HD3870 512MB or 8800GT ? (still cant decide)

Nice to have your input Sam. However you say herr it is more reliable than the 8800, and in another of your recent posts you also say the WD Raptor 150 isn't that reliable.

Care to share your "reliability" resources? Is it another online forum? I have been with storagereview for years and (no disrespect intended) but the wd raptors are one of the most reliable drives ever built (adfd versions).

I must say though, that if there was a site which gave purely reliability ratings for devices (where people could actually rate their own current / previous hardware) that would be beneficial for all! Does anyone agree??

 

Rhamhoy: Just so you know, I'm from the UK too.
Phill: Sure thing. As you know the 8800GT uses a small single slot cooler like older graphics cards, possibly to try and prove that the new G92 architecture uses less power than the GTX and GTS of old. Whilst that's certainly true, the cards still use a LOT of power and get very hot. Too hot in fact. Large numbers of early 8800GTs failed due to overheating because the tiny heatsink and fan couldn't keep up with the heat being produced. Certain manufacturers like EVGA have since increased the fan size on the cooler. I'm unsure of how effective that's been but if I were buying an 8800GT (which I wouldn't, for other reasons) I'd want to stick a proper cooler like an HR-03GT on it right away.
As for the 150GB Raptor, I'm not entirely sure why they're not very reliable. A few people I know use them and most of them have had problems. I can only guess at the cause of the issues (they are certainly not heat related, one of my friends had two of them fail and he runs them in an Antec 900 with all the fans on high - the RACKET! lol) but suffice to say I've seen substantial evidence that they're not that trustworthy. Even Tom's Hardware removed them from their test bed as they wouldn't play ball with other hardware... Doesn't that tell you something?
Several people including myself use the 37GB Raptors, and even though they're all old, they all still work fine and have proven a very reliable drive, but the 150s? I'm not convinced.
As for a reliability rating site it would be useful, but would probably be filled by the plebs that rack up all the 1 star reviews on newegg just because they're idiots and have no idea how to use the hardware.

 

And on the 8800GT Sam, the new fan is 10mm bigger and cools better by 2 degrees. The only real difference is the fan noise is lower at higher rpm.



Reference,

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=168200

 

92C is still a bit on the hot side. Granted, it's about nominal for a powerful graphics card (with the stock cooler my X1900XT reached 91C at full load), but since these tests are usually conducted in an unrealistic test-bed environment and not in a real PC case, your average PC will probably get the 8800GT to loads of 95 or higher, and that's when you start encountering problems. Certainly, people who just bung the card in their HP Pavilion are going to have huge issues with one 92mm fan cooling the whole system...

 

My HP had 2 fans.

And yeah the temps it reaches are ridiculous. I mean this youtube guy tests new games(crysis, cod4) with crossfire 3870's and overclocks slightly. His GPU temps never go over 40 in a crap case with little cooling.

Check him out Sam,

http://youtube.com/user/jayjaybwoyxx

 

Hmm, youtube. If I was demonstrating how well games look, youtube is the last place I'd think of. At least use stage6, that doesn't look terrible.

 

Scream for too much, you get fusk all.

Anyway, it's just to show FPS mainly.

 

But how is it a relevant test? Most youtube videos aren't even 640x480 res, let alone 800x600 or anything higher? How can you tell the game isn't running at 512x384?

 

He records with a cam and shows settings before along with the res he uses.(you can clearly see the res on config settings)

 

Well, at least being cammed means the FPS are genuine. It must look disgusting though (not that games like Crysis look good to start with. COD4 on the other hand, sweetness)

 

Anyway back on topic, anyone used either to watch HD content?

 

HD content playback should be pretty similar with either. You'll find Radeons more forgiving for interacting with other AV equipment though (TVs, recorders etc.)

 

I disagree entirely sam. COD 4 doesnt give you as much freedom, and I think the physics and overall graphics in Crysis are way better. Also, you cannot destroy houses, lamps, chairs, etc and use them as a weapon in COD 4 too.


COD 4 vs crysis:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=gyQTCeobZlg

 

Both are great games. Enough said.

Hopefully the new patch for Crysis will improves performance(for sli and crossfire) will be out next week. It will be interesting to see just how much fps is improved at high/very high settings. Ill say no more than a 10fps increase.

 

^I agree. Patches usually don't increase the fps in game by that much, but with Crysis anything helps.

Is the patch coming out next week? I haven't really heard any news about that on incrysis.com

 

I won't start a fanboy war over this, but I don't think Crysis is a better looking game than COD4. What I will say, is that it had the POTENTIAL to be better looking than COD4. The overall design of the graphics and physics engine allows for much more detail and if done right, could be a spectacular looking game, but it just isn't. The shadows, even on high are absolutely horrific, they look like low quality shadows on any other game. Then there's the fact that the game doesn't support Anti-Aliasing. Consider that the game runs so badly that you'll be forced to use a low resolution, aliased graphics on resolutions like that look abysmal.
COD4, by allowing anti-aliasing, and actually having decent shadows takes the biscuit IMO. If all the stupid things in Crysis were sorted, I'd vote it hands down the best looking game of the year, but as it stands, because of the crazy resolution I have to run it at and the major oversights in its development, it's actually the worst looking game I've played in a long long time. It looks so bad I refuse to play it until I can at least make up for some of its deficiencies. I don't play games at 800x600, not on a PC like mine I don't.
As for increases in performance, I wouldn't get your hopes up. Crysis has already been patched for both graphics card manufacturers to improve the frame rates significantly, and since graphics is the area where the low performance stems from, I doubt we'll se any further big increases. Considering the recent complete halt in graphics development, I think it could be several years before we're playing Crysis at high res, high detail, possibly the longest time of any PC game ever made.

 

Interesting Sam. Be interesting to see what the 9000 series GPU's are able to do with it. Crysis is actually having 2 patches made at the same time. Patch 1 works on performance with mainly SLI/Crossfire. Patch 2 is gonna be bug fixing in gameplay aswell as finally the game using a quad core cpu.

 

for COD4 crysis and UT3, each in its own mind GOTY, xfire has have a 65%+ sclaing. most being close to 75% and some even as high as 80%, but on different resolutions.

you will see a big difference with xfire, and it is worth it unless you want to wait another 9-12mothns for a more powerful R700 or 6months for the G100s

IMO cod4 takes GOTY for me, but visually, i dont think it can hold its own vs ultra high crysis. hell even low crysis looks like high farcry!

 

Look closely at how the game runs for you, not how well "it could run if only my PC was faster". On that basis, that's where COD4 gets the points. High resolution, Anti-Aliasing and slightly simpler textures takes it over low res, jaggedy graphics to me.

 

Let me get this right?.....

Even on todays hardware Crysis cannot perform where other games exceed?

Is it me? or do we have a problem of not having hardware to cope, or do we have a poorly designed, under-developed and bloating inefficiently coded game?

I can't believe its one of the latest games, yet it can't do what other games are doing fantastically for ages? One of the reasons I have decided to upgrade my rig so much is to play games like COD4 (a preview at my friends took enough convincing).

Hate how this thread has completely gone of my original topic (again), but good to see that there is a lot of interest on the topic (HD3870 Vs 8800GT).

So am I right the consensus is on the HD 3870 for the following reasons??

1) Better image quality then the 8800GT.
2) Might be less powerfull, but at £/performance it kicks ass.
3) Directx 10.1.
4) Crossfire mode seems to give a better performance than SLI.
5) Quiter and cooler to run.