What card for Battlefield:BC2 @ 2560x1440

Ezyryder · 7 Dec 2010 at 13:34

From the 570 Toms review in the other thread...

I would expect a 480 to be faster than a 5870 seeing as I can buy a 5870 for £180 and the cheapest 480 new costs at least £100 more.

RavenXXX2 · 7 Dec 2010 at 13:35

What? AMD are top with xfire setups lol, I would not expect anything else.

How do you come to the conclusion AMD are better in the frostbite engine, because they are faster with Xfire setups v single GPU Nvidia cards lol

Ezyryder · 7 Dec 2010 at 13:40

RavenXXX2 said:
What? AMD are top with xfire setups lol, I would not expect anything else.

How do you come to the conclusion AMD are better in the frostbite engine, because they are faster with Xfire setups v single GPU Nvidia cards lol

6870 vs 470.

AMD is faster...

5870 trades blows with the 570 and 480 which are superior cards...

Wait until the new range comes out and we will see, I am in no rush

RavenXXX2 · 7 Dec 2010 at 13:43

WoW is that it, the highly clocked refresh part from AMD is marginally faster than the older low clocked 470. I think we can conclude that AMD has no advantage over Nvidia in the frostbite engine. I can post up plenty of benchmarks showing Nvidia cards much faster and better min FPS but let's not derail the thread.

Ezyryder · 7 Dec 2010 at 13:48

RavenXXX2 said:
WoW is that it, the highly clocked refresh part from AMD is marginally faster than the older low clocked 470. I think IMO I can conclude that AMD has no advantage over Nvidia in the frostbite engine. I can post up plenty of benchmarks showing Nvidia cards much faster and better min FPS but let's not derail the thread.

Fixed for you

JediFragger · 7 Dec 2010 at 14:07

Another 6870 for XFire would be kickass :cool:

wuyanxu · 7 Dec 2010 at 14:36

benchmark numbers are all nice and well, but from my personal experience, gtx580 is by far a LOT smoother at 2560x1440 than 5870 at 1920x1200 in BFBC2. (24inch monitor played BFBC2 all night, went to 27inch and had lot of shuttering, so felt turned off by this game, then bought gtx580, now playing all nights again)

in fact, gtx260 feels smoother across all games compared to 5870. only change i noticed is FPS increase, actual enjoyable gameplay came from nvidia, gtx260 and gtx580.

so i'd say buy ATI if you want to benchmark, buy nVidia if you want to play games.

OLDPHART · 7 Dec 2010 at 14:47

flopper said:
I wouldnt go Nvidia, they have a lot of issues with that game

What a load of CARP. :mad:

Played BC2 with a 5870 prior to a GTX470 which l'm using now.

My GTX470 at 850:1700:2000 is Maxed Out, sound>War Tapes > res at max 1920x1200 24" monitor no problems at all, BC2 seem's a lot smoother with the 470 than with the 5870. ALL l've done is stick with the NVidea WHQL Drivers 263.09 being the latest.

opethdisciple · 7 Dec 2010 at 15:58

Can someone explain what shuttering is?

I thought at first you guys where misspelling stuttering...

Shuttering = enough grunt but not enough vram?

Marine-RX179 · 7 Dec 2010 at 16:10

opethdisciple said:
Shuttering = enough grunt but not enough vram?

I think he's confusing stuttering sharp drive in frame rate, as stuttering usually is more of an occurance with multi-GPU, not on a single GPU card. Simply put, stuttering means the game would feel not as smooth as the frame rate implies; for example, a single GPU would be smoother than a muti-GPU set up if both were at the same frame rate. Roughly speaking, a muti-GPU set up would need around 5-10fps higher to deliver the same smoothness as a single GPU card...i.e. 30fps on a dual-GPU set-up would probably feel like 20fps on a single GPU card...something like that.

But either way, while I don't doubt GTX580 is a good card, but I find his logic and approach of comparing his new GTX580 to his old 5870 1GB to be faulted. He believes the 5870 can't handle BFBC2 at 2560 because of the lack of memory, but the fact is it is the lack of "grunt" that's the biggest reason for the 5870 1GB not being able to handle that res. He's using the basis of 5870 with 1GB VRAM doing poorly at 2560, there for Crossfire 5870/6870 with just 1GB VRAM will also struggle in BFBC2 at 2560.

