What Videocard Should I Buy?

The P4, which is not the best is fine for today's sims. I have friends who still use P4's with a good AGP GPU and I still have that sort of system as a backup rig and while they are old systems they can run today's sims without much trouble on mediumish settings at a lower resolution, 1.5gb ram is fine too.

Upgrading to a 3850 will make your gaming much more enjoyable and give you much more needed performance.
 
my current 8600GT is just not good enough, i`m sick of constant screen freezers and am looking for something to replace it with.
i only play racing games Evo and rFactor mainly.

Gigabyte GA-G33m-DS2R
Intel core 2 E4500 @2.2GHZ
Kingston PC2-6400 CL5 (4x1GB)
Corsair HX520W PSU

i recon i`ve got around £250 to spend, i have no preforance over nVidia or ATI i just want something reliable and no more screen freezers.

Cheers Nigel :hug-right:

I had the 8800GT and went to the ATI 4870. It is very quick, no noise and gets the heat out of the case (dual slot card). I run GTR evo at 1920*1200 at 100 detail no problem.

Depending on your monitor's res you could go lower (4850) but I had to use full hd to agree with the monitor native res.

I am very satisfied.

Michael
 
thanks for all the tips and advice, its really appreciated.

only using 1440 x 900 at the moment, but plan to get a bigger screen next year.

at the moment the 4870 is looking favorite although am tempted by the GTX260 216 core.

the money wount be in my bank for another 9 days so please feel free to keep posting :good:
 
thanks for all the tips and advice, its really appreciated.

only using 1440 x 900 at the moment, but plan to get a bigger screen next year.

at the moment the 4870 is looking favorite although am tempted by the GTX260 216 core.

the money wount be in my bank for another 9 days so please feel free to keep posting :good:

Go either way.

4870 (get the 1gb one) is better in some games and the 260 is better in others. However I have always preferred Nvidia drivers over those of Ati. Less hassle and seem to be better optimized.

The 260 is not significantly different from the 4870. I would instead base your future purchase on which is better for your price range.
 
You would be best off going for the GTX260, as long as its the 216 core edition. Equal or sometimes better than the 4870 in a lot of different games, and it has better drivers than the ATI :dance2:
 

That's just the GTX260, not the GTX260 216 Core. The 216 core version beats the 48701GB by around 20%-40% overall according to most reviews. 5 out of 5 of the latest titles the 216 core version of the GTX260 beats the 4870 1GB.


http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=1414&pageID=5836

http://en.expreview.com/2008/10/21/nvidia-can-use-the-dx101-in-far-cry-2.html

Go either way.

4870 (get the 1gb one) is better in some games and the 260 is better in others. However I have always preferred Nvidia drivers over those of Ati. Less hassle and seem to be better optimized.

The 260 is not significantly different from the 4870. .

That's true for the standard 260, but it's a different story with the 216 core version which beats the 4870 1gb in just about every title out there.

But you can't go wrong with either as mentioned allready by some of us, but I would personally go for the faster card if I had the money :)
 
You would be best off going for the GTX260, as long as its the 216 core edition. Equal or sometimes better than the 4870 in a lot of different games, and it has better drivers than the ATI :dance2:

Yes deffo get the 216 core version if you choose the 260.

That's just the GTX260, not the GTX260 216 Core. The 216 core version beats the 48701GB by around 20%-40% overall according to most reviews. 5 out of 5 of the latest titles the 216 core version of the GTX260 beats the 4870 1GB.

But you can't go wrong with either as mentioned allready.

http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=1414&pageID=5836

http://en.expreview.com/2008/10/21/nvidia-can-use-the-dx101-in-far-cry-2.html

The 216 core is very similar to the 4870. It really is gamed dependent with these two cards.

For example:

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2008/09/25/bfg-tech-geforce-gtx-260-ocx-maxcore/7

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2008/09/25/bfg-tech-geforce-gtx-260-ocx-maxcore/6

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2008/09/25/bfg-tech-geforce-gtx-260-ocx-maxcore/9
 
This review is from "Published: 25th September 2008", over a month old so they are not using latest drivers so it's not really showing the true performance as shown in the better reviews that use the latest drivers:

http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=1414&pageID=5836

http://www.guru3d.com/article/top-10-games-with-radeon-4870-1-gb--geforce-gtx-260-core-216-test/8

That is very true. Both sets of drivers have in fact improved since then.

The latter article you posted shows it well:

Some would argue for the price you may as well get the 4870 as it will save a few quid for tiny fps difference in some games.

As Guru3d said:

Realistically, things are not as black and white as that, let's put things in perspective. These wins are based on fairly small differences with exceptions here and there. Fact is, the new Catalyst 8.11 drivers pushed forward overall performance in titles such as Far Cry 2 and Brothers in Arms as well. They just don't call it Big Bang. So, fact is that both cards offer a tremendous amount of performance and value for money.

In the end your choice should be based more on bundle, and your personal preference towards ATI or NVIDIA. Both have an excellent product ready and waiting for you in the shops. The Christmas season is getting close and if you are willing to pay a little more than the average amount of money on a graphics card... these two products would be my personal choice as they'll offer you fantastic value for money and an excellent gaming experience. There's not a game you could not enjoy with either one of these cards. NVIDIA does have a few tricks up their sleeves though in the form of PhysX, and with the new driver update supporting multi-monitor SLI gaming.
 
