New GPU - which one to get? - Hardware Discussion

11,263

July 31, 2008 04:35 PM

Quote:Original post by Mathew Anderson
I'm not exactly sure which part you have a concern with? The 4870 is noted as being close to the GTX260 but not outperforming per-say, and the slot is 4), noting that it is still behind my considerations for the 4870. I've agreed with everything you've mentioned here I believe, more or less.

I think you have your numbers muddled.
HD4850 comes close to, and iirc sometimes beats, the GTX260 but doesn't out perform it per-say. They are mostly on par iirc, but I've mostly ignored the HD4850 because...
HD4870 comes close to, and in some cases beats, the GTX28. Again, pretty much on a par.

Your ordering is correct when it comes to cost however, but still unless you need something the GTX260 or the GTX280 offer then it's an AMD no brainer.

also;

Quote:
[the HD2870x2] will also likely beat out the GTX280 in many cases

Anandtech ran a pre-view a few weeks back; the HD2870x2 beat the GTX280 in each of the 4 games tested. I suspect it will never score less than the GTX280, most likely only coming level in an OpenGL or Xfire unfriendly game as at that point its pegged back to a single HD2870.

Right now the only thing NV are king of is price, so in that regard, yes you proably have them in the correct order of least to most expensive (well, apart from the X2 card which might well be a little more than the NV offering but as it's not offically out yet).

I'll leave you with the following quotes taken from 2 of the pages you linked me to (the others didn't talk about the AMD cards at all); pretty much prove my HD4870 vs GTX280 point, for futher reading feel free to follow the link Gaiiden provided;

All quotes/comments based on 1920*1200 results.

From OverlockerClub.com;

Quote:
Wow! As the resolutions grew in the Crysis benchmarks, the HD 4870 overpowered the other cards in the testing, including NVIDIA's flagship GTX 280.

Quote:
Again, the HD 4870 seems to do better at high resolutions, even beating out the GTX 280 at 1920x1200. [knights of the sea]

Quote:
Once again, the HD 4870 comes out near the top at the higher resolutions, just falling short by two frames at 1920. Awesome. [bioshock]

Quote:
Even with high framerates, the HD 4870 was only slightly faster than the HD 4850 card in Call of Duty 4. The GTX 280 showed its muscle in this game across all resolutions.

Quote:
The ATI-based HD 4870 averaged well in the higher resolutions, even trailing at the feet of the GTX 280. [World in Conflict: I dispute 'trailing' given a 38fps vs 34fps advantage to the GTX280]

Quote:
The HD 4870 won every resolution in the Call of Juarez test.

Quote:
The HD 4870 was holding on during the whole series of resoltuions until the end where it just could not keep up.[CoH:Op Fronts]

In all those tests no mention of the GTX260 at all. AMD shown to be on par or in a couple of cases beating the more expensive GTX260, with CoH:Op Fronts being the major loser for AMD by 36fps vs 49fps.

From TechReport, all at 4x AA, 16X AF, 1920x1200 unless otherwise noted;

COD4
HD4870 69.1
GTX280 68.8

HL2
GTX280 92.7
HD4870 75.6

ET:QW
GTX280 103.7
HD4870 95.3

Crysis Very High, 1920*1200
GTX280 20.3
HD4870 18.5

Assassin's Creed, 4X AA, 2560x1600
HD4870 41.8
GTX280 37.4

GRID,4XAA 1920*1200
HD4870 80.0
GTX280 67.6

Mathew Anderson

1,135

July 31, 2008 10:31 PM

Exactly, just as my recommended order has suggested and filled in with comments for each, although my numbers don't appear to be muddled. They mainly agree with what you've stated, so I'm not sure where the problem is yet.

I want to get my hands on one of the 4870x2's once they are released, but that isn't my "need" talking so much as my urge in simply exploring high end graphics power :).

