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260 thoughts

zytok

zytok

zytok

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Joined
12 Feb 2004
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2,326
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Chesterfield
Been going through a few older games recently (thanks to the RCT thread) and have noticed how much smoother they seem compared to my 4850/4870.

RCT3 despite being an ATi branded game runs much better on the 260. Placing blueprints no longer results in the game dipping into single figure fps.

Neverwinter Nights 2 runs an absolute dream (60+fps constant) maxed out at 1920x1080 whereas it used to struggle dipping below 30 at times on the 48xx.

NFSMW used to judder occasionally even on low settings but now runs smooth as melted butter.

Some scenes on Half-Life 2 used to dip to 30-40 on the 48xx but stays at 60 with the same settings on the 260.

Even though I only bought the 192 core version when it was on sale at £135, there is hardly anything that doesn't seem to run better on the 260. Grid is the only thing I've noticed that seems to get a bit of an FPS hit but it maintains 55-60fps maxed out with 8xCSAA (seems faster than 4xMSAA?) so not a biggy.

I switched away from nVidia after the 8800GT which used to suffer from judder and I was disappointed to see that the issue still occured (though less-so) on the ATi cards.

This is the first card I've had in ages that seems to run everything smoothly. Just need to try out Gears of War and Test Drive Unlimited which both seemed to suffer badly from "micro-stutter" for me in the past.
 
Maybe you had a problem with the PC somehow not liking a 4870 lol, GOW and TDU run smoothly on my 4870 512mb.

Only problem with ATi cards I find is that there is hardly anything you can force AA on in the CCC like TDU I want more than 4xAA but it does not work in CCC with ATi :(
 
Which 4870 did you change from? I did the same going from 4870 512MB to a GTX 260 (192) last year back in September. I stated it was performing a lot better but a load of people here were telling me it was a downgrade lol.

You can get some serious clocks of the 260/275/280/285 cards which for me is a key selling point. I used to play Guild Wars, the 4870 would drop to 40FPS in some parts whereas my old 8800GT never budged from 60FPS (vsync).
 
elpedro said:
Ye, but its not like the 260 will drop below the holy grail that is 60FPS in GRID! ;)
Click to expand...

I do run it with 16af and 8AA. Could be down to server lag as I mostly play online.
To many variables to compare It was a while ago I had the 4870 a good few drivers ago thats for sure. Every new driver Nvidia release latley claims improved performance in Grid (yer right!)
 
Because the 260 has 896mb, which is better than 512mb at that res, a 4870 1gb would have also been better than a 512mb 4870/4850, as the 4870 would have been throttling down to your 4850's speeds as well.
 
elpedro said:
Which 4870 did you change from? I did the same going from 4870 512MB to a GTX 260 (192) last year back in September. I stated it was performing a lot better but a load of people here were telling me it was a downgrade lol.

You can get some serious clocks of the 260/275/280/285 cards which for me is a key selling point. I used to play Guild Wars, the 4870 would drop to 40FPS in some parts whereas my old 8800GT never budged from 60FPS (vsync).
Click to expand...

I changed from a 1GB Sapphire. I only kept it for a week or two before realising that it offered little benefit to the 4850 I'd been running for about a year. Was reluctant to go back to nVidia based on the 8800 series being disappointing for me but glad I did now. Haven't tried Guild Wars again yet but do remember this suffering from an erratic frame rate too on the 48xx.
I'm not saying that the 260 is massively faster than the 48xx but does seem much more stable and constant than the ATI offerings.
 
I have owned a lot of cards in the past year. From memory I went from 8800GTX to GTX260 (192) to HD4850 to HD4870 back to HD4850, to GTX280, back to HD4850 again, to GTX260 (216).

Out of all of these cards the 4850 offered the best value for money until the 260 (216) dropped below £150. The 4870 was simply not worth the extra money over the 4850 and the same can be said for the GTX280 over the 260.

I have recently retired the 4850 because the 260 now seems the right card. It is noticeably faster than the 4850, in a way that the 4870 never was. Min FPS is much more important than Max or Ave FPS, and the 260 excels here. Overclocking the 260 is also much more rewarding than the 4870.
 
I must admit I tend to agree going from a 4870 512 to a GTX 260 216 55nm card that everything is smoother and quicker.

However I would expect it to be since the GTX 260 overclocks like buggery and even at stock has an advantage over the 4870 512.

However, at stock the gain is quite small and nothing like the size you are saying. Perhaps you had driver issues?

Also if I remeber correctly isn't there a bug with GRID where 8x aa really only applies 2 x aa and hence the results are quicker than 4 x aa? I might be mistaken but it rings bells.
 
I am not referring to a particular set of drivers, a particular OS or even a particular system. I have changed every single component of my system over the past year and tried numerous installations of XP, Vista and Windows 7. I always perform a clean OS install.

I am just saying that I am finding that the 260 seems to run everything I've tried more smoothly (ie less peaks and troughs of FPS) than any card I've owned over the past few years. There is no way however that I see that the 275/285/295 is worth paying the extra wonga for atm as if you can run everything at 1920x1080 at 60fps with AA then no reason to pay more imo.

ps. no idea on the Grid issue. At 2xMSAA (everything maxed) I was getting 55-70fps, this dropped a little to 48-60 at 4xMSAA but went back up to 55-70 at 8xCSAA. Not sure of the technical difference between MS and CS AA?
 
I went from 4850 512MB & 4870 512MB to 2 x GTX260-216 in my 2 main PC's and the difference is slight but its there. Drivers are just better from NV even though ATI have on paper better hardware their drivers team are obviously not as large as Nvidia so they have less resource to tweak. This can make a big difference in games as NV's inferior hardware with better drivers can outperform in certain games. Its mainly min FPS is higher and gameplay is overall smoother and more consistent in real world gaming scenarios. If ATI could get put more resource into their drivers NV would be in serious trouble but if it were that easy they would have done so already.
 
willhub said:
I might move to NV soon, getting sick of the crap ATi drivers, garbage.

285 I think :D
Click to expand...

285 would be a dumb choice now lol. Look around for a cheap 280 (same as 285 just slower stock clocks) or get one of these new 275s. The fact people were saying the 260-216 was on the heels of the 280/285 and now the 275 sits in-between those two means the 285 won't be worth the added premium.

If you think about it, when the 260-216 progressed to 55nm and with the lower quality cooler, the prices actually dropped compared to the original 65nm 260. But when they did this to the 280, they kept the crappier cooler, added a few measly MHz to the clocks and branded it a new card and hiked the price...
 
275/285/4890 are not worth getting, theres just to many cards in that segment, its to swamped, only 260-216 or 1gb 4870 are worth getting, as from those, the difference is a couple or so frames between them all, its bloody ridiculous imo.

Id rather buy a card thats £50+ cheaper and overclock it to get the 4 frames or so the next card up is faster by. :p
 
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