Hardware Core i7 Christmas '08 Graphics Performance

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2008/12/17/xmas-2008-graphics-performance-on-core-i7/1

The last few weeks have been full of blood, sweat and BIOS revisions in the bit-tech benchmarking sweatshop. We've been feverishly putting our new Core i7-based graphics card test systems together and now we're here to report how the graphics landscape is reforming itself.

 

it's just too evenly matched.

to be honest, the only difference is which driver/utility set the customer prefers.

will there be a AVIO vs Badaboom encoding soon? with ATI also starting to release stream processor applications, nVidia no longer have that advantage.

 

+10000. And we should include "regular" encoders too, like TMPGEnc and non-accelerated encoders to see if there are any quality differences.

 

It is something that we are definitely looking to do, yes! I'd like to look at the various GPU accelerated encoders.

 

I still love my 8800GTs Good performance at a steal of a price!

 

Looks like you guys are really properly set up , great article

I really liked the "4870 vs 260" graphs, very helpful! I recently got my grubby fingers on a 4870 1GB, and i'm glad i did

 

I dunno, all those benchmarks are fine and all, but some more games and cards would have been nice...


(k/g! Awesome job guys, now go enjoy Christmas and stop working so late)

 

wow lots of work it seems ! The test results didn't surprise any of us i think. Now, the waiting for the next-gen graphics has commenced, as this generation hardly shows us any real performance booms. Also: it's common courtesy to pitty/laugh at, those who bought the Radeon 4870 512mb :/

 

my 3870 is starting to look quite shabby, having said that i generally game at 1440x900 and havn't noticed any problem on the lastest titels....the old girl got some life yet?

 

Tim, thanks for the very thorough comparison of GPU's... much appreciated. The step-by-step comparisons and relative percentage gains/losses were particularly informative and insightful. Reviews such as these are the main reason I stick around this site over the US based websites.

 

Thanks a lot
A nice comparison.
I came back to ATi with my 4870 1Gb and i'm happy I did. 830MHz core stock cooler all day long ( at 50%)
The 260+ is looking like a better and better choice every day the price comes down tho....

Well, i'm rooting for the next gen fight now ;-)

 

Those compairson graphs hurt my head :<

 

Yeah, I still have a 3870 too. Does ok for the most part, but AA performance is dire. It also suffers when there are things like smoke and dust in a scene. I am thinking of replacing it after Christmas, but the idle power consumption of the 4870 is too high and the GTX260 is too long to fit in my case without modification. I really hope both manufacturers can address these points!

 

My God, that's a lot of graphs! Brilliant review, as ever...

 

Very good review. If only I could read it clearly, I didn't recognize the lighter red/green graphs AT ALL.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daltonism
Deuteranomaly (most common - 6% of males, 0.4% of females): Having a mutated form of the medium-wavelength (green) pigment. The medium-wavelength pigment is shifted towards the red end of the spectrum resulting in a reduction in sensitivity to the green area of the spectrum. Unlike protanomaly the intensity of colors is unchanged. This is the most common form of color blindness, making up about 6% of the male population.

6% of the audience is quite a lot so I'd suggest to deffer from using low contrast red/green in graphs for people like us so we can enjoy the reviews without straining our eyes

 

That's a singularly unfortunate condition to have if you're into computers and websites can't you adjust your monitor to bypass the problem?

@article, it's nice to know I'll be able to slap another 1Gb 4870 alongside this one in a year's time and get an insane boost. Food for thought, though it'll have to wait till my next overdraft comes through. Free money for the cake...

 

called darwinism

nice article.. the msi overclocking comp in taiwan looked pretty cool too