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Video Card Thread (Mostly Gecube x1950xt)
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AfterDawn Addict
2 product reviews
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21. January 2008 @ 11:38 |
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oh lol.
I thought the side panel was open.
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Senior Member
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21. January 2008 @ 14:22 |
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Haha, well I may just do the mod and keep the system the way it is for a while as it is a real pain in the ass to drain the system, cut the tubing, buy new tubing, install it etc. To much work.
I am really thinking about that mod though. I might contact frozencpu.com and just ask if they can send me the door for like $25 or something...
If that doesnt work out then I need to decide what type of window I want. I was thinking of a plain one, like the picture or one with a 120mm fan hole in the middle, like this: http://www.frozencpu.com/products/3912/w...l?tl=g44c11s496
The only thing is that I am not sure if the tubing will fit behind the fan without bending/kinking around it, which is the reason why I dont have a fan installed on the door right now.
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harvrdguy
Senior Member
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21. January 2008 @ 17:17 |
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Hey guys - popping in for a minute:
Waymon - Ray GOOD JOB! on finding those images comparisons that you posted on page 57 - the most compelling ones of the difference in quality between 8800 and 3870, I would say, are the beach shots. What do you think Sam? Your picture of the Tomb raider wooden boards was helpful, but these beach shots of Ray's show a very clear difference.
Hey Sam, that price/fps comparison was great! When you look at it that way, and combine the image comparison, I would say you've made a great case for the 3870. (By the way, Ray's link on his image comparison pictures suggested that the 3870 can be pushed farther in terms of overclocking than the 3850 - another reason to spend the few extra bucks to get a 3870 instead of the 3850 I think.)
By the way, that maxishine video was interesting - with triple 8800 on ultra high settings, he couldn't go above 1600 x 1050 to get 27 fps! Man that game requires some huge resources. (He was running on an apple 2560 x 1600 like Sam's resolution, and I thought at first that's the resolution he was going to run the benchmark on.)
I think the only way you're going to run crysis, Sam, at the resolution you like, on high or ultra high settings, is on a crossfire 4 x 3870 rig. Would you agree?
MaccerM - Mike, that underwater picture is interesting - you make a good point - the graphics differences are subtle - Sam is an "eye candy" fanatic. I don't know if I would ever notice the difference. Getting fluid performance from a faster gpu is important - no doubt about it.
Of course, from Sam's point of view, when you have a great monitor like the Dell, and you like to run 2560 x 1600, you get used to really appreciating the look of a game.
Abuzar, you're thinking of putting an 8800 in your next build, because it will be easier to sell - that's the approach apparently that Nvidia takes - faster and don't fret too much about total optimization of image quality, because most people won't pick it up.
But, ultimately, I have to go back to Sam's analysis of price/fps.
From that standpoint, not only do you perhaps get better eye candy, but the 3870 represents better value. The price/fps is lower, crossfire or no crossfire.
I guess I keep thinking, with crossfire and four 3870 boards, you've got to be able to run Crysis, I would hope, at least as well as maxishine with his three 8800s, getting 27 fps at 1600 x 1050. But wait a second, was he really getting the benefit of the SLI configuration? Look at Waymon's fps results - turning on CF reduced the numbers??????
So let me ask you guys, if CF actually reduces Ray's fps results on the crysis benchmark, then on the maxishine youtube video, is maxishine getting the 27 fps from the sli of the 3 8800s, or is he only getting the results from one 8800? In other words, if CF doesn't work for crysis yet - if the patch still doesn't work - I assume that sli doesn't work either, or am I wrong?
I hope I'm right, because I would expect 3 8800s to do better than that - and I would hope that four 3870s will eventually let Sam run Crysis at 2560 x 1600 on at least high, if not ultra high settings, getting at least 30 fps. Right Sam?
See you guys,
Rich
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AfterDawn Addict
4 product reviews
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21. January 2008 @ 17:28 |
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I totally agree with you from the image quality standpoint. I'd easily say the ATi graphics "look better", but if I owned the 8800GT, I'd never notice anything was wrong, and it doesn't exactly look bad, only less complete.
As far as the four 3870s go, not a chance really, if I'm honest Only dual crossfire seems to scale well, and even if we take a modest 4x the performance of a single card, the 3870s are only likely to pull 30fps, and much as I'd love it to be, I wouldn't expect that much out of that setup. I wouldn't even expect 3x.
I'm happy to run games at 1680x1050 as long as I can run them at max, and with Call of Duty 4 I can, with 4x AA too. AA doesn't work properly for me in Crysis, and even if it did, three 8800 Ultras can barely make a playable frame rate.
I'm going to stick with my estimate of five years before a desktop PC of any incarnation can max the game out and get it playable.
As far as the 8800s go, I think you're half right. You are seeing benefit from SLi, but not the full benefit. In other words, you're not seeing the same as one card can manage, but you're not seeing three times the speed. A single ultra should make maybe 12fps on high.