[Edited by - Mathew Anderson on August 1, 2008 8:31:37 AM]

Mathew Anderson
Community Manager

cignox1

736

August 09, 2008 09:14 AM

nVidia understimated AMD offering, and the results is what we see: nVidia thought that they could use once again their architecture, but in order to provide enough power they came out with an expensive chip. ATI choose another path, and this round they won.
I always had nVidia (Tnt 2, geForce 3 and gForce 6600), but this time I bought the 4870. The only issues are a small (compared to nVidia) amount of memory and bad driver support, that lead to bad power managment.
That aside, I'm currently playing all games I have (Yes, even THAT one) at maximum quality, resolution and AA being the only thing that can hurt the performances.
And let me say one last thing: this is the first time we can have a graphic card for that price and that can handle without problems any game available.

So, this is my opinion: even if you have a lot of money, buy a 4870 (perhaps the x2 that should come in a few weeks). Next year you might consider buying another card, but spending those money for the gForce has not much sense...

Quarklight Blog<br/>My Site

Liort

785

Author

August 10, 2008 06:13 AM

What do u mean by bad drivers? those are the sort of things that scare me :)

And what is the x2 version?

Lior Tal
Game Developer/Software Engineer

daviangel

604

August 10, 2008 06:31 AM

Well all my last several GPU's have been from Nvidia(6600,7900gtx, and currently 8800GTS) but the next card I'm gonna get is an ATI 4870 or 4850. Most likely gonna go with the 4870 since it has a dual slot fan so it should be quieter. Every single slot vidcard like the 8600gts I got a while back has been quite noisy in comparision(like a hair dryer or jet taking off) so you might take that into consideration if it matters to you?

[size="2"]Don't talk about writing games, don't write design docs, don't spend your time on web boards. Sit in your house write 20 games when you complete them you will either want to do it the rest of your life or not * Andre Lamothe

Nytegard

842

August 10, 2008 07:17 AM

Quote:
You post is wrong on a few levels, mostly todo with the performance difference between the HD4870 and the GTX260 and GTX280.

In short;
The HD4870 out performs the GTX260 in pretty much all tests.
The HD4870 comes in VERY close to the GTX280. Certainly close enough that the 'cream of the crop' is looking nothing more than an over priced and under performing chip.
The HD4870x2 flawlessly beats the GTX280 in the tests I've seen.

Frankly, AMD is a no brainer this time around; the cards are cheaper and more powerful than NV's selection.

I'm going to nitpick here against this. I've tried both a 4870, dual 4870s (which is suppose to simulate the x2 until it comes out), and currently use a 280.

While the overall numbers of a 4870 beat the 260 in many tests, to me, the 260 is better. Why? Because the reviews you read focus on average frames per second, and forget the minimum frames per second. The 260 easily has more minimum frames per second (probably because of more video RAM?) in most of the games, providing a much smoother gaming experience. Sure, with the 4870 you can go from choppy to super smooth, but does it really make that much of a difference between 2 cards when you're running at 180 fps compared to 120 fps? Your monitor most likely can draw 60 fps at best (unless you have a CRT, then probably 120).

Now, the dual 4870's easily beat the 280 in many of the games I have, except Crysis. And this is one area I kept the 280 over the 9800GX2. Once again, in certain spots, both the dual 4870's and 9800GX2 practically cried in certain areas in Crysis getting single frames per second, whereas the 280 was getting 40+. This, I know was do to not having enough video RAM. Perhaps the 4870x2 with 2 GB RAM would solve those problem areas, but from the reviews, it still does worse in the games which don't scale well to dual GPUs.

The other issue I have is that the X2 is purely driver based. To get the speed improvements, you need to have the support in the driver (it's not per app, but rather for features), and if the game just happens to not be supported, you'd be running at the speed of one 4870.

A few issues I have with SLI (albeit a couple are going to be resolved in Sept) are microstuttering, and the lack of dual monitor support.

Not that I'm stating you shouldn't get the 4870x2. DX 10.1 support is overrated, as only a couple games such as Age of Conan use it, and we're moving onto DX11 support shortly anyways, in which all brand new video cards which are faster than this current gen will be out anyways. If you don't play Crysis, the choice is easy, the 4870x2. Better overall min frame rate and average frame rate. If all you play is Crysis, then a 280 is an easy choice. But the best card for it's value is the 4850.

daviangel

604

August 10, 2008 07:55 PM

Quote:Original post by Nytegard
Quote:
You post is wrong on a few levels, mostly todo with the performance difference between the HD4870 and the GTX260 and GTX280.

