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Sick of 4870 - Is the GTX 260 any good?

Well I personally had driver probs when I used to have crossfire.

I will now just go the 'single' card route however if you want to choose I think that crossfire overall seems to be better..but lately sli seems to give a good performance.

Basically I think it's swings and roundabouts..and with ati and nvidia constantly bringing out new driver revisions.

I do think even though I put 'swings and roundabouts' that ati seem to be more committed to improving crossfire performance than nvidia - I have never had sli though and if someone comes on and they say it gives good performance then it might be 'evens-stevens'.

Sli and crossfire are always a gamble though because you're reliant on drivers for games for it to work all the time...and if you're not motherboard reliant at the mo I personally wouldn't choose a card on it's 'multi gpu' performance and in my opinion they're fairly close anyway.

Choose the card you think suits you best for single card and then when you decide to add another one it would be a nice bonus then..but my opinion is choose the card for it's single performance first.

I know that there's not a lot in it between the two cards..4870 and 260 but there are differences.
 
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VortexA1 said:
I do think even though I put 'swings and roundabouts' that ati seem to be more committed to improving crossfire performance than nvidia - I have never had sli though and if someone comes on and they say it gives good performance then it might be 'evens-stevens'.
Click to expand...

Well SLi seams awesome in the games I have tested it with so far, Crysis for example seams to give 80%+ boost from SLi over a single card, I've not really compared many games or had it very long so hard to say if this is the case accross the board and no clue as to how much NV improve the performance. The latest drivers are supposed to give massive performance boosts to some games/apps, but it doesn't mention anything about specific SLi improvements.
 
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VortexA1 said:
Well I personally had driver probs when I used to have crossfire.

I will now just go the 'single' card route however if you want to choose I think that crossfire overall seems to be better..but lately sli seems to give a good performance.

Basically I think it's swings and roundabouts..and with ati and nvidia constantly bringing out new driver revisions.

I do think even though I put 'swings and roundabouts' that ati seem to be more committed to improving crossfire performance than nvidia - I have never had sli though and if someone comes on and they say it gives good performance then it might be 'evens-stevens'.

Sli and crossfire are always a gamble though because you're reliant on drivers for games for it to work all the time...and if you're not motherboard reliant at the mo I personally wouldn't choose a card on it's 'multi gpu' performance and in my opinion they're fairly close anyway.

Choose the card you think suits you best for single card and then when you decide to add another one it would be a nice bonus then..but my opinion is choose the card for it's single performance first.

I know that there's not a lot in it between the two cards..4870 and 260 but there are differences.
Click to expand...

Well thats exactly what I was saying I might do anyway.
For a long time im sure it'll just be the one card. And I have no idea whether to choose the 260 or the 4870.
I wonder if Hydra will be out when/if I get a second anyway :P
 
kylew said:
So you don't care what the experts who made the GPUs say, you think you know better than them?

There's wanting lower temps, and then there's just being stupid and thinking you know better than the ones who made the chips themselves.

GPUs are fine to run at high temps. You might not like it, but it doesn't mean that they're crap. Think about it a bit more before ranting. The coolers they come with obviously aren't the best, but they're not 'crap' just because you can get coolers that are better at removing heat.

Is water cooling crap because phasechange gets lower temps?

It's all about cost, the coolers are designed to work with the cards within the safe boundaries of temps for them, they're not crap, they're 'adequate'.

Better cooling is always better, I've changed the coolers on both my 4850s to get lower temps and more overclocking headroom. They change the stock coolers to something better at a later date because at that time the manufacturing costs have gone right down so they can afford to put something better on while keeping the cost down.
Click to expand...

All true.......

