So Ive been running my 4850's for a while and decided I just had to try one of those GTX 280's which with a weekly deal and a 10% voucher, I bagged for the same price as my xfire setup 
The GTX is an awesome looking card, quite a piece of kit with a nice finish to the cooler.
I ran a few tests to see how they go against each other. The winner will stay in my rig.
Asus Maximus formula x38
QX9650 @ 3.870
4GB OCZ reaper
1680x1050 drivers set to highest quality
Nvidia 177.83 driver
Ati 8.8 beta
I ran test at stock and overclocked as far as i could, the overlocks arn't really fair as the xfire was watercooled but ill show them anyway. If i keep the GTX it will go under water too.
Here goes.
I noticed in Conan the GTX fps was rock solid where as the Xfires FPS constantly fluctuated +/- 5 fps
In Devil May Cry, I had noticed on the 3rd test with my Xfire that sometimes the Boss animations would sometimes jerk , I had also noticed other 4850/70 users mention it. I was reasured when the GTX also did it, obviously an engine/animation problem.
I included the Nvidia only 8xCSAA here, just for reference. Though it might confuse things.
So it looks like im going to keep my Xfire setup, mainly due to the benchmarks. A couple of other things i noticed was the GTX doesnt half give out some heat, it was like a storage heater under my desk with the side off my case. The casing gets very hot, but i guess water cooling would sort that.
To me the image quality looked better on the ATI, in 2d its much brighter by default though I believed you can make the Nvidia look as good, but also in 3D with 8AA the GTX looked a bit blurry to me.
Anyway hope it helped someone, i was totally impartial when doing this test and would definatly have swapped over to the GTX if I thought it was better. Ive never noticed any microstuttering with my Xfire so far, maybe different people notice it more than others.
Cheers
The GTX is an awesome looking card, quite a piece of kit with a nice finish to the cooler.
I ran a few tests to see how they go against each other. The winner will stay in my rig.
Asus Maximus formula x38
QX9650 @ 3.870
4GB OCZ reaper
1680x1050 drivers set to highest quality
Nvidia 177.83 driver
Ati 8.8 beta
I ran test at stock and overclocked as far as i could, the overlocks arn't really fair as the xfire was watercooled but ill show them anyway. If i keep the GTX it will go under water too.
Here goes.
I noticed in Conan the GTX fps was rock solid where as the Xfires FPS constantly fluctuated +/- 5 fps
In Devil May Cry, I had noticed on the 3rd test with my Xfire that sometimes the Boss animations would sometimes jerk , I had also noticed other 4850/70 users mention it. I was reasured when the GTX also did it, obviously an engine/animation problem.
I included the Nvidia only 8xCSAA here, just for reference. Though it might confuse things.
So it looks like im going to keep my Xfire setup, mainly due to the benchmarks. A couple of other things i noticed was the GTX doesnt half give out some heat, it was like a storage heater under my desk with the side off my case. The casing gets very hot, but i guess water cooling would sort that.
To me the image quality looked better on the ATI, in 2d its much brighter by default though I believed you can make the Nvidia look as good, but also in 3D with 8AA the GTX looked a bit blurry to me.
Anyway hope it helped someone, i was totally impartial when doing this test and would definatly have swapped over to the GTX if I thought it was better. Ive never noticed any microstuttering with my Xfire so far, maybe different people notice it more than others.
Cheers
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