True but it's not only a few tiny FPS in newer titles, which brings me back to what I was saying earlier about the GTX260 216 core being more future proof as in 5 out of 5 of the latest titles the GTX260 216 core wins by quite a bit. (about 40% faster in the newer titles)

http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=1414&pageID=5836

We weren't expecting it, but the Nvidia BFG GTX-260 Core 216 (MaxCore) made it a clean sweep. With every game at every resolution, it took the lead and kept it. If this were a Shootout at the OK Corral the ATI GPU would be sprawled in a pool of blood with five holes in its core and the Nvidia GPU would be left standing unscathed.
You can't get much clearer than that. "The perfect GPU for the 2008 Christmas seasons hottest games, in the $300 dollar price range, is the GTX-260 Core 216." Be sure when you set on Santa's lap you tell him no GTX-260 Core 216 or don't slide down my chimney!
But no point going on, sure Nigel as all the information he needs, both are great cards to go with and you can't go wrong with either as said by a few us allready :)
 
True but it's not only a few tiny FPS in newer titles, which brings me back to what I was saying earlier about the GTX260 216 core being more future proof as in 5 out of 5 of the latest titles the GTX260 216 core wins by quite a bit. (about 40% faster in the newer titles)

http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=1414&pageID=5836



But no point going on, sure Nigel as all the information he needs, and you can't go wrong with either as said by a few us already :)

Indeed. That Dead space benchmark seems to be a slight anomaly though. It's interesting how there is such a vast difference in this particular title.

Either way as you said he won't go wrong.

I had a similar problem deciding which to go for and I am now going GTX260 Maxcore.
 
let me help a bit
while this is an old review (was released when the core 216 went out) it is a pretty good comparison for power consumption
this is right now the reason i prefer the nvidia more (although the price of the ATI is better :))
so in the end it is better for you to decide on these 2 Nigel

power.png


anyway....can check the reviews here
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3408&p=1
http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-260-core-216--bfg-ocx-maxcore
http://hothardware.com/Articles/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-260-Core-216-EVGA-Zotac/Default.aspx?page=10
 
Indeed. That Dead space benchmark seems to be a slight anomaly though. It's interesting how there is such a vast difference in this particular title.

Either way as you said he won't go wrong.

I had a similar problem deciding which to go for and I am now going GTX260 Maxcore.

It's not just deadspace, look at all the benchmarks from the review with the 5 latest titles, the 4870 1gb gets pretty much owned in those 5 titles + the GTX260 216 uses less power, but the 4870 is a little cheaper, it's a tough chose :)

I hope the power that the cards use comes down in the future too, am hoping in 2 years we won't need a power station to power our PC's :chuck:
 
  • vmagics

The P4, which is not the best is fine for today's sims. I have friends who still use P4's with a good AGP GPU and I still have that sort of system as a backup rig and while they are old systems they can run today's sims without much trouble on mediumish settings at a lower resolution, 1.5gb ram is fine too.

Upgrading to a 3850 will make your gaming much more enjoyable and give you much more needed performance.
I hope I didn't put anybody on a downer with my above post. I'm just reporting on my own experience. I've never really had much luck with getting extra performance from older components. Which would explain why I need to buy a 'penis compensator' of a pc.
 
Simbin products ask a lot from cpu and memory, so i think upgrading only a gpu will not give that much better performance.

If money is the issue and you can only upgrade the gpu then try to run low details, like low resolution textures and no AA and AF, AA and AF kill fps a lot.
 
Simbin products ask a lot from cpu and memory, so i think upgrading only a gpu will not give that much better performance.

If money is the issue and you can only upgrade the gpu then try to run low details, like low resolution textures and no AA and AF, AA and AF kill fps a lot.

So you are advising to still buy a new gpu and lower AA and AF? AA and AF are limited by the GPU not the rest of the system. So if the CPU is the limiting factor and he gets a better GPU enabling or raising the AA and AF levels will not harm the FPS.
 
So you are advising to still buy a new gpu and lower AA and AF? AA and AF are limited by the GPU not the rest of the system. So if the CPU is the limiting factor and he gets a better GPU enabling or raising the AA and AF levels will not harm the FPS.

In therory you are right but i have had the same situation when i still used AGP.

Before an image comes on the screen the following actions will be done:
  • The active application sends the display request to the CPU.
  • The operating system raises its hand (generates a software interrupt)
  • The CPU pauses what it's doing to retrieve the request from the operating system
  • The CPU sends the instructions for the display to the video controller
  • The video controller sets an interrupt and then sends the information to the graphics processing unit
  • The GPU calculates which points on the monitor should be shaded in which way to create the new display.
  • The GPU writes the information to video memory and also sends it to the display
  • The display redraws the screen using the new instructions.
So if a high AA and AF level will be set, the cpu has to work harder to deliver the instructions to the GPU.

My personal experiences with a newer AGP cart and using the same CPU are indeed better FPS. AA and AF still killed FPS so i used a lower resolution, less details and lower AA and AF.
 
Well it all comes down to how much AA and AF you are using. If your resolution AA and AF combination superseeds the capabilities of your gpu to push out a certain amount of FPS(let say 50) then the CPU will never get you to display more no matter what CPU you are using I was allways in the understanding that the CPU had nothing to do with AA and AF as it is done by the GPU and the two are done after step 5 in your post.

If an CPU limits a game to 50FPS and you get those 50FPS with your current GPU but increasing resolution, AA and or AF will make your FPS drop getting a faster GPU will help you accomplish this. You can see it allmost all gpu reviews. Where they do not test in Full HD and higher resolutions only.
 

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