Originally posted by sammorris:

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The HD3850 256MB is unfortunately owned by higher resolutions, but if you only game at up to 1280x1024 you're not likely to encounter big frame drops that are due to the memory alone, since the only games that need more than 256MB at that res aren't going to run smoothly anyway on an HD3850.
If you use 1680x1050, or moreso 1920x1200+ then the 512MB is more important.

Estuansis: We've had the discussion about Crysis before, it's not a valid ATi vs nvidia test. It is useful in the sense that, if you can run Crysis, you can run anything, but as a brand for brand comparison it's once again skewed in nvidia's favour (remember that this is how nvidia operates, landmark titles such as 3DMark, Oblivion and now Crysis are "optimised" to give the highest frame rates regardless of image quality). Given the different rendering techniques used, I avoid using Crysis for card comparisons. There's nothing explicitly wrong with nvidia cards drawing Crysis, hence how they got away with it, but it's missing a large amount of detail compared to how the game was designed to look. "The way it's meant to be played" - what a laugh!

Abuzar: I used to trust the THG VGA charts, and I still trust their articles, but the recent VGA charts are a crock of ***t, because all of the nvidias outperform all of the ATis, a 6600GT beating an HD3870? Give me a break.
Look for the individual articles on the 8800s and HD3800s for better testing.

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Originally posted by sammorris:

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Heh, for a pretty large list of games that's true. Of course, it doesn't apply to all games. I've run CS:S at 1600x1200 with 4xAA on only 256MB before, but then unless you use HDR, CS:S isn't really a very demanding game.

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There's nothing explicitly wrong with nvidia cards drawing Crysis, hence how they got away with it, but it's missing a large amount of detail compared to how the game was designed to look. "The way it's meant to be played" - what a laugh!

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I posted it in one of the threads a little while back. VR-Zone demonstrate the difference in Crysis.

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Estuansis: I quite agree with the entirity of that post. Whilst you can say going for an image quality boost that is marginal in some games is purile, so is going for a frame rate boost you're not going to see. Even a frame rate boost that is noticeable, e.g.the HD3870 to the 8800GTX, it's not sufficiently much for an upgrade, and consequently, it's not sufficiently much to be worth panicking about.

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"nvidia market ***t like gold and we market gold like ***t"

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I used to trust the THG VGA charts, and I still trust their articles, but the recent VGA charts are a crock of ***t, because all of the nvidias outperform all of the ATis, a 6600GT beating an HD3870? Give me a break. Look for the individual articles on the 8800s and HD3800s for better testing.

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