But manufactures are becoming lazy and not testing there gpus out properly before shiping them, there just seeing the £££ signs, like with everything thesedays

Take the 4850/4870 for example, when they first came out, temps were stupidly high in the 80s, I know ati said these temps were perfectly fine. but thats just shoddy workmanship if you ask me, cos Ive read review now of the 4870s in the 40s idel and 60s load. Plus theres noway I would trust a card or anything for that matter that was always in the 80s, plus heating the rest of your system up too.. A happy pc is a cool pc and a more stable one,,,, end of

Ive moded my 3870s bios with "cyber-mavs" help cos the fan speed was all wrong cos idel speed was set to 45% and was the noisest thing in my system, but now its set to 20% and I can only just hear it. with only about a 1 or 2c increase.
 
Natima said:
Out of curiosity (sorry for thread hijack again) I'm totally at a stalemate whether to get the 260 "216" or the 1gig 4870 for my new build.
The only thing thats gonna really sway me is whether Crossfire, or SLI is likely to be better, say if I ever decide to add another card.
I'll be using the UD5 so both are compatible.

Can anyone give me any insight into Crossfire vs SLI on these two cards?
Click to expand...

SLI and Crossfire are pretty equal lately.

Check out this review, it'll help you decide as it has benchmarks using latest drivers for HD 4870 512MB/1GB X2 and the GTX 260 212/GTX280 with crossfire and SLI results for all except the 4870X2, which is crossfire on one card.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2008/12/17/xmas-2008-graphics-performance-on-core-i7/1
 
Phil2008 said:
I want the 1gb version of these,, but my bank balance wont allow me to get one atm:D appently idle temps are 45c and load is 68c, but I guess that depends on your case cooling

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-186-AS&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=939&name=Asus%20ATI%20Radeon%20HD%204870%20512MB%20"Dark%20Knight"%20GDDR5%20TV-Out/Dual%20DVI/HDMI%20(PCI-Express)%20-%20Retail
Click to expand...

While the 512MB is very good, you're really better getting a 1GB one. You can get 'em for around £205 if you look around.
 
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kylew said:
So you don't care what the experts who made the GPUs say, you think you know better than them?

There's wanting lower temps, and then there's just being stupid and thinking you know better than the ones who made the chips themselves.

GPUs are fine to run at high temps. You might not like it, but it doesn't mean that they're crap. Think about it a bit more before ranting. The coolers they come with obviously aren't the best, but they're not 'crap' just because you can get coolers that are better at removing heat.

Is water cooling crap because phasechange gets lower temps?

It's all about cost, the coolers are designed to work with the cards within the safe boundaries of temps for them, they're not crap, they're 'adequate'.

Better cooling is always better, I've changed the coolers on both my 4850s to get lower temps and more overclocking headroom. They change the stock coolers to something better at a later date because at that time the manufacturing costs have gone right down so they can afford to put something better on while keeping the cost down.
Click to expand...

+1

I'm sure a lot of people aren't bothered about their cards temperatures - I know a few people that don't even bother looking at their card temps and they wouldn't even know a good temp from a bad one. These GPUs are designed for high heat.

Better cooling is always better but the coolers are designed to work with the cards within the safe boundaries of temps for them.

Yep..I'm sure the designers/engineers know the tolerances more than us - so agree with above post. :p
 
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VortexA1 said:
+1

I'm sure a lot of people aren't bothered about their cards temperatures - I know a few people that don't even bother looking at their card temps and they wouldn't even know a good temp from a bad one. These GPUs are designed for high heat.

Better cooling is always better but the coolers are designed to work with the cards within the safe boundaries of temps for them.

Yep..I'm sure the designers/engineers know the tolerances more than us - so agree with above post. :p
Click to expand...

I totally agree, I must be too fussy with my temps then.
I guess I have to be a tad carful tho with what Im buying, cos I cant really do anything about it if I do have probs cos of high temps.
 
kylew said:
SLI and Crossfire are pretty equal lately.

Check out this review, it'll help you decide as it has benchmarks using latest drivers for HD 4870 512MB/1GB X2 and the GTX 260 212/GTX280 with crossfire and SLI results for all except the 4870X2, which is crossfire on one card.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2008/12/17/xmas-2008-graphics-performance-on-core-i7/1
Click to expand...

