The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

Depending on what games you play, probably yes.

 

edit: nothing to see here, carry on.

 

LOL @ your perceived hate of the 9600GT. You don't like that card Sam XD

The 9600GT is fast as hell but not really for 1920 x 1200. You'll be a lot happier with say the 4870 or if you can stretch it, the 4890. Again the 4830 is lacking for high res gaming and will struggle a bit with newer games at 1920.

 

Ok, lets say I do buy the 4870. How long do you think it will last me? Ahh heck! They could release a game next week, that would only run on the 4890 for all we know LOL! Makes the world go round right! But nah, seriously. You think i'd be happy for AT LEAST 2 years!

 

You'll be fine with a 4870 for a while, if you've lasted this long with an 8600gt then I'd say you can't go wrong. Depends on how much the 4890 is though - looks like about 10% more performance, so if it's not too much more then I'd suggest stretching just that little bit extra for one of those instead. Either way, both of those cards would be a biblical improvement on an 8600gt at high res.

On another note, I've been trawling the internet all day and I still can't pick between crossfire 4890 and gtx275 sli.... which do you think would be better?

 

Im not positive, because i've only recently got sucked into the gaming side of things LOL! But you may check if your board supports BOTH crossfire and Sli before you consider both. I know my last board didnt mesh well with ATI due to an Nvidia Northbridge! You might look into that first. But if you already know...Im not sure which would be better.

Thanks for your opinion by the way

 

No worries champ.

Yeah it supports both, getting a new rig with a dfi x58 - as far as I know most x58 boards are sli and crossfire compatible. Might have to wait for sammorris to arrive lol. He is quite the helper

 

Ehhh...Hes ok! LOL *Sarcastically speaking of course* Totally jerking your chain sam! ROFL

 

I don't hate the 9600GT at all, but it's the same price as a far superior card, it isn't worth buying. If you were to go back and search for posts from me when it first came out, I was quite fond of it for being the first card to show near-100% SLI scaling, and it was better value back then too. nVidia just seem to be overpricing everything these days (except the GTX275).
For reference, the HD4870 is a full DOUBLE the performance of the 9600GT, and only about 40-50% more expensive from some of the cards I've seen.

Omegaman: They won't release a game that outcasts the HD4870 for a long time. The only 'you can or you can't situation that exists right now is DirectX10.1 such as used in H.A.W.X. and both the 4870 and 4890 can pull that off. No Geforce card can yet do it. You should be fine for at least a year at full 1920x1200 on high settings, and the other year you certainly won't have any trouble running games, but you may have to knock the detail or res back a bit.

Rubix: Until I see the GTX275 SLI benches in full I'm not sure, but the HD4890 CF combo is a force to be reckoned with, that much is certain.

As for SLI/CF cross-compatibility, you're essentially right, nForce chips for Socket 775 (and any other recent gen socket) are strictly SLI-only (and also crap). Intel and AMD chipsets are strictly Crossfire-only, but obviously any of them will work with a single card from either manufacturer.
i7s have the ability of using EITHER Crossfire or SLI, but not both simultaneously, and I believe only boards with the GT200 chip (which is where all the problems start) can use Triple-SLI, but don't count me on that. Triple SLI is so outrageously expensive I don't do much research on it...

 

Well, I recently read an old review that showed crossfire 3870s, and the average increase in FPS was 70% or so... which I believe at the time was much better scaling than sli (the reference cards were 8800gt's). But, that being said, the gtx275s look a little faster to begin with, so I'm stil no closer to making a decision. Lol. Let me know when you find some good benchmarks!

 

Yeah but if there were driver problems recently, back in those days, Crossfire was very unreliable. The 8800GTs didn't actually scale as well in SLI as the 9600s did, so when SLI'ed they worked out about the same.
One site has reported the GTX275s being the better card, but the more popular opinion now seems to be the reverse, i.e. that the HD4890s are better.
The bonus is of course that you don't need i7 to use two HD4890s...

