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My mini review - GTX 280 vastly better than 9800GX2 for high res gaming

Thanks Mr B.

Did you notice microstuttering when playing Crysis with the GX2. I had SLI 8800 GT for a short while but changed to the 8800GTS because it was a lot more smoother overall during gameplay and didn't suffer from microstuttering due to bandwidth issues I'm guessing.
 
Just a small thing, but it is really that much faster at high resolutions to justify the £150 extra you'd have to put to it?
 
Tbh i seen reviews of the 8800 ultra beating the gx2 when at the highest res because of the bandwidth killing the gx2. Thought this was common knowledge. Only in graphics intensive games though. I still think the gx2 at lower resolutions is the card to have over the very expensive gtx280 as theres not much difference at all.
 
TiZoR said:
I have no issues playing them games in your review with my EVGA GX2 ssc card,

I play all my games at 1920x1200, might be a duff card?

anyway good review there :)
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Me too, not had any problems with the BFG GX2 at 1920x1200

Now when i had a 3870X2 that was a stutter fest,
 
TheRealDeal said:
Tbh i seen reviews of the 8800 ultra beating the gx2 when at the highest res because of the bandwidth killing the gx2. Thought this was common knowledge. Only in graphics intensive games though. I still think the gx2 at lower resolutions is the card to have over the very expensive gtx280 as theres not much difference at all.
Click to expand...

There is a micro stuttering issue that affects the GX2 thats underreported by the review sites. My money will be going on the 280 at the end of the month.
Anyway for me single card-------->sli and crossfire.
 
tdream said:
Thanks Mr B.

Did you notice microstuttering when playing Crysis with the GX2. I had SLI 8800 GT for a short while but changed to the 8800GTS because it was a lot more smoother overall during gameplay and didn't suffer from microstuttering due to bandwidth issues I'm guessing.
Click to expand...

Yeah i did notice this with GX2 and Crysis, there was also some weird issue i had where after playing Crysis for a while the performance would continue to get worse until the stuttering was bad and the FPS dropped.

Tute said:
Just a small thing, but it is really that much faster at high resolutions to justify the £150 extra you'd have to put to it?
Click to expand...

Yes it's WAY faster at 2560x1600, i mean, not being able to play some games at that res on the GX2 with no AA/AF, to being able to run them with 2x/4x AA + 16x AF on the GTX 280... big difference. Obviously though, if you had something like a 1650x1080 monitor then the GX2 would be a better choice.


Coolasmoo said:
Me too, not had any problems with the BFG GX2 at 1920x1200

Now when i had a 3870X2 that was a stutter fest,
Click to expand...
It's still quite hard to affect 1920x1200, unless you turn up the AA and AF enough - you need to do this to run in to it at this res. But some games where the 512MB memory limit kicks in with enough AA/AF are:

GRID
UT3
Mass Effect
Oblivion + High res texture mods
ET:QW
Crysis (although it's harder to tell with this game as it already cripples the GPU with AA at this res anyway)

Edit: i'll just add this last bit to my original post before more people say this :p
 
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As much as I wanted this to blow chunks (high pricing), it seems nvidia have made something for us neglected high ressers. Hope ATI will come up with a good top end solution soon or nvidia to drop the price to £250-£300 ish. Cheapist one is £440 atm on OcUK :(
 
Yeah, this is one area where the GTX 280 is practically needed atm; extreme high res gaming. Any other solution just gets bogged under and runs out of VRAM.
 
Nah the 280 is a noisey *******. Only problem i have with mine.

When it's idle it's exactly the same as my GX2 was, which in turn was also the same as my 8800GTX.

But when you start a game the 280 makes more noise than other cards i've had in recent years (6800 Ultra, 7800GTX, 7900 Ultra, 8800GTX, 9800GX2), and after your've stopped playing a game the fan never spins back down to it's original idle speed.

I have water cooling, so everything else is quiet and i can easily pick out the noise from the card. Guess i'll just get a block for it at some point..
 
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I think the fact the fan never backs down much after exiting a game is going to be a deal breaker for a lot of people. I wonder will this be sorted with a bios fix or driver fix ? I guess the other option is to force it to back down using software.

That EVGA precision tool is actually pretty sweet in that regard (works on any G90 or G92), with fan control on both gpu's, individual profiles for controlling fans, core/memory speed etc.. all selectable from the system tray. And best of all, backgound monitoring with support gor the Logitech G15 / Z10 speakers LCD.
 
unless someone mentioned it, (no one usually does) Ati have vastly better memory usage than Nvidia, have done for a long long time and seems to be they always will, would be interesting to see a comparison at same settings with a 4850/70.

Remember reviews when the 8800 gts 320/640 came out, at higher res a 1900xt 256mb could beat out a 8800gts 320 due to memory usage. Ati compression of textures is obviously a lot more efficient. Same went with 512mb cards vs the 8800gts 640, ATi went ahead in certain resolutions due to the massive drop in speed when you run out of memory. Though really just another reason I feel safer with ATi :p

The worst thing about the jump from 512 to 1gb is the cost involved, especially with gddr5 as with anything new it will be ridiculously expensive compared to older stuff. the reason its such a pain for increased cost is, you don't necessarily need 1GB if you run out of memory with a 512MB card, you might only need 513MB, or more likely higher but I doubt anything comes close to using a GB yet so you essentially pay for wastage which is a shame.

1GB, at this time is overkill, I get that there are a few users with a 30" screen who it will help, but only in a small minority of games, to increase the price of the final card to the 99.9999999999% of users who don't need 1GB is fairly silly for them. AT the end of the day GFX makers need to aim a range of products at the widest range of people and be affordable in the segment. If ATi went ahead with 1gb of gddr5 on their 4870 no doubt it would increase the price significantly when only a very very small portion of buyers would see it used. Nvidia playing on epeen again. Its always a shame to lose out because you got a better screen, but its very silly to increase the cost so much. THey probably should have stuck with the old 8800gtx setup with 756mb mem and a midrange bus for a quite a lot cheaper card and the best of both worlds, but then, Nvidia have always been dumb.
 
MR.B said:
Nah the 280 is a noisey *******. Only problem i have with mine.

When it's idle it's exactly the same as my GX2 was, which in turn was also the same as my 8800GTX.

But when you start a game the 280 makes more noise than other cards i've had in recent years (6800 Ultra, 7800GTX, 7900 Ultra, 8800GTX, 9800GX2), and after your've stopped playing a game the fan never spins back down to it's original idle speed.

I have water cooling, so everything else is quiet and i can easily pick out the noise from the card. Guess i'll just get a block for it at some point..
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It is a little noisey, not quite as bad as my old X1900XTX though and the idle temps are pretty amazing imo, mine idles at 45C and loads at 80C, also my fan/gpu does spin down to idle/power saving mode as soon as the temp drops, if it's not doing this for you then you might have a problem somewhere.
 
Shocky-FM said:
It is a little noisey, not quite as bad as my old X1900XTX though and the idle temps are pretty amazing imo, mine idles at 45C and loads at 80C, also my fan/gpu does spin down to idle/power saving mode as soon as the temp drops, if it's not doing this for you then you might have a problem somewhere.
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Diff Vendor, diff Bios ?
 
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