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AfterDawn Addict
2 product reviews
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21. January 2008 @ 18:35 |
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I didn't see the chart sam posted. Anyway for price/fps the 8800GT wins.
Newegg has them both for 249 at the cheapest.
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AfterDawn Addict
4 product reviews
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21. January 2008 @ 18:39 |
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The results I posted were for the UK, where the hd3870 is far cheaper. In the US there's no reason for many people not to get the 8800GT if they intend to replace it in a year or less.
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AfterDawn Addict
2 product reviews
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21. January 2008 @ 18:49 |
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Well I plan on replacing it in a couple of months so that should be good. :)
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Senior Member
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21. January 2008 @ 20:37 |
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Abuzar, how about a 9800GX2? http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/01/05/e...eforce_9800gx2/
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Wow rich, that was a really interesting (and long, I could tell you put a lot of thought into it) post you wrote! Just to make 1 thing clear, the Crysis benchmark that Maxishine did was with 2x 8800Ultras in SLi - not 3 as the 3 way SLi motherboard wasnt out yet. (I have no idea how he got a hold of one either; are they even out yet?)
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AfterDawn Addict
4 product reviews
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21. January 2008 @ 21:44 |
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potentially controversial post
The 9800GX2 will undoubtedly be fast (in games where SLI works, of course) but it's not really anything new. You can now just put four 8800GTs in SLI rather than three, and not really for any less money than four of the single cards. Could two of the 9800s run Crysis maxed on very high, even at 1792x1344? I doubt it. The card bores me, it really does. The last time the graphics industry produced something mindblowingly revolutionary was when the 8800GTX came out. When will they come up with something worth raving about?
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AfterDawn Addict
2 product reviews
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21. January 2008 @ 21:48 |
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Ray, I don't have the cash to afford that stuff. We'll see how well it does when it comes out. If the 3870CF beats it then I'll go that way. Of course this is a few computers down the road. I don't think I will have enough money to put this into my next two computers.
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Senior Member
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21. January 2008 @ 21:49 |
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Wait a second sam. You're saying that the 9800GX2, with 2 cores on 2 PCBs linked togeather would be relying on Sli for use as one?
I heard somewhere that the Ati 3870x2 will have the 2 GPUs linked togeather, thus not relying on CF for them to work as one.Confirmation on this matter would be great, because if this is false then the only advantage of buying 2 of the 3870x2 or 8900GX2 would be to run Quad SLi/CF on a motherboard with only 2 PCI-e slots.
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 21. January 2008 @ 21:52
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AfterDawn Addict
2 product reviews
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21. January 2008 @ 21:50 |
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The article said it's like the 7950 GX2, so yes it will be relying on SLI.
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AfterDawn Addict
4 product reviews
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21. January 2008 @ 21:51 |
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Things may have changed now, but the most popular card based on two graphics cards was the 7950GX2, which the 9800 is a direct copy of, using 8800GT PCBs rather than 7900GT PCBs. That needed SLI to work.
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 21. January 2008 @ 21:52
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Senior Member
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22. January 2008 @ 13:35 |
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AfterDawn Addict
4 product reviews
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22. January 2008 @ 13:43 |
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About what's to be expected isn't it? It's pleasing to see that the combination running in a single card hasn't dropped the performance much, if at all. Could you potentially mount a proper cooler on this thing? If you can, and it comes out for £250 or less, it's going on my "to be considered" list...
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Senior Member
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22. January 2008 @ 13:53 |
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Heres the rundown:
It outperforms the 8800gtx Ultra in alot of benchmarks (not in Crysis)
It will be release in 1stQuarter this year
(posted in the comments)
Performance diffrence in terms of R680 to 8800Ultra
Bioshock 1280*1024 = 4% Slower
Bioshock 1920x1200 = 24% Faster
Bioshock 2560*1600 = 39% Faster
COJ 1280*1024 = 11% Faster
COJ 1920x1200 = 24% Faster
COJ 2560*1600 = 10% Faster
COJ 1280*1024 4AA 16AF = 13% Faster
COJ 1920x1200 4AA 16AF = 23% Faster
Lost Planet 1280*1024 = 27% Slower
Lost Planet 1920x1200 = 30% Slower
Lost Planet 2560*1600 = 37% Faster
Lost Planet 1280*1024 4AA 16AF = 18% Slower
Lost Planet 1920x1200 4AA 16AF = 18% Slower
Lost Planet 2560*1600 4AA 16AF = 10% Faster
Crysis 1280*1024 = 13% Slower
Crysis 1920x1200 = 2% Slower
Crysis 2560*1600 = 12% slower
COD4 1280*1024 = 42% Faster
COD4 1920x1200 = 32% Faster
COD4 2560*1600 = 26% Faster
COD4 1280*1024 4AA 16AF = 27% Faster
COD4 1920x1200 4AA 16AF = 20% Faster
COD4 2560*1600 4AA 16AF = 16% Faster
NFS:Pro 1280*1024 = 32% Faster
NFS:Pro 1920x1200 = 38% Faster
NFS:Pro 1280*1024 4AA 16AF = 72% Slower
NFS:Pro 1920x1200 4AA 16AF = 67% Slower
Serious Sam 2 1280*1024 HAA 16AF = 30% Faster
Serious Sam 2 1920x1200 HAA 16AF = 45% Faster
Serious Sam 2 2560*1600 HAA 16AF = 78% Faster
UT3 1280*1024 = 7% Faster
UT3 1920x1200 = 24% Faster
UT3 2560*1600 = 37% Faster
F.E.A.R. 1600*1200 = 20% Faster
F.E.A.R. 2048*1536 = 20% Faster
taken from asiancoastdj here http://www.incrysis.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=18473
Also, if you some of the comments over on incrysis, you will see that they're talking about how the PCI-e 2.0 boards give a better performance boost with this card.
