Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => Gaming Discussion => Topic started by: Al Tarket on August 11, 2008, 08:15:40 am
-
So what is the best graphics card of all time, i am either thinking of buying a evga or xfx 9800 gx2 or gecube radeon HD 3870. i hear they are the best of the best.
whats your views on what the best card is?
-
iisn't the 230 better?
-
9800 gx2 or radeon HD 3870
Both are last generation cards and slow compared to the latest.
The latest generation are GeForce GTX260 and GTX280 series as well as Radeon 4850 and 4870 series. All four are good so go with whatever you can afford. My personal recommendation would be Radeon 4850.
-
The 4850 and 4870 are more bang-for-the-buck, but the GTX series are the most powerful, albeit for much more.
I'd go for the 4 series.
-
I'm curious, how many generations of video cards are there at the moment?
-
The 4870 and GTX 260 are very competitive right now, and both have different advantages. I would recommend those to most people. The GTX 280 is the single fastest card, but even at $400 it's a little too expensive to recommend given that the others are down to $250, except at very high resolutions where its memory allows it to really pull ahead.
The 4870 X2 will be out in a week or two and should easily take the crown, but it's a multi GPU card that is not directly comparable to the others.
I'm curious, how many generations of video cards are there at the moment?
You mean all time? I can think of 11 if you only count 3D capable cards. (and consider the Nvidia 8/9 and AMD 2000/3000 series to be of the same generation)
-
Many (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-graphics-card,1987-6.html).
-
Yeah, that's actually a very accurate list. Not terribly precise, but very accurate.
The 9800 GX2 as you didn't state before is actually an extremely good card, better than the GTX 260 by far and competes with the GTX 280. However, since it has some stability issues it's more in the ballpark of the HD 4870. If you have only one PCI-E slot and can't afford the $415-$475 GTX 280, get a newegg'ed 9800 GX2 for $340-$400.
-
The 9800 GX2 is known to have misleading benchmark scores due to its poor minimum framerates in several games, often not much better than a single GPU. I think any of the current gen cards I mentioned earlier will give much more consistent performance across the board.
-
i am very interested in the x2 version of the 4870 version.
so far the asus version of the 4870 looks blindingly quick on paper however many seem to complain of the cards operational temperature window, reported 70'c to 105'c, i am also leaning towards removing that plastic case and fan and shoving an arctic cooler twin turbo on it for maximum usage. some expert reviews say their is much more within this graphics card if significantly cool enough.
-
If your going to overclock your video card(s) Asus' video cards is by far your best choice. My Asus GeForce EN8600GT (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121098) is being overclocked at 150%. The highest the temperature has ever gotten was 98 F / 36 C but the average temperature of my card is around 75 F / 23 C. I never changed the cooling on the card, and it doesnt even have a fan. But it doesn't really need one because I have this (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811196021) case.
-
if i combined that twin turbo for the graphics with this case as you pointed out and my real silent cooler for the cpu, the operational window will be so low, i look forward to it!. i need to get some money together to get it all, thats including a tft lcd 19" gaming monitor, a x-fi gaming sound card and also a 1200w psu, i have a computer that i wont need to upgrade for at least 4 to 6 years. thanks for you help guys.
-
If your going to overclock your video card(s) Asus' video cards is by far your best choice. My Asus GeForce EN8600GT (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121098) is being overclocked at 150%. The highest the temperature has ever gotten was 98 F / 36 C but the average temperature of my card is around 75 F / 23 C. I never changed the cooling on the card, and it doesnt even have a fan. But it doesn't really need one because I have this (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811196021) case.
Or BFG, which comes overcloked and has a lifetime warranty, even with the overclocking.
-
i need to get some money together to get it all, thats including a tft lcd 19" gaming monitor, a x-fi gaming sound card and also a 1200w psu, i have a computer that i wont need to upgrade for at least 4 to 6 years. thanks for you help guys.
Don't do that, if you sell your old parts within a year, you'll generally get 70% of what you payed for them. Then you can spend about 300-500$ a year and still stay top-of-the-line. (I believe CP said that)
-
i wouldn't do that, i am thinking my graphics card is either faulty or just doesn't work right for some games like for freespace for example.
even so i wouldn't know what to do to sell to an international buyer anyhow. no, i traditionally buy the pc parts i have had and made sure it works and after i want an upgrade i will give it to someone who can not afford such a machine. just selling it off to somebody who has money for such an item only means they can take further from the poor and more greed to the rich.
-
:wtf:
-
i was looking on a few sites that do comparisions on what card is the best for your money. it seems to me that the 9800 gx2 is consistently in the top range of cards, in some games beating this new radeon card and the 280 to the mark. its peaked my interest, i might check it out. i hope i can add a cooling solution to it if i can.
on another note 260 is nowhere to be seen.
