-
Competitor rules
Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.
9800 GTX+ or 4850?
- Thread starter Brammo
- Start date
Soldato
- Joined
- 28 May 2007
- Posts
- 10,224
Lol which ones call of duty 4 i don't think so or any other decent shooter bar ut3.
buy a NV card and it will be obsolete in two weeks.
im sure all the guys who bought the 8800gtx on launch day will agree with you on that
Wouldn't know, don't play COD4 anymore, not that the 8800GTX had any problems playing it at 1920*1200 to start with.
But from what i'm playing, UT3, Grid, Mass Effect, Crysis and stalker all seem to run better, this is what happens when new cards get released, driver improvements get passed onto previous generation.
Soldato
- Joined
- 28 May 2007
- Posts
- 10,224
Wouldn't know, don't play COD4 anymore, not that the 8800GTX had any problems playing it at 1920*1200 to start with.
But from what i'm playing, UT3, Grid, Mass Effect, Crysis and stalker all seem to run better, this is what happens when new cards get released, driver improvements get passed onto previous generation.
I like the new nv series for performance but i tend to keep my cards for around a year or more so i would get a ati card at this point. Just think the 4850 is better than the old 9800, 4870 over the 260 but when it comes to the 280 or 4870x2 i think it depends on the monitor size as on a 30 inch monitor the 4870x2 blows the gtx280 away. Most sites will tell you that the 4 series is better than he gtx series of cards for more than 1 reason.
Phew! ok, back on topic... Since SLI is out of the question and crossfire is flavour of the month, if you are planning on going multi GPU at some point, a 4850 or 4870 is your obvious choice.
SLI is nice, and recently it's actually been able to hold a candle to crossfire in some cases, but you have to sacrifice too much for it. Firstly, you need to get an Nvidia chipset board, which , in my experience are *** unless you shell out a lot. The Nvidia RAID and storage controllers are *horrible*, and only the expensive ones overclock. Plus there's the inability to display on multiple monitors. It isn't helped by the fact that the new P45 boards are really good and support crossfire straight off the bat.
Plus, with all the discussion on new technology, the fact remains that the 4850 IS newer technology, a more efficient architecture, and the many driver updates from ATI will ensure that more performance is continually unlocked (they release new drivers so much I just can't be arsed to keep installing new ones, not sure if that's a good or bad thing). The 9800 was a rehash of a card that is also a rehash of a 2 year old card (is that right? GTS320->GTS512->9800GTX) and although it shares the same size of construction it is essentially antiquated.
SLI is nice, and recently it's actually been able to hold a candle to crossfire in some cases, but you have to sacrifice too much for it. Firstly, you need to get an Nvidia chipset board, which , in my experience are *** unless you shell out a lot. The Nvidia RAID and storage controllers are *horrible*, and only the expensive ones overclock. Plus there's the inability to display on multiple monitors. It isn't helped by the fact that the new P45 boards are really good and support crossfire straight off the bat.
Plus, with all the discussion on new technology, the fact remains that the 4850 IS newer technology, a more efficient architecture, and the many driver updates from ATI will ensure that more performance is continually unlocked (they release new drivers so much I just can't be arsed to keep installing new ones, not sure if that's a good or bad thing). The 9800 was a rehash of a card that is also a rehash of a 2 year old card (is that right? GTS320->GTS512->9800GTX) and although it shares the same size of construction it is essentially antiquated.
You forgot to add a bit to make what you're saying totally correct!. (At 2560x1600 and ridiculous amounts of AA like 32xAA) Which most people won't use or even feel the need to do so.
So to that point it's your scenario that it's not suited for. Your needs from a card are really not what the majority needs and I think that's what I've been disliking about your reports. The GTX 260/280 was built for your needs just as the X2 4870 was (bandwidth monsters). The other cards (4850/70) will not cope with the amount of AA you require and at that resolution, for most they won't have this problem. You need to start making this clear when you post about this subject. When you have done, many people have replied that they would not need the amount of AA that you prefer.
Yeah, damn them for developing PhysX support for my 21 month old card.
Physx is useless right now though. Wow, UT3 which isn't really that popular and Vantage have the main use for now. Oh and those who play GRAW2 still.
One benchmark that means absolutely nothing to a gamer and two titles that most have played or have moved on from by now.
If Physx was mainstream and it was in most of our gaming then I think you have a point. The fact is that it's not, just like Quad Core isn't needed for gaming yet, or like the launch of DX10.1 to give ATI cards mandatory 4xAA. At least ATI's feature will give something that just about everyone will want. Physx is a miss for most.
By the time it is mainstream then both AMD and Nvidia will have the capabilities to do so. CUDA runs the Ageia Physx engine right now so they can only get better so might have the better performing cards come the time for AMD to come to the market with their solution. Havok and AMD look to be working on something so time will tell. Physx for now is useless. People that promote their new Vantage scores well, they are really just clutching at straws.
