Video Card Thread (Mostly Gecube x1950xt)

I think right now the official ones work better.

 

People keep trying to fob me off with that excuse - I've never had major issue with Catalyst myself.

 

TBH, I had no problem with the catalyst drivers. I think the interface is quite good and I actually prefer it to the new 100 series drivers Nvidia interface, which now has the Ntune add-on which IMO is a total waste of time. Much prefer the pre-100 drivers with the old interface and for the extra options you just downloaded the coolbits reg and everything was there. And at least my TV out worked with the X1950! With the current 169.21 set I cannot change my TV format to PAL, which is v.annoying as I often used to use my 24" CRT to watch movies on. I did infact email Nvidia about this 2 weeks ago - no response yet! (and that's not mentioning the fan speed issue either!)

 

I prefer the ATI overclocking thing to Nvidia's. The Nvidia thing is a PIA to be honest.

 

ATiTool supports nvidia cards too though, so the process should be quite similar.

 

I was talking about ATI overdrive utility, which works surprisingly well.

 

back to cases, I think I may get something like this:



or do a mod to my 900 like this:



Overall I would still pick that case sam had in his link over these.

 

What's different about the 900 in the pic? I'm getting one soon hopefully.

 

The side window's huge!

 

^I know! Thats why I like it. The window on the standard 900 is a bit to small for me - mostly because the fan mesh takes up half of the viewing space.

I have been looking at these kits to do the mod with:
http://www.frozencpu.com/cat/l3/g42...Kits-Acrylic_Windows-Clear_Windows-Page1.html

 

oh lol.

I thought the side panel was open.

 

Haha, well I may just do the mod and keep the system the way it is for a while as it is a real pain in the ass to drain the system, cut the tubing, buy new tubing, install it etc. To much work.

I am really thinking about that mod though. I might contact frozencpu.com and just ask if they can send me the door for like $25 or something...

If that doesnt work out then I need to decide what type of window I want. I was thinking of a plain one, like the picture or one with a 120mm fan hole in the middle, like this: http://www.frozencpu.com/products/3...indow_Kit_w_120mm_Fan_Hole.html?tl=g44c11s496

The only thing is that I am not sure if the tubing will fit behind the fan without bending/kinking around it, which is the reason why I dont have a fan installed on the door right now.

 

Hey guys - popping in for a minute:

Waymon - Ray GOOD JOB! on finding those images comparisons that you posted on page 57 - the most compelling ones of the difference in quality between 8800 and 3870, I would say, are the beach shots. What do you think Sam? Your picture of the Tomb raider wooden boards was helpful, but these beach shots of Ray's show a very clear difference.

Hey Sam, that price/fps comparison was great! When you look at it that way, and combine the image comparison, I would say you've made a great case for the 3870. (By the way, Ray's link on his image comparison pictures suggested that the 3870 can be pushed farther in terms of overclocking than the 3850 - another reason to spend the few extra bucks to get a 3870 instead of the 3850 I think.)

By the way, that maxishine video was interesting - with triple 8800 on ultra high settings, he couldn't go above 1600 x 1050 to get 27 fps! Man that game requires some huge resources. (He was running on an apple 2560 x 1600 like Sam's resolution, and I thought at first that's the resolution he was going to run the benchmark on.)

I think the only way you're going to run crysis, Sam, at the resolution you like, on high or ultra high settings, is on a crossfire 4 x 3870 rig. Would you agree?

MaccerM - Mike, that underwater picture is interesting - you make a good point - the graphics differences are subtle - Sam is an "eye candy" fanatic. I don't know if I would ever notice the difference. Getting fluid performance from a faster gpu is important - no doubt about it.

Of course, from Sam's point of view, when you have a great monitor like the Dell, and you like to run 2560 x 1600, you get used to really appreciating the look of a game.

Abuzar, you're thinking of putting an 8800 in your next build, because it will be easier to sell - that's the approach apparently that Nvidia takes - faster and don't fret too much about total optimization of image quality, because most people won't pick it up.

But, ultimately, I have to go back to Sam's analysis of price/fps.

From that standpoint, not only do you perhaps get better eye candy, but the 3870 represents better value. The price/fps is lower, crossfire or no crossfire.

I guess I keep thinking, with crossfire and four 3870 boards, you've got to be able to run Crysis, I would hope, at least as well as maxishine with his three 8800s, getting 27 fps at 1600 x 1050. But wait a second, was he really getting the benefit of the SLI configuration? Look at Waymon's fps results - turning on CF reduced the numbers??????

So let me ask you guys, if CF actually reduces Ray's fps results on the crysis benchmark, then on the maxishine youtube video, is maxishine getting the 27 fps from the sli of the 3 8800s, or is he only getting the results from one 8800? In other words, if CF doesn't work for crysis yet - if the patch still doesn't work - I assume that sli doesn't work either, or am I wrong?

I hope I'm right, because I would expect 3 8800s to do better than that - and I would hope that four 3870s will eventually let Sam run Crysis at 2560 x 1600 on at least high, if not ultra high settings, getting at least 30 fps. Right Sam?

See you guys,

Rich

 

I totally agree with you from the image quality standpoint. I'd easily say the ATi graphics "look better", but if I owned the 8800GT, I'd never notice anything was wrong, and it doesn't exactly look bad, only less complete.
As far as the four 3870s go, not a chance really, if I'm honest Only dual crossfire seems to scale well, and even if we take a modest 4x the performance of a single card, the 3870s are only likely to pull 30fps, and much as I'd love it to be, I wouldn't expect that much out of that setup. I wouldn't even expect 3x.

I'm happy to run games at 1680x1050 as long as I can run them at max, and with Call of Duty 4 I can, with 4x AA too. AA doesn't work properly for me in Crysis, and even if it did, three 8800 Ultras can barely make a playable frame rate.
I'm going to stick with my estimate of five years before a desktop PC of any incarnation can max the game out and get it playable.

As far as the 8800s go, I think you're half right. You are seeing benefit from SLi, but not the full benefit. In other words, you're not seeing the same as one card can manage, but you're not seeing three times the speed. A single ultra should make maybe 12fps on high.

 

I didn't see the chart sam posted. Anyway for price/fps the 8800GT wins.

Newegg has them both for 249 at the cheapest.

 

The results I posted were for the UK, where the hd3870 is far cheaper. In the US there's no reason for many people not to get the 8800GT if they intend to replace it in a year or less.

 

Well I plan on replacing it in a couple of months so that should be good.

 

Abuzar, how about a 9800GX2? http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/01/05/exclusive_nvidia_geforce_9800gx2/

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Wow rich, that was a really interesting (and long, I could tell you put a lot of thought into it) post you wrote! Just to make 1 thing clear, the Crysis benchmark that Maxishine did was with 2x 8800Ultras in SLi - not 3 as the 3 way SLi motherboard wasnt out yet. (I have no idea how he got a hold of one either; are they even out yet?)

 

potentially controversial post
The 9800GX2 will undoubtedly be fast (in games where SLI works, of course) but it's not really anything new. You can now just put four 8800GTs in SLI rather than three, and not really for any less money than four of the single cards. Could two of the 9800s run Crysis maxed on very high, even at 1792x1344? I doubt it. The card bores me, it really does. The last time the graphics industry produced something mindblowingly revolutionary was when the 8800GTX came out. When will they come up with something worth raving about?

 

Ray, I don't have the cash to afford that stuff. We'll see how well it does when it comes out. If the 3870CF beats it then I'll go that way. Of course this is a few computers down the road. I don't think I will have enough money to put this into my next two computers.