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Worth it now?

arc@css said:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-190-AS&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1341

Seems like a cracker of a deal to me. Wasn't long ago that the value version was £290.
Click to expand...

less bad value isn't the same as good value. Considering a 4870x2 is considerably faster, and still cheaper, its a terrible price. seeing as its slower, a lot slower than a 4870x2 it would need to be sub £200 to be a great price, considering its not all that much faster than a 260 or a 275, at £135-150 the 260 is great value.
 
Straying slightly off the price for the mo, the difference between this and say the 260 is more than just fps, right? The 285 has the 512 memory interface, higher clocks which I appreciate the 260 can o/c like crazy anyway, better IQ and higher bandwidth. So it has more to offer than just higher fps. Though compared with the X2 I have to agree it is not as good value.

I am really tempted to buy this since I am after an nVidia card.
 
Go for it man. I went from a 8800GTX -> 4870X2 -> GTX285. The latter pees over the others. I don't care what anybody says the X2 has micro-stuttering and inconsistent fps. At least you know with a single card solution (1 GPU) you're getting 100% performance across the board.

In my exeperience the only games which i played where the X2 was beating the 285 was Grid, UT3 and Oblivion. But even then, I have only lost some very slight smoothness in Oblivion and the 285 kicks out enough frames to make it a smooth experience. Also, the X2 does not overclock well even on water.
 
What I believe to be the case is that I'll be getting better minimum frame rates and perhaps more consistent fps too - though maybe there isn't much in it with regards to that side of things.
 
if you can find a 216 sp 260 for around £135, then you'll find the 285 is OVER 80% more expensive, yet, what, 15% faster at best, when both maxed out overclocks, maybe a smaller difference as the 216 "should" have more headroom for overclocking starting out at a lower clock. if they both hit the same final clock(not sure if they do, no idea how either clock) then the difference is likely to be negligible.

Personally i think the 275 for £200ish is a very very hard sell considering the 260 is so damn cheap, another £50 for another tiny performance bump is just as unsellable to me.

Keeping in mind you'll be almost at sli 260 costs to get that 285gtx, frankly, 260 sli spanks the 285 just as hard as a 4870x2 spanks it left right and centre.

I can't think a of a single situation where playing 80% more for 10-15% performance increase is good value.

The only valid reason(and i only just noticed you have a 4870x2 now) to downgrade to a single card solution is to make money going with something cheaper because you need it, or like I did, I went to aa 4890 because my room is, just, insanely hot in summer and especially at the moment mainly playing windowed mmo's running an extra core, an extra 100-120W all the time for no reason in a baking room isn't worth it at the moment.
 
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His motherboard doesn't support SLI so thats out...

the £135 260 tho is great value for money and overclocks nicely...
 
Yes you're right about the sli. I don't mind though, haven't tried crossfire yet either. I don't see me tinkering with two cards yet.
 
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2009/05/26/sapphire-radeon-hd-4890-1gb-atomic-review/6


Firstly, its not hard to change a mobo if you're really that way inclined. Frankly i'd buy 260 sli and change mobo before buying a 285gtx.

But as that review, and many others show, in ALL but one game(COD:WAW, and even then you'd assume it would be fixed, and cod 4 never had the issue on same engine, afaik, and both ran flawlessly for me, if i had that minimum, i never noticed it once), the 4870x2 either spanks or destroys the 285gtx, in both average AND minimum fps.

In FO3, Crysis, Far Cry 2, at higher resolutions the 4870x2 is routinely spanking it and with that review, FO3 at 1,920 x 1,200 8xAA 16xAF which is probably what most people with either card would play at, its got a fully 50% higher minimum framerate than the 285GTX.
 
Cheers for the link drunkenmaster. I must admit I didn't realize the X2 was so far ahead of nvidia's 285. Hmmm, perhaps the money would be better spent on a monitor to take advantage of my radeon (using a Dell 22.2" atm). Or since my q6600 doesn't seem to o/c reliably maybe an E8600 or a Q9650. Decisions, arrghh!
 
Most nForce motherboards SUCK - tho the X58 platform isn't bad - but not a cheap move...

as much as I hate to admit it - the best forward move given his motherboard (I believe it does dual x16 in cf) would be a couple of 4890 cards :S tho personally I'd rather have an nVidia setup as its always felt more stable performance wise in multi GPU to me.

EDIT: Oh missed that you already have a 4870X2... in that case theres nothing really worth moving to at this time.

Either spend the money on a Q9550 or something like that, that overclocks well or a decent monitor.
 
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screen first, grab a cheap quad later in the year IF games start to need it(which is unlikely tbh). Though if its doing 3.5Ghz easily and higher isn't reliable, then you won't need one for a long time. If 3.5Ghz isn't reliable, run at 3.2Ghz, more than enough for any game out there.

To be honest a 4890 1gb is pretty damn close to a 285gtx, heavily overclocked versions of both cards, at least overclocks they are sold at, the 4890 might even more ahead in several games(I don't think the 4890's go much further than 1gz pre-overclocked, no idea if 285's overclock much further or not). there really isn't any single card available, that can match a 2 core setup be that two cards or 2 cores on one card. The 295gtx is FAR better value than a 285gtx because its still less than twice the price for very very big performance. But from a 4870x2, the only "upgrade" will be sli of some sort, or 2x4890's, or maybe a single card from ati or nvidia's next gen range.
 
Thanks gents, will head over to the monitor section. :)

edit - I agree for single player games that a 3.2 or even 3.0 is probably enough but I play quite a bit of css, and being an online game that is cpu dependent means I really need a good overclock.
 
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Hmm I've not seen anything in CSS - tho I don't play it that much any more - that my Q6600 + 260GTX SLI can't handle in figures over 300fps with max settings as 2048x res.
 
What are you running your q6600 at Rroff?

I must admit that occasionally I'll go and play on 64 player servers which must hit the cpu hard on any system. Though I do get a little performance drop on some 32 player servers too. Some of the more laggy maps like port or Dust2. The highest fps I've had in css is somewhere over 500. Normally the lowest is around 100.
 
if you're getting a performance drop its more likely css using a higher AA setting than you need, unless you're running bots theres no reason to even need a particularly high clock on a dual core. Not even sure if CSS uses multicore's tbh, it probably doesn't as HL2 wasn't even multithreaded for ages, supposed to have been added in one of the ep's afaik.

But that game runs, as it does for Rroff and it has done for years, way before I had a quad core.

Check your cpu usage in task manager, it might be spreading the load but its probably not actually using more than once cores worth, so 25%.

Sorry was just reading, the lowest fps you've had is 100?
 
3.0-3.6gig - depends what I'm doing. Over 3gig takes a huge increase in voltage and a massive increase in heat - so I run it at 3gig as much as possible.

Ah I haven't played on any 64 player servers in a long while...
 
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