I'm all for single card solution over dual-card set-up myself as well, but what I'm concerned about is whether or not can OP really sell his existing 6870 for a good price...no offense, I wouldn't even consider buying a 2nd hand 6870 for £150, as the prices of the cards could fluctuate quite a bit this two months or so with the launch of new £200~ cards, so both camps could re-adjust the price level for the cards.

wuyanxu · 7 Dec 2010 at 16:18

sorry, perhaps it's stuttering.

basically noticeable (ususally less than half second) pauses that ruins gameplay experience. it's clear sign of shortage of vRAM.

1.5GB cards is the minimal you should be looking at.

Walter Sobchak · 7 Dec 2010 at 16:26

Thanks for the replies fellas!

Seems I started a good debate! My mb is Asus p5q deluxe so it does support x8 crossfire but would need a new psu.

Just had a blast @ 2560x1440 using medium settings and the game was very playable. I think Ill wait and see if the new single atis will sort me out.

Marine-RX179 · 7 Dec 2010 at 16:30

Walter Sobchak said:
Just had a blast @ 2560x1440 using medium settings and the game was very playable. I think Ill wait and see if the new single atis will sort me out.

I would suggest you have a go on overclocking your 6870 if you not yet done so. Even as little as 2 extra fps on both minimum and average would could be a nice little improvement

wuyanxu · 7 Dec 2010 at 16:38

Walter Sobchak said:
Thanks for the replies fellas! Seems I started a good debate! My mb is Asus p5q deluxe so it does support x8 crossfire but would need a new psu.

Just had a blast @ 2560x1440 using medium settings and the game was very playable. I think Ill wait and see if the new single atis will sort me out.

try turn off HBAO, i was able to play acceptably everything on High, no AA, no HBAO.

but gtx580 blows it out of the water even with FRAPS recording.

Walter Sobchak · 7 Dec 2010 at 17:07

Marine-RX179 said:
I would suggest you have a go on overclocking your 6870 if you not yet done so. Even as little as 2 extra fps on both minimum and average would could be a nice little improvement

I haven't yet, but have downloaded MSI Afterburner. Any suggestions where I should start?

wuyanxu said:
try turn off HBAO, i was able to play acceptably everything on High, no AA, no HBAO.

but gtx580 blows it out of the water even with FRAPS recording.

Will do! Ta

Marine-RX179 · 7 Dec 2010 at 17:39

Walter Sobchak said:
I haven't yet, but have downloaded MSI Afterburner. Any suggestions where I should start?

Most people can overclock 6870 from 900MHz to 950-975MHz or stock voltage no problem. You might have to look around for advice if you wish on increase voltage for the card for higher overclock.

pinkpotato · 7 Dec 2010 at 20:44

I would go for 6870 crossfire ive had mine running for a while and such a step up over my single 5870 so pleased i managed to sell it for the same price as a 6870

OLDPHART · 8 Dec 2010 at 15:52

My setting's using Gossamer's Launcher 1.3 -> 470 850/1700/2000 Res x920x1200, my Monitor won't allow 2560x1600, but 1920x1200 will probably be the top one for a 470.

My 470 at stock same settings but at 1680x1050 no problems, sound is set at War Tape's for both in BC2 setting's -

wuyanxu > GTX580 and you had to turn off, AA, HBAO, to play on High setting,s?

Guardsmon · 8 Dec 2010 at 16:19

My old 8800GTX ran BC2 better than my new 5770... stupid ATI and frostbite, now I get random games when everything on screen apart from labels is black. I want me 8800GTX back!!!
Buy a 8800GTX it'll do you what you want... if you run winXP, turn off AA and use 1920x instead

wuyanxu · 8 Dec 2010 at 16:26

OLDPHART said:
wuyanxu > GTX580 and you had to turn off, AA, HBAO, to play on High setting,s?

with 5870, for 2560x1440 had to turn off AA, HBAO to play at acceptable rate. zero chance of smooth recording. even at 1920x1200 using FRAPS was out of the question.

with gtx580, it's a simple matter of putting everything to highest possible including Vsync. i kept 8xMSAA because i feel 4x is already more than enough at this resolution. FRAPS recording or not, it's unnoticeable.