the recommendation is asking what is the best card for the money, bang for the buck. Also, it's better to look at the individual resolutions rather than the averaged performance 

lostrib

Think about it this way: If that site would recommend Nvidia all over the place, what do you think the AMD fanboys on there would think? They would all say the site "sold out" to nvidia and move on to some other site who says different. I mean it's cynical, but it would certainly make sense. They're a business after all. It makes more sense for them to give some to nvidia and some to amd and give an impression of "balance".

And about the resolutions, what I said holds true for everything up to 1920X1200. Above that, maybe the bigger memory buses AMD has finally begin to take charge. But to me it's remarkable, for instance, how a 660 ti can even hold pace with the 7950, let alone beat it in about half the games. I mean it's got half the memory bus (192 to 384), it's a smaller chip with less transistors, it's a 150W card vs a 180W one. It's a light heavyweight against a heavyweight. It's ridiculous the results are what they are.

[QUOTE="zamolxe"]

And Toms hardware is what, God's word? They are immune to bias? I mean, OK, if you want to trust that site over all else, it's your right to do so. I just offered a rather substantial argument to the contrary.

lostrib

same could be said for techpowerup.  So i guess the point is moot?

No, it isn't moot. Because what you offered was a "recommendation". The recommendation can be based on any number of factors (like the game bundles which started this thread). What I offered was some cold, hard benchmark data. It was an average relative performance over 15 games, which was then scaled again relative to current prices. So we're not talking about the same thing. My point is purely price/performance, not some vague recommendation which can be justified in any number of ways.

And Toms hardware is what, God's word? They are immune to bias? I mean, OK, if you want to trust that site over all else, it's your right to do so. I just offered a rather substantial argument to the contrary.

[QUOTE="zamolxe"]

[QUOTE="lostrib"]

well, we found the fanboy.

lostrib

I have a 6850 right now (looking to upgrade to a GTX 660). So there goes that argument. When I bought the 6850, it was the best card in its price range. I can't say that about any AMD board between 150$ and 400$ now.

Toms hardware would seem to disagree

How many games does Toms hardware test? The link I provided tests about 15 (and every one is quite relevant to someone looking to upgrade).

well, we found the fanboy.

lostrib

I have a 6850 right now (looking to upgrade to a GTX 660). So there goes that argument. When I bought the 6850, it was the best card in its price range. I can't say that about any AMD board between 150$ and 400$ now.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Inno3D/iChill_GTX_650_Ti_Boost/26.html

With the latest drivers, the gtx 650 ti boost is better and cheaper than the 7850. Same way, 660>7870, 660ti>7950, 670>7970. The game bundles are there to make up for this little fact. That being said, those bundles are admittedly pretty tempting.

The X360 has 3 cores and 6 threads, and the PS3 can run six or seven threads (as far as I understand, it's a different type of CPU). I don't see much difference in this regard with the new generation. It will still be difficult to split tasks efficiently and there will still be bottlenecks. I don't see how this can possibly change.

For me, the only advantage that AMD could get with these consoles is with those sets of instructions that are specific to AMD processors. These instructions might translate less efficiently on intel CPUs, but even this is just a possibility right now. It might not make any practical difference at all.

I agree the consoles may change things, but if we're talking of "right now" that's the way I see it. Look at the last graph here:

http://techreport.com/review/23750/amd-fx-8350-processor-reviewed/5

Would you accept to be limited by your CPU in a game to such an extent? Until AMD manages to close these sorts of gaps, I certainly wouldn't consider them.

I wouldn't exchange my 2400 for any AMD processor. Regardless of how many cores and how much brute force they have, games will still be primarily limited by those bottleneck scenarios which depend on only one core and one thread. And in those scenarios even 5 year old intel cpus beat AMD's current ones. The architecture that intel has since Conroe is just better than AMD's. AMD manages to stay competitive (barely) by selling their CPUs and mobo chipsets with much lower profit margins.