 

The Bit-Tech benchmark results are in, and while I will post the graphs of the results, take them with a little pinch of salt, as the review is written from start to finish with nvidia in favour, even before the results have been shown. I do suspect bias creeping in here. The results are the least favourable for ATI of any of the sites shown so far.


http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/6234/bt4890ave.gif
http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/1800/bt4890min.gif

The significance of ND is a new forceware revision they were provided for testing but is not yet out for release.

Overclocking tests
http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/8546/btcryoc4890ave.gif
http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/3016/btcryoc4890min.gif

 

Thanks bud! Thats the type of reply I was looking for And Heck, If I should so desire later, a second identical card would stretch it another 6months to a year huh? So I'll buy one card now, at 150-200, and buy the second (newegg permitting) LOL, when the price is considerably lower! Though my S-ata area wont like that LOL. Unless they fashion a shorter identical card, JUST FOR ME LOL!!!

 

I doubt it, the only likelihood of that is such an advance in technology that there'd be something like an HD5600 series.

Guru 3D performance benchmark graph:
http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/4150/guru3d4890.gif

Firing Squad performance graph:
http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/2251/firingsquad4890.gif
Note: COD4 results are wrong for some cards (but I have left the results up. Also bear in mind at 1600x1200 the CPU ceiling affects the GTX285 and HD4890 CF severely). The results for Left 4 Dead were so wrong I chose not to include them as they bear no relevance to how the cards actually perform. I also did not include Battleforge as they chose only to test it in DX10.1 mode which meant nVidia cards would not be able to run the game.

 

Omega - nice new sig with the HAF - looks really good!

Sounds like you're gonna spring for a 4870 which should work out great for you.

Cute cat pictures, Sam. In particular I noticed "can u smuggles me in ur spedo" hah hah, so I'm not the only one with a spedo.

Nice work on the charts! I'm seeing some excellent frames with 4890cf at 2560x1600, so I guess I'll sit here and wait a bit for 4890x2!

 

Assuming one is ever made. There's no sign that it will be yet. It seems rather 'consumer demand' based. How will they know unless they make one? Either way, the HD4890 uses more power than the HD4870 by about 30W, so an HD4890X2 would use 60W more power than an HD4870X2, and probably need two 8-pin connectors (and therefore Quad CF would be out for most PSUs, the ZM850-HP included) That's really pushing it, and it's worth noting that that figure would only be about 35W behind the power a dual GTX285 card would draw, and if one of those could be made, I'd be damn certain nvidia would have made one buy now. Interestingly enough the GTX275 is the most power hungry card of all at load, and the most efficient of all at idle.

On the plus side, the HD4890 runs at only 64ºC full load versus the GTX275's 90ºC, but at a higher than usual 2400rpm fan speed. In theory that means that for an HD4890X2 to maintain the same load temperature, the fan would have to be at basically 100%. With a little knockback to 70% I'm sure higher but acceptable load temperatures could be achieved, but 70% is very unpleasant indeed.

 

Thanks harvrdguy Yah...much like wallpaper, I get board rapidly LOL! Though I think i'll use this one for now. I made the NIN from scratch. I LOVE photoshop
Yah, im gonna spring for the 4870 as soon as I can. My funds are a little bit tied up right now. Ive decided to put the ram on hold, since the 6400 is running fairly well. Im 99% sure however, that a batch of 1066 Ram will kick it in the behind! The 4870 just seems like the right choice! It Beckons to me LOL!

 

LOL I finally dumped my Razer Krait optical for a new-ish Logitech MX518. It's like a trade-for-semi-keeps-trade-back-whenever deal. So works for me if I ever get mouse sick ;P

Laser is better though. Slightly smoother movement and higher DPI/accuracy.

 

I've never found that with Laser mice. I still use Red-LED optical and have no issues.

 

Eh, getting a core i7 anyway so I guess that part doesn't matter.

OK so it looks like the radeon wins in fallout and stalker, and is close enough to be equal in farcry2. But its not as overclockable as the gtx275... which sucks. But I still need a crossfire/sli comparison before I make my decision

So if the gtx275 is just ahead with these new beta drivers... theoretically ati could release some new ones too, boosting performance and making it more difficult for me to choose? lol. Oh how I loathe choosing parts for a new computer... lol