Thanks a lot!
It seems theres not much in it really.
In which case I think I'll go for the 4870 1Gig.
My reasons being, I'd like to do my part to help ATI/AMD recover from a poor situation. I much prefer their business model too, they seem to want to innovate more than just rip people off.
 
Natima said:
Thanks a lot!
It seems theres not much in it really.
In which case I think I'll go for the 4870 1Gig.
My reasons being, I'd like to do my part to help ATI/AMD recover from a poor situation. I much prefer their business model too, they seem to want to innovate more than just rip people off.
Click to expand...

Go for the "dark knight" version the temps are ment to be great liike I said in one on my posts.
 
mmj_uk said:
It's a bit irresponsible to recommend he buy a new PSU when it could be a faulty card, he could be sat here next week £100 down and no better off. :p

Insufficient PSU will usually cause BSOD's, reboots, failure to post or something a little more terminal like that.

Try the card on another system before splashing out on a new PSU.
Click to expand...

I agree with this guy - recommending that the OP spend more money on a new PSU in the hope it will fix his problems is not a logical or efficient way of solving this.

If the system worked fine before the new card was fitted, it is the card that is most likely to be at fault. First thing to do is to try the card in another system or just RMA it. If the replacement still exhibits the same fault then you can look elsewhere in the system.

Personally my money is on a duff card, graphical corruption is usually symptomatic of GPU memory failure. If the PSU was inadequate, the system would hard lock or re-boot under load.

Hope this helps.
 
Natima said:
Thanks a lot!
It seems theres not much in it really.
In which case I think I'll go for the 4870 1Gig.
My reasons being, I'd like to do my part to help ATI/AMD recover from a poor situation. I much prefer their business model too, they seem to want to innovate more than just rip people off.
Click to expand...

No worries, happy I could help. :)
 
mea98rm said:
I agree with this guy - recommending that the OP spend more money on a new PSU in the hope it will fix his problems is not a logical or efficient way of solving this.

If the system worked fine before the new card was fitted, it is the card that is most likely to be at fault. First thing to do is to try the card in another system or just RMA it. If the replacement still exhibits the same fault then you can look elsewhere in the system.

Personally my money is on a duff card, graphical corruption is usually symptomatic of GPU memory failure. If the PSU was inadequate, the system would hard lock or re-boot under load.

Hope this helps.
Click to expand...

While that could be the case, you've also got to remember that his PSU isn't rated to supply the necessary ampage for the 4870 and considering the power requirements of the 4870 over his other card, it really does point the finger at it being a PSU issue. Don't forget, faults don't always manifest in the same way on all hardware. :)
 
kylew said:
While that could be the case, you've also got to remember that his PSU isn't rated to supply the necessary ampage for the 4870 and considering the power requirements of the 4870 over his other card, it really does point the finger at it being a PSU issue. Don't forget, faults don't always manifest in the same way on all hardware. :)
Click to expand...

Yes but the point is we're not gambling with his money, it could be faulty card or it could be a struggling PSU, neither of us are 100% certain so his next step should be to rule one of them out to be certain.

He mentions that the artifacts only occur with Overdrive on and having autodetected an overclock, that to me suggests that it works fine with no overclock? I also don't see how a new PSU will fix the s-video and LOD problems he reports, those sound driver related.

I just think people have been a little hasty at pointing the finger away from the card and towards the PSU.
 
re

i dont care how many fps an 4870x2 pushes over any gtx card,i will always buy nvidia as i heard the ati cards stutter in game...i will never buy an ati card
 
thevet said:
i dont care how many fps an 4870x2 pushes over any gtx card,i will always buy nvidia as i heard the ati cards stutter in game...i will never buy an ati card
Click to expand...

You sound like some one that got banned some time ago for ranting about how 'ATi Sucks'. ATI or NV hardware doesn't suck, it only sucks when the people who buy it can't use it.

Something doesn't suck just because of your inadequacies. :o
 
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