Taken from the forum thread on incrysis.com
Originally posted by Pande:
Everything that Supports Crossfire/SLI will support this card. Otherwise it might only utilize one core. But maybe it doesnt need Crossfire support since you might not need an Xfire board.. Only time will tell.
Thats what I was thinking... I think I will keep the 3870s, and essentialy they will be the exact same thing right?
Also, I dont think I could upgrade to this card even I wanted to. The 3870 nearly touches my HDD cage, never mind a PCB with 2 cores on it! Not to mention I would need to redo my cooling - if I was going to crossfire these.
Maybe I will crossfire these in the future... Who knows? I WANT MORE BENCHES!!!!
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AfterDawn Addict
4 product reviews
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22. January 2008 @ 14:17 |
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Let's see, I play COD4, Serious Sam 2 and FEAR from that list. I'd also probably play Crysis if I had a card powerful enough, so the card's looking good so far!
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harvrdguy
Senior Member
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22. January 2008 @ 17:56 |
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Wow, I don't know how you guys waded through all that chinese.
It looks like the heart of the matter is waymon's question - with two cores, does the 3870x2 need CF? It would seem to me that they would be able to split up the pixels and the game would not know there were two cores.
I believe that is what the original company that nvidia put out of business - what was the name? 3dfx, something like that - that's what they did about 8 years ago when they tried to compete with nvidia by putting two cores on a board - there was no crossfire at that time - so the game didn't know there were two cores.
So it seems to me that the engineers at AMD should be able to split the pixels, maybe by one core taking the top half of the screen, which I think is how 3dfx did it. If that is true, in other words no worries about requiring crossfire support, then that should be a screaming board!
So Sam, Ray, is that what the benches are showing? A board that runs almost twice as fast, with no crossfire support required??
-Rich
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AfterDawn Addict
2 product reviews
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22. January 2008 @ 18:27 |
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Ah but it IS internal crossfire.
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AfterDawn Addict
4 product reviews
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22. January 2008 @ 18:49 |
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Yeah 3dfx, I remember back when the Voodoo 3 came out - first time I actually heard a brand name model of a graphics card mentioned!
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Senior Member
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24. January 2008 @ 11:59 |
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AfterDawn Addict
4 product reviews
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24. January 2008 @ 14:18 |
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As far as I can recall it's two 8800GT cards, not two 8800GTXes.
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AfterDawn Addict
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24. January 2008 @ 14:37 |
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its probably, liekt he 7950X" which was two mobile 7950s, two moblie M8800GT .
MGR (Micro Gaming Rig) .|. Intel Q6600 @ 3.45GHz .|. Asus P35 P5K-E/WiFi .|. 4GB 1066MHz Geil Black Dragon RAM .|. Samsung F60 SSD .|. Corsair H50-1 Cooler .|. Sapphire 4870 512MB .|. Lian Li PC-A70B .|. Be Queit P7 Dark Power Pro 850W PSU .|. 24" 1920x1200 DGM (MVA Panel) .|. 24" 1920x1080 Dell (TN Panel) .|. |
AfterDawn Addict
2 product reviews
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24. January 2008 @ 14:45 |
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Also you have to consider that Nvidia cards tend to do worse in Synthetic Applications, and ATi cards do very good in those. When it comes to the games themselves though many times the Nvidia cards that did worse in 3DMark will do better in games.
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harvrdguy
Senior Member
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24. January 2008 @ 15:22 |
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Abuzar,
You said "internal crossfire support."
Damn! So the 3870x2 board is simply two boards sitting on one piece of plastic - no engineering to get past the need for the game to support CF to realize the power of two cards?
If that's true, then it's no big deal - I mean, come on. The Voodoo board from 3dfx all those years ago didn't need the game to know that they had two boards combined.
I am a little disappointed if that is true, although I guess as Sam has mentioned, the price point might be even better than two separate 3870s like waymon has, which of course is good.
If crossfire is needed, then no advantage, Ray, over what you already have, except as you pointed out, it would give somebody the ability to run two of those and effectively be getting four 3870s in CF using only two slots - provided their case has the width to hold the monsters.
Anyway, in final analysis, if Sam puts it on his "to be considered" list, that sounds pretty good.
- Rich
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