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I had to re-build my box with a new CPU/MB/RAM as I could never eliminate the lockup issues and they were getting worse. I replaced the guts with an i5 3rd gen with integrated graphics, but it does not have enough steam for my big monitor. I am trying to decide between these two cards:
The GT260 is an EVGA Brand core 216
ATI Gigibyte HD5770 Super Overclock.
At some point I may replace either one of these, but for now it needs to last a year, be stable, have good driver support, etc.
Which would you choose and why? Seems they have very similar performance.
Only drawback is the GT260 does not appear to have a Dual DVI connector, requiring me to use two cables. No big deal.

Another note:
While the GT260 is a higher performer, the ATI is lower power consumer... PC is left on 24/7

Of those two, the Radeon HD5770 is the better card in most games.

Any reason you're looking specifically at cards that are two generations out of date? A GTX 650 would roughly equal those cards I think, they're pretty cheap, and it'd use about 30% the power of the 260, maybe 60% the power of the 5770.

Are you looking second hand?

Only drawback is the GT260 does not appear to have a Dual DVI connector, requiring me to use two cables. No big deal.

Edit: Also, what is it you're aiming to do that can use two cables? That's not the way Dual-Link DVI works... it's not analogous to two separate connections, it's just a single connection with all the pins connected.

.

JustAnEngineer wrote:

Of those two, the Radeon HD5770 is the better card in most games.

Don't forget that liquidsquid is comparing a 260 GTX Core 216 (12.5% more cores than the stock 260's 192 cores) vs a "super (lame) overclock" 5770 (50MHz "overclock" is 5.8% faster than stock 5770 woot), so the performance between the two will be very close, and will probably trade positions depending on the game and settings.

Despite my disdain for the anemic OC on the 5770, I'd pick the 5770 between the two because the performance will be comparable and the power consumption will be significantly lower.

Lastly, this is all contingent on the OP already having access to the cards; if buying new, it'd be better to get a 650Ti (40-50% faster than the 5770) if you're on a budget.

The reason I am asking between these two cards is I have both on-hand. I had the ATI in the build I just re-did, and the 260 I yanked a while back thinking that was the problem with my machine. It was not. If I could go back 3 years ago, I would have just re-built the entire box at once, which I wound up doing over a much more extended period of time.

Thanks, I was leaning in towards the ATI anyhow as it was working quite well for me, now that I am fairly certain it wasn't the cause of my unstable system. It turned out to be the CPU.

BTW my monitor accepts two single DVI at once, or one dual DVI. It allows support of a card like the GTX260 which does support multi-monitor but has no dual DVI connector.

With the new motherboard, CPU, RAM, the system appears to be stable again. The best part of the build is Windows 7 x64 install just "worked" without a re-install of everything. I had to mess around with a few drivers, and an AMD PCI driver that at first refused to go away, but after that, surprisingly flawless. No software re-installs required! Not used to that.
My old dual-core AMD is absolutely KILLED by this i5 system.
i cannot believe the performance increase, even in single-threaded apps.

liquidsquid wrote:

BTW my monitor accepts two single DVI at once, or one dual DVI. It allows support of a card like the GTX260 which does support multi-monitor but has no dual DVI connector.

How strange, never heard of that one before. How does it work? Does it literally treat one half of the screen as a separate monitor to the other half?
What res is it?

Anyway, back on topic - ah, I see why you're looking at those specific cards now
Not much to add, I think I'd agree with the general concensus. The Radeon's the slightly better choice - you get similar performance, slightly more up to date feature set, and much lighter power consumption.