I'm looking for advice on buying the video card.

I will mainly be playing mmorpgs and maybe some rpgs like skyrim or heroes 6. I was thinking this for a long time, why in the video card reviews they never include mmorpgs for benchmarking.. The only one i saw was world of warcraft on techpowerup. All others usually limit the selection with mainly shooters and action games.

My decision would be much easier if they included more of the mmorpgs in their benchmarks..

So given they are the same price, which one would be better for playing mmorpgs:

Radeon HD 6870

GeForce GTX 560

Equivalent performance, but the 6870 is cheaper:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161389

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102948

No GTX 560s on New Egg within $17 of those.

I prefer the GeForce, but its just preference.

I don't think you could go wrong with either really.

http://www.hwcompare.com/11005/geforce-gtx-560-vs-radeon-hd-6870/

AMD will be releasing a selection of 7000 series (southern island) chipsets Decemer 6th (something to consider). Expect to see a line of 3rd party cards before Christmas or just after the holidays

Most sites I use place the 560 over the AMD. http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

But the 560 is seemingly ever so slightly more expensive. Personally I prefer nvidia and would go for that. I use the 570 atm and love it. 

flip a coin..

heads=560  tails-=6870

Originally posted by Durray

Most sites I use place the 560 over the AMD. http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

But the 560 is seemingly ever so slightly more expensive. Personally I prefer nvidia and would go for that. I use the 570 atm and love it. 

You're thinking of the GTX 560 Ti, which is a different card, and much more expensive.  Your own link puts the 6870 ahead of the GTX 560.

I would suggest waiting till December, like one of the posters above said.  The 6800 series of AMD cards barely perform better than the 5800 series, yet they draw almost twice the power and produce a lot more heat than the 5800 series.  The same goes for the Nvidia 500 series cards, which are incredible energy hogs and produce even more heat than any of the AMD cards, yet only with a slight advantage in performance in some areas while performing even less than AMD in others.

The upcoming 7000 series of cards should have a much better performance to cost ratio and chances are good that Nvidia will release their compeition in the same time frame.

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Originally posted by Vorthanion
I would suggest waiting till December, like one of the posters above said.  The 6800 series of AMD cards barely perform better than the 5800 series, yet they draw almost twice the power and produce a lot more heat than the 5800 series.  The same goes for the Nvidia 500 series cards, which are incredible energy hogs and produce even more heat than any of the AMD cards, yet only with a slight advantage in performance in some areas while performing even less than AMD in others.
 
The upcoming 7000 series of cards should have a much better performance to cost ratio and chances are good that Nvidia will release their compeition in the same time frame.

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What are you smoking?

First off, AMD redid the model numbers. The 6900 series is the step upgrade to the 5800 series, and the 6800 is the upgrade to the 5700. That being the case, power in the 6800 series is ~dramatically~ lower than the 5800 series, but if you compare apples to apples, the 6800 series does use a bit more power than the 5700 series, but not appreciably so. The 5770 was the mainstay of the 5700 line, and it was a power miser with a draw of only 108W. It's step upgrade would be the 6850 (due to the change in model numbers), with a power draw of 127W - more power, and percentage-wise a good deal more, but it's also a good deal more capable card. Comparing the 6800 series to the 5800 series, you find the 6800 series is actually slower. The 5870 was a very popular card when it was released, it uses 188W, but is a good bit faster than the 6870 (TDP of 151W). The 5870 didn't see a real upgrade until the 6970 was released a few months later.

The entire 5700 series has more or less just been rebranded as the 6700 series and is still being produced and sold today, so you can still buy that 108W GPU if you need ultra low power.

Second off, the nVidia 500 series is notably better on power management than the 400 series was. Case in point, the 480 versus 580. Both are about the same on power use (480 is 250W, the 580 is 244W), but the 580 is dramatically quieter and cooler running while increasing performance over the 480. However, I can't dispute the "energy hog" statement, as they typically use about 20% more power than their AMD equivalents to produce about the same framerates for comparable GPUs.

The upcoming 7000 series will initially be the step upgrade to the current 6800 line. As such, they may actually perform on par or somewhat slower than the current 6900 series (in fact, I wouldn't be surprised to find that they end up being basically just a die shrink of the current 6900 series, keeping about the same thermal and energy profile as the existing 6800 series, then cranking it back up later on next year to put out a faster 7900 series).

Originally posted by Durray

Most sites I use place the 560 over the AMD. http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

But the 560 is seemingly ever so slightly more expensive. Personally I prefer nvidia and would go for that. I use the 570 atm and love it. 

For starters, that website lists only the results from one benchmark suite. Real world benchmarks typically put the somewhat newer GTX 560 ahead of the 6870 while others put it below. Also, as Quizzical pointed out you are referring to the GTX 560 Ti, the premium predecessor to the GTX 560.

OP: With that said it is truly a matter of preference and what deals are on the market for respective cards. It is important to research each manufactuer's offering as cooling, overclocking and noise profiles differ from company to company and even from model to model. First of all find a card that has a good deal and then find a review of that specific card (make and model).

As I pointed out above, December 6th is a little over four weeks away and will bring a few new cards to the market via the Radeon HD 7000 series.

Originally posted by Ridelynn

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Originally posted by Vorthanion
I would suggest waiting till December, like one of the posters above said.  The 6800 series of AMD cards barely perform better than the 5800 series, yet they draw almost twice the power and produce a lot more heat than the 5800 series.  The same goes for the Nvidia 500 series cards, which are incredible energy hogs and produce even more heat than any of the AMD cards, yet only with a slight advantage in performance in some areas while performing even less than AMD in others.
 
The upcoming 7000 series of cards should have a much better performance to cost ratio and chances are good that Nvidia will release their compeition in the same time frame.

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What are you smoking? ...