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Hardware Summer 2008 Graphics Performance Roundup

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by CardJoe, 11 Jul 2008.

  1. SlickGnome

    SlickGnome What's a Dremel?

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    Great article, Good to see that 3870 I picked up for $120 (USD) didn't completly die on the testing, (Not going to bother trying crysis on it). Eventually I'll pickup a high end card (or 2, 4870 Crossfire probably) for a better gaming rig but as I currently can only game about 1 day a week, Id say I got decent bang for the buck.
     
  2. Baz

    Baz I work for Corsair

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    don't count on it - the gtx280 die is bloody enormous, so chip yields are low and thus the price is high. If Nvidia were to agressivly slash prices,they'd be losing money very quickly.
     
  3. hodgy100

    hodgy100 Minimodder

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    i might have to save up that extra £80 to get the 4870 :) im really impressed with the porformance of the card. thanks for the review, it's the best review / comparison on the net :)
     
  4. wyx087

    wyx087 Homeworld 3 is happening!!

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    it's like 8800GTX, shortly after 8800GTX drops below £200. all e-tailers began to dry up on them.

    any chance of giving insite whether the 512MB is enough for the highest level of AA possible on these ATI video card? im thinking 1GB may be better buy if 1900x1200 is already seeing games being limited by 512MB
     
  5. rollo

    rollo Modder

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    gtx 280 will always be the super high end product. same as ultra is still

    any chance of showing ultra in sli performance dif. Still own my pair of them, Would like to see performance dif between them and 280 .
     
  6. Timmy_the_tortoise

    Timmy_the_tortoise International Man of Awesome

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    I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that 1GB is useless without a 512-bit memory interface, and a decent bandwidth.. otherwise it'll be bottlenecked and you'll see no real benefits, not even at 1920x1200.
     
  7. Guest-16

    Guest-16 Guest

    We will be doing an SLI and CrossFire article soon.
     
  8. wyx087

    wyx087 Homeworld 3 is happening!!

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    that's for GDDR3 cards such as 8800GT and 4850.

    there's a Powercolor GDDR5 1GB 4870 on OCuk. GDDR5 offers a lot more bandwidth at same clock speed compared to GDDR3
     
  9. pizan

    pizan that's n00b-tastic

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    awesome article. thanks for the round up, this really helps me out with the new system i plan...hope to buy.
     
  10. Timmy_the_tortoise

    Timmy_the_tortoise International Man of Awesome

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    Ahh.. Okay.. Thanks.
     
  11. Guest-16

    Guest-16 Guest

    FYI Everyone We're about to make an article addendum and add two more pages - one was a Leadtek GTX 280 which arrived this morning (it's stock clocked and since we had three ATI cards we're featuring this too) and the Power Consumption results too because people asked for it, so we tested it. This doesn't affect the scores.

    EDIT: Extra pages are up, guys.
     
  12. TRG

    TRG What's a Dremel?

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    Thanks. The power consumption is a great addition. I had no idea the 4870 was such a beast!
     
  13. PhenomRed

    PhenomRed What's a Dremel?

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    i've just bought a 4850, and its a great card. this review made the purchase even better
     
  14. Gunblade

    Gunblade The Frugal Chef

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    Awesome! This is where I am kind of stuck. With my EVGA 750i board I am locked into buying nvidia, and using SLI as a graphics upgrade solution. Decided this because it seemed like that's what the market has driven it to. So I have one 8800GT and I am looking to get the second card. I hope I don't find out from the upcoming article that I need buy two new ones instead, :duh:
     
  15. Paradigm Shifter

    Paradigm Shifter de nihilo nihil fit

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    I've seen a fair amount of speculation that the reason the 4850 and 4870 suck so much at idle is because Powerplay isn't working properly. Would also explain why they're so hot idle (well, that and the fact that ATi have set the fan speeds to incredibly low settings)... of course, time will tell on the Powerplay front. Maybe newer drivers will fix it, maybe it'll need a BIOS flash. Dunno.
     
  16. KoenVdd

    KoenVdd What's a Dremel?

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    Feels so good that ATi finally got back in the game (fanboy, I'm sorry). I think it might be the best if people just buy ATi for a while, even if it isn't as good as nVidia (which clearly isn't the case now) as I see every buck going to nVidia would go into big bag that might get opened when ATi makes a good card again, but is going to stay locked away otherwise (I know I'm exaggerating, but go with me), while every buck going to ATi will be spend to make a stronger R&D department so they can keep nVidia on their toes (so long ATi doesn't get cocky like it and AMD did the last time and the cash won't be used to try and keep a dying CPU manufacturer alive for a while (that is if AMD's CPU business is really dying, haven't been following it to much recently really)). I know this is half my fan boy speaking but I think it would make sense that we try and avoid a nVidia monopoly at all cost, just look at how cocky they are when they still have competition, imagine what it would be like when they had no competitors (and I don't think Intel's Larrabee is going to much more the a low-mid end GPU with high processing power). Also nice to see ATi got their AA problems under control and even better than nVidia because that was on of the trade marks of ATi (hot, slow but looking good).

    PS to GUNBLADE just wait for the 4870 X2, that will go just fine on a nVidia board (I think) and a little birdie told me that it would perform up to 30% faster that a regular Crossfire arrangement. (Tho beware, the birdie looked kind of suspicious, FudZilla).
     
  17. Mante

    Mante What's a Dremel?

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    Am i the only one that want a 4850x2???? Please Amd/Ati listen to me!! :p
    By the way Owesome review! keep up the good work!
     
  18. EmJay

    EmJay What's a Dremel?

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    Wow, beast of a review. That must have taken months to get pulled together. Perfectly readable, though! Thanks for the excellent work, and I'm looking forward to the SLI/Crossfire sequel!
     
  19. Guest-16

    Guest-16 Guest

    We worked it out and it's taken 2 people working about 60 hours each and one working ~24 over 5 days to put it together :eeek:

    To say we were looking forward to the weekend today is an understatement ha!

    We really really appreciate all the kind comments though - it keeps us going to do the next one! :)
     
  20. WildThing

    WildThing Minimodder

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    Yes, a truly excellent review and well worth the wait! The work put in really shows. Thank-you Bit-Tech!!!!:rock:

    Think I'll be getting a 4870, but am I the only one thinking of waiting until we see some custom/aftermarket cooling? I Wonder if HIS will do the usual IceQ business with the 4870.
     
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