260 thoughts

[zytok]

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.

 

[zytok]

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).

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.

 

[zytok]

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?