-
I'm still pretty happy with my inexpensive 8800 GT 512 MB
-
9800GX2 is two G92 chips on same PCB. It has internal SLI, for good performance it requires that both drivers and game supports SLI properly. SLI doesn't work as well as advertised.
IMHO you'd be better off with single chip solution any day.
-
I agree. See my earlier comment on that card.
As far as I know, current gen multi GPU setups like the 4870 X2 have more consistent minimums, although they still carry several other issues.
-
Yeah. The biggest issue is it's never going to eat up all 2GB of GDDR5 vram.
-
I think that is the least of its issues. 1GB is more than enough for any game right now.
My problems with multi-GPU are the inconsistent performance, both in lesser known games as well as specific parts of games, microstuttering/input lag, and the lack of triple buffering. I can't see either company solving these problems, at least not with the AFR rendering mode they both use.
-
well thats odd. thanks fury.
i am looking towards this powercolor HD 3870 x2, it looks like it can compete with the bigger cards at a much cheaper price. unusually though powercolor have always produced modded weak cards, i wonder why you have produced a modded strong card..
is it any good before i spend my money?
-
Errr... 3870X2 is just like 9800GX2, with pretty much same problems. Look for Radeon 4850, 4870 and GeForce GTX260, GTX280 if you want to invest your money on something that actually delivers promised performance. And like 9800GX2, 3870X2 is previous generation card. That said, 4870X2 and 4850X2 actually seems to have improved CrossFire performance since 3870X2 and both new generation X2's have been just launched, at least on paper.
-
Yeah, and if you absolutely want a multi GPU, CrossFire is a much better performing system than SLI.
I'd get the 280, or possibly the 4870X2 (keeping in mind what CP said)
-
i live in israel right next to a contested area, the gaza strip and thats a problem itself. i might go on holiday again, i got 1 months holiday leave coming up im gonna take it in the states, i never had a Christmas because Israel is always warm through the year with little rain. i might try my hand on this thing called skiing and in the process find a local computer hardware or gaming store and look for a fast graphics card maybe. maybe meaning, even odds on if i can get one because of the Christmas rush before your thanks giving day and bank holidays. my mind is made up, any one of these 3 cards, 4870 x2, 9800gx2 and 280 or two powercolor 4870's hooked up on a motherboard which means getting a fsb 1333 for QX9680 core and ddr2 at 800mz at least in 4gb memory and two pcie with pcix slots and 4 pci slots. it's going to be far more cheaper because of the currency exchange and the us dollar is far more generous towards it's items then any other place :D.
-
Few things.
The QX9650 is waaaaay overrated, a 9450 is just fine,and a hell of a lot cheaper.
the GX2 is not an option, it's an old card, and does not perform. Also, it's very expensive.
And do try skiing, it's THE best sport.
-
i hear rumors the quad core blue can not runs games too well. its the reason why i still run duo core. i thought intel have a proper gaming core, you must be sure to warn me of such a thing. the gx2 performs well in tests, well you know the saying, you can't kick it until you tried it, and i hope you have to tell me this (my bad, i have been ignorant of such a warning for that card), so i need to pay more for my electric bill because the 4870 x2 card according the reviewer eats electricity up at a big rate. it might be more expensive but it seems the 280 is a safe bet even so. besides, i need to gap the hole. i need a cheap solution before i go for a more permanent solution a 3ghz duo core with x-fi gaming card, a 3870 from powercolor, a bigger hdd, a change to sata2 for 1tb instead of my 80gb ide hdd and a pci-e board that runs the 3ghz duo core and a faster memory that can carry double my old board of 2gb.
according to friends who went skiing in Italy and Croatia, i need two thin skid devices and 2 metal rods along with some heavy warm clothes and some goggles of some sorts.
-
according to friends who went skiing in Italy and Croatia, i need two thin skid devices and 2 metal rods along with some heavy warm clothes and some goggles of some sorts.
Metal rods? Well, I guess that would work.
-
i hear rumors the quad core blue can not runs games too well. its the reason why i still run duo core. i thought intel have a proper gaming core, you must be sure to warn me of such a thing. the gx2 performs well in tests, well you know the saying, you can't kick it until you tried it, and i hope you have to tell me this (my bad, i have been ignorant of such a warning for that card), so i need to pay more for my electric bill because the 4870 x2 card according the reviewer eats electricity up at a big rate. it might be more expensive but it seems the 280 is a safe bet even so. besides, i need to gap the hole. i need a cheap solution before i go for a more permanent solution a 3ghz duo core with x-fi gaming card, a 3870 from powercolor, a bigger hdd, a change to sata2 for 1tb instead of my 80gb ide hdd and a pci-e board that runs the 3ghz duo core and a faster memory that can carry double my old board of 2gb.
