Video Card Thread (Mostly Gecube x1950xt)

About those HD-cards:

I was comparing the 7900GS to the HD3650 like this:
http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=562&card2=510

As you can see, things like the clocks are a good amount higher on the 3650.
But when you look at the pixel- and texture-fills, those are a lot lower.

Now, first I was thinking about getting the 3650, just to give it a try.
Because note the 3650 is around 50 Euros cheaper (by ASUS) than the 7900GS (by XFX).
But seeing those odd specifications, I'm thinking the HD isn't so much for gaming as for like media and such.
Am I seeing that right? Or would the 3650 still work better in games than the 7900GS?


Besides that, would this way of cooling work well?
http://asus.com/products.aspx?l1=2&l2=9&l3=666&l4=0&model=2171&modelmenu=1
It seems that ASUS is good at the passive cooling, but if it actually is that great?...

 

The HD3650 is between 5-20% faster than the 8600GT, so draw your own conclusions from that.

 

Ah, so it doesn't matter that some of those specifications are way lower?
That I don't run into problems with like the effects and textures and stuff...

 

This is based on game tests at 1280x1024.

 

What's the difference between a ATI Radeon X1950XT and a Gecube X1950XT?

 

They are the same thing. The card is the X1950XT by ATI. GeCube is an ATI partner and they manufacture the card. The only difference between manufacturers is the quality of the card. The performance is the same(unless it's factory overclocked).

 

DIE THREAD DIE!

(rocking a HD3870 now) salivating for the 4870

 

lol It's still going!

 

kardson: As was I until last week when I acquired a 4870. If it fits it looks like that'll soon be swapped for a 4870X2.

 

Here you go.

http://promotions.newegg.com/NEemai...=EMC-IGNEFL081908-_-email-_-E0-_-Promowording

 

$235? Wow, that's all I paid for mine, and second hand no less...

 

Well I hope those X2's come down soon, they're way above MSRP.

 

Yeah, I was very fortunate to find one under the MSRP, else I would never have bought one.

 

You got a X2? I thought you got a 4870?

 

As of thursday, both. Intend to sell one, depends how the X2 works out.

 

I want tri-CF benchmarks!

 

You don't need me for that!
http://techreport.com/articles.x/15293

 

Sam, regarding that report above, on the crysis page, I know they were using Vista and DX10. With XP and the hacked ultra-high DX9 patch, isn't performance about 10% better, and don't you get just about all the effects? Are you losing any critical effects at this stage of DX10? (I guess we're at DX10.1 now and nobody supports it yet, from what I have seen.)

The reason I am asking is that Estuansis did such a good job at describing the advanced graphics capabilities of crysis - such as particulates, motion blur, etc - in fact you also mentioned that you have been noticing a lot more interesting graphics with your 4870 compared to your 3870 - that I am very intrigued about being able to run crysis at full throttle, to see the wow factor that estuansis is talking about. Of course I'm talking new build for me.

And for the new build - I'm sure I'll get a 30" something - maybe one of Abuzar's oem displays, if he can still get them at that time.

So getting back to the tech report, I notice that they didn't even bother to try 2560x1600 at high and very high. (However I have seen some Youtube videos at 2560x1600 supposedly very high with 280SLI - again maybe XP and crysis patch - and the frames were running around 30-33.)

But on the tech report above, they DID get around 28-30 fps at very high, 1920x1200 with GTX280 SLIx3, also SLIx2, also GTX260 SLIx3 or 2 (how could a GTX260 SLIx2 pull 2 more fps than GTX280 SLIx2 - just the nature of how he was running the demo? - there isn't anything about the 260 that is better than the 280 is there?)

So it really didn't seem to matter if you had two GTX boards, or 3, you picked up at least 50% more fps. Same is true of 4870. With more than one you went from about 18 to from 23-25, about a 30-40% gain, and above 2 you didn't really see any increased gain.

In this case, the nvidia boards, in SLI, hit the critical 30fps, and the 4870 fell a little short - we know that crysis seems to favor nvidia for whatever reason (because nvidia cheats on the shadows! )

In any case, my question to you, how does 1920x1200 scale on your 2560x1600 monitor? Does it look good? Do you get the jaggies big-time, according to your very critical eye? Now that you have your x2, will you be running some crysis at 1920x1200 and letting us know how you feel about the results?

I know that you are still with xp, so you'll be using the hacked ultra patch I assume. I wonder if you'll hit 30 fps? (I think you said your mobo won't support another PCI 16x, so you won't be trying out the x2 and single 4870 = CF3 that they tried in the above graph - just as well because it didn't buy them any real performance gain.)

Just quite interested in how you will start feeling about crysis now that you are going to be turning up the effects! I wonder if you'll start becoming a big fan like estuansis. LOL

 

Sadly I can't get the monitors anymore

There goes another source of income.

 

Rich: Even more than that, Performance in DX9 with hacked very high settings is almost the same as high. DX10 loses you nothing. However, by the looks of things, the HD4870X2 only works properly in Vista, so I may have to start using DX10 anyway... In XP on all 'high' settings though, 2560x1600 is playable as long as you don't use AA, and Crysis' AA isn't very good anyway. One warning though, in the latter half of the game it will choke a little, though I'm not sure if my GPU or CPU is to blame for that yet.

1920x1200 scales badly on my 30", for rendering - i.e. games run at 1920x1200 may look fine, but when you use 2560x1600, you wouldn't believe how much better it looks. I tend to to run 1920x1200 in a 24" box in the middle of my screen, rather than expand it to full size. 1920x1080 for HD films, however, scales very well, and looks superb.

My mobo will support the HD4870 in the top slot, so I could crossfire three GPus, but my 520W PSU won't like that, so I'm not going to risk it.
As for Crysis, I still like it more than most, but it's not my favourite game.