I am building a PC for the time and need some advice about a graphics card.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Productcompare.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007709%20600030348%204018&IsNodeId=1&bop=And&CompareItemList=48|14-125-418^14-125-418-TS%2C14-127-699^14-127-699-TS

I have it narrowed down to these two cards. I don't know a whole lot about the minutia of the technical specs, and would like some explanation as to what the few differences between these cards really amounts to. Before anyone gets to recommending other cards, these are at the max of what I will pay for a graphics card.

Thanks in advance.

I'd get the 7870. It seems like a better card at a glance.

The 7870 is marginally better, but they are so close, you should probably pick based on which game you'd rather have free.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107-7.html

@Kidavenger:

I was originally going to get the 7870, but the $15 dollar rebate on the 660 and Assassin's Creed III vs. Far Cry made me reconsider. If I can get comparable performance out the 660, I'm leaning toward that.

I always buy Nvidia because I've found the support to be better, so I can't really comment much on the Radeon. Those look pretty much the same as far as specs are concerned. Did you look up the benchmarks? Unless there were a really distinct advantage on the Radeon side, I'd get the 660.

ATi get shit on too many times by new games having glitches on their hardware. Going Nvidia is usually a safer bet.

@Sooty: a few examples would be nice...

Personally I am fine taking a slight performance hit to know that my card will work properly with every game. ATI cards are nice because you get a lot of power for the price, but there are games that will give you grief, and their support can be very spotty.

IMO Nvidia is the safer route.

@Kidavenger said:

@Sooty: a few examples would be nice...

Hard to remember as I don't own an ATi card, only going from the grumblings I've heard, I do remember benchmarks usually favouring the Nvidia cards though, and Rage was broken on ATi. (not that Rage was a game worth playing)

@Kidavenger said:

@Sooty: a few examples would be nice...

Assassin's Creed 3, Rage, and I remember one of my friends complaining about Saints Row 3. Nvidia is always faster with their driver updates which is why I will always stick with them. I wouldn't be surprised if there are issues for the upcoming Far Cry 3 also.

The OP should consider looking at a 660 ti.

Rage flat out refused to work on my ATI with multiple issues. Also Borderlands (yea the first one) would run for 20-40 minutes at most then crash to desktop for no apparent reason. Had too many issues with ATI which made me get a 660 when they came out, best decision i have made for my pc.

I have an Nvidia, but I would be careful with ATi and Far Cry 3. Check out Brad Shoemaker's twitter. He had a series of outrage tweets about his Crossfire crashing his game. I went with Nvidia solely because I heard the numerous forums complaints about the poor driver support.

I tend to avoid ATI, I'd go with the 660. If this was ME, I'd go 660 in a heartbeat; wouldn't even think twice about it.

Also I'd go with EVGA; their warranty is slightly better. Another year of Labor.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130826

Also with no shipping cost, they come out about equal without having to bother with a rebate.

They seem to be pretty similar spec wise. I don't know about the brands or if either has done better on comparison tests though. 
 
At a glance it seems like bother are fine. I tend to like NVidia cards, but that's just my bias. Sometimes NVidia is better, sometimes it's not. Both seem fine.

@ll_Exile_ll: If you're still in the process of choosing, I'll weigh in with my two cents: I've got two AMD cards in my system (ATI is dead and was absorbed by AMD a while ago) but nVidia has the better driver support. While a single card system won't encounter half of the problems a Crossfire one like my own (or Brad's) has, nVidia still has a leg up over AMD when it comes to speed of updates.

You can get a loser with either, but when you pit two cards with performance close enough to call it a knife fight against each other (<5 FPS in almost every game), I'd use driver support as my tiebreaker and that has to give the nod to nVidia.

@Mirado:

Thanks for weighing in, I actually did wind up going with the nvidia.

@ll_Exile_ll: I've heard that AMD 7xxx series have been marginally better than Nvidia at this price point.

However, I've had, myself, more incompatibility issues with AMD than Nvidia, and you get Cuda (not used often) and Physx (still not super common) with Nvidia.

EDIT: Ah, saw your post.

Yeah, I'm an Nvidia guy as of this year. Too many bad drivers and stuff when I used to be 100% loyal to AMD.

Yeah, I'm seriously considering going back to Nvidia for good after my first ATI card. I've had three separate games that I just cannot play (Saints Row: The Third, Trackmania 2, and another game I can't actually remember right this moment) because of my ATI card. Also, Catalyst Control Center is kinda a piece of shit. Was actually looking for something comparable to the 7870 for about the same price.

@Kidavenger said:

@Sooty: a few examples would be nice...

I've been using ATI cards for going on five years without any problems. Then again, I didn't play RAGE when it first came out.

@wemibelec90: I've gotten Saints Row to play nice in Crossfire, so you should have no issue using just one card. What GPU do you have? You shouldn't have to do much to your system beyond making sure your drivers are up to date and maybe grabbing an application profile to get it to work.

Are you still having issues, and if so, what's wrong?

@Mirado said:

@wemibelec90: I've gotten Saints Row to play nice in Crossfire, so you should have no issue using just one card. What GPU do you have? You shouldn't have to do much to your system beyond making sure your drivers are up to date and maybe grabbing an application profile to get it to work.

Are you still having issues, and if so, what's wrong?

Bad stuttering every few seconds. Makes the game absolutely unplayable. I have a 5750 in my computer right now and tried everything (reinstalls, new drivers, various tweaks and settings) and nothing works. Still haven't gotten to play it. I'm definitely not alone. There's a whole thread in the Steam forums from a bunch of other ATI users that can't play it either.