I've used other SLI setups in the past and know their limitations well. CF is very similar.
Basically, you will be happy with a multi GPU setup as long as (1) you primarily only play the high profile games that are benchmarked on hardware sites, (2) you aren't very picky about motion irregularities (which includes a variety of things) as long as the game is generally playable and (3) you don't mind spending additional time with many games tweaking profile settings. Of course, for the highest end setups you also want to have a monitor with a sufficiently high resolution so you can take advantage of it.
Many people do in fact meet all these conditions and think multi GPU is great, but there are also many others like me who find the extra baggage unacceptable. It's important to know the pros and cons fully before committing to multi GPU, especially since the reviews rarely point out any of these things.
As for the quad cores, there is certainly nothing bad about them apart from the higher cost. They just don't have much of an effect in most games right now, with two or three exceptions.
-
can you go into a little more detail in "motion irregularities"?
-
Get a quad core. They are the way of the future, and games now will start to take advantage of multithreading to a greater degree.
Quad cores run a game just as well as a dual core, but for the same price, a dual core will run most games faster. This is due to the fact that dual cores have less cores, but more power per core. Quad cores have slightly less powerful cores, but more of them. You won't usually max-ou a dual core processor, or a quad, so the best bet is to get a quad. The Q9450 would be perfect for you.
-
can you go into a little more detail in "motion irregularities"?
They're basically the things I mentioned earlier.
1: Inconsistent performance across a game. Mass Effect is a current example of this, with the performance in certain areas (the Citadel tower and Noveria have been mentioned) inexplicably tanking a lot on SLI and CF even though the framerate everywhere else is perfect. I've seen similar things in the past with Far Cry and Splinter Cell: CT, in situations where a single GPU is fine. Since these glitches only occur in specific parts of a game, the reviewers never notice them and you only find out after you buy the setup yourself. To be fair, such problems aren't common in high profile games, but they are highly irritating when they do occur.
2: Variable input delay between frames, also called microstuttering. The exact effect of this has been heavily debated and it depends on both the game and the framerate. It's more prominent at lower (under 40) framerates, where the game will subjectively feel choppier than you would expect given the framerate.
3: Triple buffering does not work with AFR, so vsync is not a practical option in most recent games and you will experience tearing. Many people play with vsync turned off anyway and won't mind this. However, the result is that very high (80+) framerates will look smoother on a single GPU.
-
thanks cp, i need to some how sell my duo core with thermal paste, but never used. and try get some money for that quad core then. i know the balance of power, i have researched this many many times. i was very surprised with the quad core when it first came out, just under 10ghz. and now their near 13ghz, which seems very good. however i do have a limited amount of money to use, you know what the routine is, the pc is accessory is second and you and the family are first, food, clothes and so on. i will sriously give it a look after several months of mileage on the core and if all goes well i will try sell it or give it away, and find the quad elsewhere.
i am glad one no as countered my choice with the powercolor card, when i have the money i will jump boat to the next powercolor card in the 4870 range. by that time hopefully the price will be a little lower.
as of about an hour ago i just ordered a sata2 spinpoint f1 1tb internal hdd, so i have started my cheap upgrade.
-
Like I've said, 4 cores at 3.2 Ghz is not 12.8 Ghz. If you fill 4 cups with 3.2 litres of water each, it doesn't make them turn into a big cup filled with 12.8 litres,a nd you can't drink out of them all at once.
4*3.2 is 4*3.2. Not 12.8.
-
sorry i do not understand your comment. what you trying to say?
-
You do not add the speed of the cores. The processor is not 1 processor running at 12.8 Ghz, it is 4 processors running at 3.2 Ghz. When calculating the speed of a CPU, you don't add the speeds of all the cores together.
-
very much the same as the gpu, i do understand that also and the memory clocks are under the same thing. like i said, i research this stuff for everything that is value and all the specifications.. and so on, you know the drill on such things. however will be good for futured reference if someone gets confused by such a thing.
-
I'm still pretty happy with my inexpensive 8800 GT 512 MB
Same here, no complaints at all with the games I want to run.
-
9800GX2 is two G92 chips on same PCB. It has internal SLI, for good performance it requires that both drivers and game supports SLI properly. SLI doesn't work as well as advertised.
IMHO you'd be better off with single chip solution any day.
not entirely true, sli seems to be really effective at driving alot of pixels. if you have a high res screen and want a descent frame rate at the native resolution, sli is the way to go. for most single screen gamers or people with cheap lcd screens, theres really no point to it.