In short;
The HD4870 out performs the GTX260 in pretty much all tests.
The HD4870 comes in VERY close to the GTX280. Certainly close enough that the 'cream of the crop' is looking nothing more than an over priced and under performing chip.
The HD4870x2 flawlessly beats the GTX280 in the tests I've seen.

Frankly, AMD is a no brainer this time around; the cards are cheaper and more powerful than NV's selection.

I'm going to nitpick here against this. I've tried both a 4870, dual 4870s (which is suppose to simulate the x2 until it comes out), and currently use a 280.

While the overall numbers of a 4870 beat the 260 in many tests, to me, the 260 is better. Why? Because the reviews you read focus on average frames per second, and forget the minimum frames per second. The 260 easily has more minimum frames per second (probably because of more video RAM?) in most of the games, providing a much smoother gaming experience. Sure, with the 4870 you can go from choppy to super smooth, but does it really make that much of a difference between 2 cards when you're running at 180 fps compared to 120 fps? Your monitor most likely can draw 60 fps at best (unless you have a CRT, then probably 120).

Now, the dual 4870's easily beat the 280 in many of the games I have, except Crysis. And this is one area I kept the 280 over the 9800GX2. Once again, in certain spots, both the dual 4870's and 9800GX2 practically cried in certain areas in Crysis getting single frames per second, whereas the 280 was getting 40+. This, I know was do to not having enough video RAM. Perhaps the 4870x2 with 2 GB RAM would solve those problem areas, but from the reviews, it still does worse in the games which don't scale well to dual GPUs.

The other issue I have is that the X2 is purely driver based. To get the speed improvements, you need to have the support in the driver (it's not per app, but rather for features), and if the game just happens to not be supported, you'd be running at the speed of one 4870.

A few issues I have with SLI (albeit a couple are going to be resolved in Sept) are microstuttering, and the lack of dual monitor support.

Not that I'm stating you shouldn't get the 4870x2. DX 10.1 support is overrated, as only a couple games such as Age of Conan use it, and we're moving onto DX11 support shortly anyways, in which all brand new video cards which are faster than this current gen will be out anyways. If you don't play Crysis, the choice is easy, the 4870x2. Better overall min frame rate and average frame rate. If all you play is Crysis, then a 280 is an easy choice. But the best card for it's value is the 4850.

Yeah, the fact that I might still be getting single digit framerates in Crysis is the only reason I haven't bought a new vidcard. The benchmarks I've seen show even the ATI 4870 dropping under the magic 30fps limit but this was at like 1900x1200 resolution or something and I don't plan on going over 1280x1024 re which is my 20' LCD monitor native resolution so I might be safe?
By the time I upgrade to a larger LCD and resolution I"m sure cards will be out that are doing over 100fps easily-LOL!

[size="2"]Don't talk about writing games, don't write design docs, don't spend your time on web boards. Sit in your house write 20 games when you complete them you will either want to do it the rest of your life or not * Andre Lamothe

cignox1

736

August 14, 2008 01:46 AM

I keep resolution quite low whem playing crysis, and in VH quality I have fps enough to look smooth to me. To be honest, I'm used to play games with low fps (think that I played doom 3 on a geForce 3 :-) so having 25 frames per second is enaugh for my eyes.
I just say that while the 260 might be a choice (still to see if it worths the price difference) the 280 really is way to much expensive: if you really want to play crysis, then I suggest to buy a 4870 now and play everything BUT crysis. Next year you buy the 5870 (or whatever the name will be) to play crysis at high resolutions with AA :-)

Quarklight Blog<br/>My Site

New GPU - which one to get?

This topic is closed to new replies.

Popular Topics

Recommended Tutorials

New GPU - which one to get?

This topic is closed to new replies.

Popular Topics

Recommended Tutorials

Reticulating splines