You know performance on the 9 and 8 series and improved allot since the launch of the GTX series, think I gained over 1000pts in the vantage GPU test on my old 8800GTX in the last month alone....Damn nvidia indeed.
C'mon Shocky. You think a benchmark improvement is a great thing?. I've got the Physx driver on and Warmonger was erm good for to see it worked then taken off my system. UT3 I'm done with for now and it might help me in GRAW2 if I get around to playing it. The fact is, that it's about as useful as a Quad core CPU in gaming (except Sup Commander, and a slight boost in UT3).
I don't deny that it's a great free addition for old hardware. I think it's marvellous. It's just not useful for now where as if developers implemented DX10.1 there could be a significant boost in all games for ATI and I think that is more useful than Physx right now. Really, it's all pretty useless right now as it's not mainstream. By the time it is mainstream, both will be ready.
http://www.custompc.co.uk/news/602763/amd-announces-physics-partnership-with-havok.html
---------------------------
Sorry about that Brammo
.If you're crazy about AA and would love nothing more than to pump this up whilst gaming then I think it's down to two choices for you. I wouldn't go SLI with the GTX 260s. I think it's down to the GTX 280 and X2 4870. In this situation and at your resolution I would go for the GTX 280 easily.
The X2 4870 is still seeing gains at 4Ghz so there could be more to be released from this card and as MR.B has stated the X2 4870 and GTX 280 cut it no problem at his resolution of 2560x1600 and he is below 4Ghz. So I think the X2 4870 would be slightly wasted at 1900x1200 if it's running MR.B's resolution fine and there could be more with increased CPU speed The much cheaper GTX 280 will be efficient enough for your gaming needs.
If you went for the single 4870 and in some titles the amount of AA you required @ 1920x1200 wasn't giving you performance you wanted then I think the extra £70 would be a good investment. I do think that the 4870 on it's own would be enough but because you were willing to buy two GTX 260s then it's seems sensible to me to get the fastest card that will be ready to handle the Vram limitation that you might address with the single 4870.
If you would rather save the money then you could always have your PC ready and then just buy the 4870, test your gaming out over a range of titles and if you think you've made the right choice then just be happy with your purchase. If however you feel as if you could do with a little more grunt then you could send it back and get the GTX 280 as long as you do it within the first week. I think in your case you have a good reason to have the ability to do this so you don't make the wrong choice.
You forgot to add a bit to make what you're saying totally correct!. (At 2560x1600 and ridiculous amounts of AA like 32xAA) Which most people won't use or even feel the need to do so.
So to that point it's your scenario that it's not suited for. Your needs from a card are really not what the majority needs and I think that's what I've been disliking about your reports. The GTX 260/280 was built for your needs just as the X2 4870 was (bandwidth monsters). The other cards (4850/70) will not cope with the amount of AA you require and at that resolution, for most they won't have this problem. You need to start making this clear when you post about this subject. When you have done, many people have replied that they would not need the amount of AA that you prefer.
Well obviously, and thats why i was talking about 1920x1200 when i said all that, which i made pretty clear.... from experience you will still notice a difference @ 1920x1200 with a 1GB card over a 512MB one, with loading times (which would effect any res) and overall smoothness. I know 512MB isn't enough for my needs, but with them cards they were just short stop gaps for me. I dont think 512MB is enough for 1920x1200 IF you're planning to keep the card for some time, because of future more texture heavy games.
And i just use 4xAA, anything over 8x at native res and it's near impossible to see a difference, no idea where you got this idea that i use more... unless you got it confused with 16xAF that i often use aswell.
Last edited:
Agreed, I regard anything over 4XAA as just throwing away performance for nothing, only supersampling really looks any better beyond that but SS completely kills performance so it's ouy of thw question most games.
But at what resolution, 800*600? At the native resolution on LCD monitors more then 4xAA is not noticable. Your eyes are probably playing tricks on you if you really think the difference is that big.
Permabanned
- Joined
- 19 Jun 2007
- Posts
- 10,717
- Location
- InURmama
If that was the case there would not be 16xAA and now newer fancy versions of AA as who plays at 800x600 (avoiding CS) ?.
I run 1920x1440 with 16AA or whatever is highest in the Games Menu, only 1 badly made game and a few badly ported console jobs slow down so need RES/Settings lowered and have since launch.
All on a card that's now old tech.
I run 1920x1440 with 16AA or whatever is highest in the Games Menu, only 1 badly made game and a few badly ported console jobs slow down so need RES/Settings lowered and have since launch.
All on a card that's now old tech.
Caporegime
- Joined
- 8 Jul 2003
- Posts
- 30,063
- Location
- In a house
PhysX isn't free though.