-
i need to some how sell my duo core with thermal paste, but never used. and try get some money for that quad core then.
If I were you, I'd keep that duo and look at quads again next year. Especially since Nehalem is coming and Intel will probably at some point next year stop releasing new Core 2 models. Meaning you could possibly get the latest and fastest core 2 quad that Intel will ever release when you upgrade from your duo.
At the moment you won't see significant improvement in upgrading to quad-core unless the quad-core has higher clocks than your duo.
-
at weatherop: you probably trying to say that their is no point upgrading, well unless you have a now very obselete AGP board, i think that would discourage otherwise.
at fury: i assume your talking about the front side bus speeds? well this 3ghz duo runs at 1333 i have seen higher speeds, much higher. however the average gamer runs at 1333 i would assume which means i am on a level playing field with everyone despite the extra processing baggage. yes the prices go down over time, which is a good reason for doing a temporary solution for maby 6 moths before swich to another system, by then hopefully it will be january or feburary and this new cards will be old news selling for better prices.
LGA1366 is new boards needed to run this processor, 1x or 2x quickpath replaces fsb entirely, which means anyone who wants a new nahalem processor needs a new main board also. and new octi-cores 8 cores in a processor!.
-
No I am not talking about FSB speeds, both duos and quads run at same FSB speeds. I was talking about core clock. If your duo runs at 3GHz, it is more than enough to run games into the foreseeable future. Most quads run at slower core clock than duos. A quad running at 2.5GHz will usually be slower in games than a duo running at 3GHz. So for a quad to be sensible upgrade, you need to upgrade to a 3GHz quad or faster. And those high end models cost a lot. Even if you are an overclocker, duos overlock better.
-
ok higher quad speeds. it seems their might be no need for this now, when this new processor comes out im going to need a new system anyway. wel will see.
-
If your on a budget, and you want quad core, my suggestion is to wait when quad core isn't still a relitively new technology. With that in mind, if your computer is super slow and you need an upgrade now, AMD Athlon 64 X2's are cheap, and will run just about any game today and still have some power in reserve.
If you want to spend thousands now, so that you don't need to upgrade for 5 years then go ahead, buy a quad core processor, make sure you do your own research though in finding the best processor, look at benchmark reviews on specific processors and pick one that works the best. But don't just go by benchmark reviews, also check to see if they have any major flaws. Intel's first dual core processors had problems and intel didn't seem to care, they put it on the market anyways ahead of schedule.
-
can anyone suggest a site that do top end cards at low prices?
many sites produce the same results in some cases i have seen some 2900xt on the site for 1000 dollars, and i am not joking either the same with some 8500gt and 7600gts... :lol:.
-
Well I don't know about Israel, but NCIX.com is good in Canada, and NewEgg.com is even better (US only). If you can get an American relative to send you one, or ask Sandwich, he is in Israel (Jerusalem I believe) and ordered some parts a while ago.
-
if i have this currency thing figured out, if you live in the united kingdom you got real bargin prices for highest end graphics cards. the cheapest you will find a 280 their is 350 Canadian dollars and translated thats 176 pounds and the shipping costs are about 5 pounds and you typically look around in shops in the united kingdom and the 280 is anywhere between 210 to 350 pound. problem though they at ncix dont ship internationally.
and i have already seen newegg with nothing really special happening their.
-
Well NCIX is basically a Canadian manufacturer, although there are many Israelis and Lebanese with dual-citizenship (as evidenced by last year) So I thought that you may have been able to get a friend/relative mail you one.
-
i dont have any resources within Canada or united states, but i do within Europe. but thats the otherside of the of the sea from the eastern seaboard.
-
i dont have any resources within Canada or united states, but i do within Europe. but thats the otherside of the of the sea from the eastern seaboard.
NCIX doesn't ship internationally?
I'd avoid them like the plague anyway... their customer service is abysmal.
-
Try NovaTech.co.uk or Misco.co.uk if you have relatives in the UK, they are the only ones I know about in Europe. Also, as I have said, PM Sandwich (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?action=pm;sa=send;u=214), he lives in Jerusalem and may be able to help you out.
-
novatech has ok prices, more like the same as every other, however they have an own brand which means its far more cheaper, and should be generally more reliable. hopefully as reliable as the 9500 radeon was. as for misco they have some cheap prices, but no enough to interest me.
overclockers has a few cheap discounts of good cards however its not enough to give it any serious though due to the fact you buy from their and their is a hidden vat charge of 20 pounds.
-
You should really ask Sandwich, he could probably save you some money.