BongWizard
Electical Engineer
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- 916
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- OZ
at all stock clocks, the core 216 will usually beat a 4870 (thats what it was made for!), but the 4870 should rape the 216 at higher resolutions (ie 19x12 and bigger) because its got faster (yes, faster... GDDR5 with a 256 bit bus will outperform GDDR3 with a 448 bit bus) framebuffer and more of it
they'll both overclock pretty well, but the core 216 should clock up a bit better than most 4870s with stock cooling (although will some skill and cooling, you can get a 4870 up to over 950MHz on the core, but you could probably do about 850Mhz with a core 216 on nice cooling too)
also, think about whether or not you wanna go for SLi/CF later... if you do, and you get the 216, you'll need a new mobo, but you can do CF on just about any board
imo, get the core 216, because it will serve you better in a wider range of situations which you're likely to encounter
they'll both overclock pretty well, but the core 216 should clock up a bit better than most 4870s with stock cooling (although will some skill and cooling, you can get a 4870 up to over 950MHz on the core, but you could probably do about 850Mhz with a core 216 on nice cooling too)
also, think about whether or not you wanna go for SLi/CF later... if you do, and you get the 216, you'll need a new mobo, but you can do CF on just about any board
imo, get the core 216, because it will serve you better in a wider range of situations which you're likely to encounter