I didn't realize you could inflict pain through abbreviations etc. Do you know what carrying on a joke is? (meh, some people just ruin it)
Here it is folks, Geforce 260 vs Geforce 260 core 216 (new card) vs Geforce 280 vs ATI 4870 vs ATI 4870 X2: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3408&p=1
Has anyone else had problems with their 4870's? I've just RMA'd two Sapphire's back to EBuyer as they gave a BSoD as soon as XP booted up, never even had a chance to get to desktop. They were acknowledged as faulty and given that I've seen comments about a bad batch of Sapphires currently on the go I thought I'd skip the RMA hat trick and opted for a Powercolor 4870 instead, still waiting on delivery for that one.
I highly recommend an EVGA GTX280. It's really a top notch card, you can play games at 1920X1200 if you get a 24 inch monitor with pretty solid framerates. And EVGA provides top notch service to N. America and Europe. It's considerably better than the 4870, though not a *lot* better. But's that only if you want to spend a bit more. If you want to spend less then the 4870 is still a pretty sweet card. I'm just more of a big fan of EVGA's service so that couples with the amazing 200 series GPU is a sure bet.
+1 The lower price and the fact that it is a damn good card means the 4870 is definitely the best choice. As for 'The 280 will last longer' argument, as GPUs are evolving all the time so there is little point in looking at it in that way.
Now that the competition is back on, don't expect the GTX 280 to be around forever like the 8800 GTX was...
My 4870 'should' be delivered on the 22nd. I am in the lucky position currently of having a job that lets me work week on/week off. So I should be able to enjoy next week! And as an aside, I noticed last night I topped 1000 hours playing Battlefield 2 online . Which is over a month solid in 18 months! That's not including all the other games I own (too many to list). No wonder the girlfriend hates my computer And yes I don't the need the 4870 to play BF2.
I've got the 4870, and it rocks my world. Just don't throw Crysis at it, and if you do, crank AA all the way up. For some reason, the 4870's fps plummets with AA on anything under 8 so don't expect to squeeze any extra performance out of your games by switching it down. I bought mine early though, in hindsight, I should have waited for the 4870X2, because now with Farcry 2 on the horizon, I'm seriously thinking about a dual 4870 crossfire solution.
I just bought a 4870 too, delivery today hopefully However I'm being a bit cash concious at the moment.
Adobe Photoshop CS4 is going to use nVidia CUDA (so GPU rendering with nVidia video cards) http://www.dailytech.com/Photoshop+CS4+Will+Use+GPU+Power/article13040.htm
as i've said in other thread, IMHO the ATI card is only a tiny bit better than nVidia cards in gaming but a lot worse in all other aspects such as GPGPU and power managment. CUDA is not about gaming. GPU has stepped away from solely for gaming into the general purpose world (aka. GPGPU) such as video encoding (i use). and currently, nVidia's Folding client is far better than ATi's, being a Folder for Bittech, i value CUDA capacity heavily, so when gtx280 and 4870 1GB are £20 difference, i'd get nVidia card within a heartbeat. also, with ATI's lack of power-management, it's really a shame its Folding capacity is so slow. apart from a tiny gaming performance/price advantage, ATI cards really sucks in all other aspects. ps. im no fanboi, been using ATI cards from 9x00 series until 8800GTX, but to me, 4850 is just a newer ATI version of the power-hungry 8800GTX with less Folding and no GPGPU support. 4870 is only a tiny faster in games but no actual feature improvement. (in fact, it's a backwards step for me in terms of GPGPU capacities)
Me my self I'm thinking to get an 260 because the new CUDA thingy.. it's about the same price as 4870.... if not.. The 4850 Cheesecake But i know that my 1950XTX IS TOTALLY CRAP! I tried Mercenaries 2 World In Flames and it SUX! so I need new card for sure.
OCuk had a deal about 3 weeks ago, gtx280 for £250. i nearly hit buy. im waiting for 55nm to come out, and see if the 55nm is worth the extra i think TimS is implying that gtx280 series is still Dx10, and with Dx11 around the conner (next year), a replacement Dx11 beast will be released by both company soon.
