Don’t Miss Our Latest Graphics Card Head-to-Head

In case you happened to have missed it, we posted an article yesterday which pitted NVIDIA’s GTX 260/216 against ATI’s HD 4870 1GB, two incredibly good cards for the under-$300 range. Our goal, though, was to see which came out on top, throughout both performance-related tests and also power consumption and temperatures. Because an article like this wouldn’t be complete without it, we also take a hard look at current pricing.

Overall, NVIDIA’s card came out on top, but you really need to check out the article to see what kind of differences we’re dealing with. In the end, the card proves to be less expensive, faster, have better power efficiency and runs cooler. It’s hard to ignore those hard facts.

ATI’s upcoming Catalyst 8.12 driver is supposed to include major improvements in some of the exact games we used in the above article though, so we’ll be revisiting the performance once that hits, to see if our conclusions can at all change. The fact of the matter is though, even if ATI’s new driver puts their cards on par with the GTX 260/216, NVIDIA still has a few other factors working in their favor, most notably better pricing. At least for now.

When all said and done, NVIDIA has without question won this round. ATI either needs to make great performance-related improvements with their 8.12 Catalyst driver or price their cards more competitively in order to earn your dollars. The numbers here speak for themselves. NVIDIA suffered a somewhat humiliating fate this past summer, but their holiday season is looking to make up for it.

Source: ATI HD 4870 1GB vs. NVIDIA GTX 260/216 896MB