and also pulls ahead in Warhead by ~4 FPS. It depends what games you play, what res you game at etc.

Also note where I am the 1GB 460 is £140 and the 6870 is £200. £60 for a difference in performance that isn't enough to make unplayable FPS on 460 playable on the 6870 wouldn't persuade me personally, but it's up to the individual. I can't find the results at the moment but the gap closed to the point where the 460 cards were leading in many previously 6870 dominated games when using SLI vs Crossfire. Scaling in both is pretty awesome, but SLI seems to have the edge in the games I tested.

How can the 6870 lose to anything to the 460?
The 6850 beats the 460 in most benches...
Every bench I saw had the 6870 beat out the 460 by 10+ fps whereas the 6850 would win/lose by 1-3fps.

Now if you're talking about the GTX 460 FTW, then yeah it'll beat the 6870.

[borg_7_of_9]

How can the 6870 lose to anything to the 460?
The 6850 beats the 460 in most benches...
Every bench I saw had the 6870 beat out the 460 by 10+ fps whereas the 6850 would win/lose by 1-3fps.

Now if you're talking about the GTX 460 FTW, then yeah it'll beat the 6870.

most likely to improve with better driver's too...

The drivers are pretty bad...

[Psycho101]

Those are the figures I got, and there's no bottleneck or bias. The set of tests I ran were on fresh images of Win 7, with the basics installed. I then installed the latest Catalyst or Forceware and benched after a restart.

The only alteration was to set both drivers to use high quality, with all optimizations off. I've played Crysis a fair bit on 6850 Crossfire recently and AMD's new default driver settings take a hit to image quality. Not everyone will notice it, some might have to know what to look for but to me, the default was worse than nVidia's "Performance" setting with AF sample optimization and Trilinear optimisation on.

Both pairs of cards were also fully referance models and set to referance clocks. Also note that the drivers used were 266.35 for the nVidia card and 10.12a hotfix for the AMD cards.

It's definitely more than possible for the 460 to bench higher in some games. If I had of benched Lost Planet 2 I'm betting the 460 would have beaten the 6870 by a larger margin than any other bench that it came ahead in.

There are games biased toward ATi and games biased toward nVidia. If I had more games available at the time, the trend would maybe have been different. However at 1920x1280 and HQ settings a +10 FPS or higher difference at High Quality settings would have been very rare.

With AMD's "optimizations" that have been added/tweaked at the standard CCC settings, maybe 10 FPS would be easily acheivable in some cases. However, Like I said, the IQ difference was noticable to me. Even my boss asked me why the road in the distance on the AMD cards in Warhead were flashing and crawling so much, and he litterally knows nothing about gaming, AA, AF surface optimizations.

On Standard settings, I found that the AMD card benefited much more than the nVidia card. That confirmed to me that more optimization was taking place. If I can't see that optimization then great, but I certainly could. Also on games that ran with already excessively high frame rates, the 6870 did indeed have a larger margin of lead, however when talking about games like Crysis and Metro 2033, the gap was much much tighter, both in terms of FPS and as a percentage.

Another plus point for the AMD card was that it seemed to cope with both an increase in resolution and an increase in detail in DX11 games better, loosing less relative performance compared to the 460 as settings were increased. DX10 still seemed to suit the 460 more, as the Far Cry 2 bench indicated (6870 scored 71 FPS, the 460 scored 78 FPS and repeat tests confirmed the gap).

The clincher for me is that where the 6870 managed to pull away significantly, it didn't matetr because FPS on both cards was through the roof anyway. On more demending titles the actual FPS difference wasn't noticable. In the case of Metro 2033, I had to choose my settings carefully too. That game eats VRAM. Increasing settings beyond those I tested at introduced stutter that can only be explained by running out of VRAM and the resultant texture swapping. The same scenes bench fine on a 2GB 460, confirming my theory. For higher settings than I tested and even for an improvement at the ones I did, neither card is ideal.

The 6870 is a nice card. If the price is right, then it's a very attractive piece of hardware. However with the £60 price difference where I am, I wouldn't personally recommend one for the reasons stated above. The 6870 will really come into its own when nV release the 560 and AMD start to get heavy on the pricing. I'd expect in the next 4-6 months it will go from a decent card to being absolutly outstanding value for its performance.

[Bad_Motha]

Right now Newegg has good price on this XFX AMD 6870 1GB. Double LifeTime Warranty and free Microsoft Headset. All for the price of a GTX 460 ~ $199 after MIR.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150506

Not bad deal if ask me considering most 6870 cards are priced closer to that of the GTX 470.

[potato88]

Considering you're coming form a 5450, I'd hope you would have an adequate power supply unit and a PCI-e x16 slot to power up a GTX 460. I have a feeling you're running an old CPU too which can cause a bottleneck.

Yes i have a 750w power supply and a pci-e x16 slot. Cpu is a phenom II x4 945 3ghz

[Bad_Motha]

Which 750W PSU do u have? They aren't all equal...

[potato88]

Right now Newegg has good price on this XFX AMD 6870 1GB. Double LifeTime Warranty and free Microsoft Headset. All for the price of a GTX 460 ~ $199 after MIR.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150506

Not bad deal if ask me considering most 6870 cards are priced closer to that of the GTX 470.

Sounds like a great deal, but im in australia so not really viable for me.

What resolution are you planning on playing on? What monitor do you have currently?

Currently playing at 1440x900 on a samsung 22" lcd

[Psycho101]

Right now Newegg has good price on this XFX AMD 6870 1GB. Double LifeTime Warranty and free Microsoft Headset. All for the price of a GTX 460 ~ $199 after MIR.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150506

Not bad deal if ask me considering most 6870 cards are priced closer to that of the GTX 470.

At that price it's a steal.

I also see some GTX 460's that seem to have a lower price, by up to ~$30, but I'm not quite sure... We don't have mail in rebates over here. From what I understand, the 1GB EVGA with a 95MHz OC is $169 after the $30 rebate, if I'm reading it right. I allso didn't understaind why it would only show me the price after I vewed it in the shopping cart. :confused:

Unless on a tight budget, at those prices it comes down to features too.

If you want MLAA which allows AA where conventional MSAA isn't implemented, SSAA that has had some effort into making work, Eyefinity and regular as clockwork drivers, I'd get the ATI. Definitely adjust the drivers to high quality though. AMD's image quality is superb at this level and the defaults just don't do justice to what the hardware is capable of.

If you want PhysX, nVidia 3D Vision (not great atm but still impressive), 3 monitor surround (needs SLI but that's pretty sensible IMO, you want SLI for 3 1080p monitors) more tweakable drivers in the form of using nV Inspector, forcing SSAA both Sparse Grid and Rotated grid and don't mind waiting a bit longer for your driver updates, go nVidia.

I'm not biased to either team by the way. If nVidia produce the next great value for money powerful high mid end card, I'll buy a pair of them. If AMD do instead, I'll buy a pair of those instead.