How are there still should I buy 260 or 4870 threads still?

[AzN]

Originally posted by: taltamir
so. To summerize things:

4. The GTX will OC a lot higher and benefit a lot more from that OC.


7. The GTX takes a lot less power in both idle and load, it will cost you less to own in electricity.
8. The GTX runs more quietly and much cooler, and thus less likely to break (most likely because nvidia partners actually offer good warranties, it will cost them too much to replace a ton of cards later on, AMD partners don't have that problem, it will be out of warranty and the customer loses)

I love how you mention more overclocking on 260 and imply GTX 260 uses less electricity. Once it's overclocked I don't think you will be saving much electricity. They are about even in terms of power consumption. 260 uses less at idle.

Just because a chip runs little warmer doesn't mean it's going to break either.

 

[AzN]

Originally posted by: nitromullet

Originally posted by: Azn

Originally posted by: nitromullet

Originally posted by: Azn
4870 does have faster 8xAA performance. You can't deny about that. Major sites like Anandtech, Tom's Hardware and techreport says 4870 is 10% faster than 260gtx at bone stock and fast as GTX280 when 8xAA is applied.

The choice is really a coin flip. Either you want faster performance with higher AA settings or you want to push more raw fps with GTX260 and try your luck with overclocking. Not all GTX260 will be pushing 750mhz core like that other thread. Seems 650-700 is the norm far as overclocking goes from 576. Not that 4870 can't overclock either that's been clocking the core to 790-840 and huge memory overclocks.

In the end you can't really lose if you went with either card.

...where?

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3341&p=1
http://techreport.com/articles.x/14990/1
http://www.tomshardware.com/re...deon-hd-4870,1964.html

It would have been easier if you weren't such a Nvidia fanboi with GTX280 and actually compared benches between the 2 cards.

I'll just post Anandtech benches since we are in Anandtech....

Crysis
HD4870 35.6 fps
GTX260 33.6 fps

COD4
HD4870 82.4 fps
GTX260 74.3 fps

Quake Wars
HD4870 96.8 fps
GTX260 84.2 fps

Assasin's Creed
HD4870 55 fps
GTX260 50.2 fps

Witcher
HD4870 48 fps
GTX260 46.1 fps

Bioshock
HD4870 107.7 fps
GTX260 69 fps

Oblivion
HD4870 41.5 fps
GTX260 43 fps

I don't think there is much of a question if the 4870 beats the GTX 260 in most cases by a few fps, but none of those are with 8xAA... Also, note that the biggest win is in Bioshock, which just so happens to not have any AA at all.

Considering bioshock doesn't officially support AA why would they bench it with AA. There are plenty of sites showing 8xMSAA where RV770 takes a bigger jump from 4xAA compared to GTX260. Don't tell me you haven't seen it.

http://www.computerbase.de/art..._clive_barkers_jericho

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: Azn

Originally posted by: taltamir
so. To summerize things:

4. The GTX will OC a lot higher and benefit a lot more from that OC.


7. The GTX takes a lot less power in both idle and load, it will cost you less to own in electricity.
8. The GTX runs more quietly and much cooler, and thus less likely to break (most likely because nvidia partners actually offer good warranties, it will cost them too much to replace a ton of cards later on, AMD partners don't have that problem, it will be out of warranty and the customer loses)

I love how you mention more overclocking on 260 and imply GTX 260 uses less electricity. Once it's overclocked I don't think you will be saving much electricity. They are about even in terms of power consumption. 260 uses less at idle.

Just because a chip runs little warmer doesn't mean it's going to break either.

they are both correct, just not necessarily at the same time (but they might). The 4870 might OC less, but it still OCes.. I don't know the exact power consumptions of each card at max expected OC. But it will be higher for both.

 

[AzN]

Originally posted by: taltamir

Originally posted by: Azn

Originally posted by: taltamir
so. To summerize things:

4. The GTX will OC a lot higher and benefit a lot more from that OC.


7. The GTX takes a lot less power in both idle and load, it will cost you less to own in electricity.
8. The GTX runs more quietly and much cooler, and thus less likely to break (most likely because nvidia partners actually offer good warranties, it will cost them too much to replace a ton of cards later on, AMD partners don't have that problem, it will be out of warranty and the customer loses)

I love how you mention more overclocking on 260 and imply GTX 260 uses less electricity. Once it's overclocked I don't think you will be saving much electricity. They are about even in terms of power consumption. 260 uses less at idle.

Just because a chip runs little warmer doesn't mean it's going to break either.

they are both correct, just not necessarily at the same time.

I think you are favoring 260 because you got one or getting one. Trying to justify your purchase? Fair enough. I would have gotten it too just because of more vram.

 

[taltamir]

I have just one thing to say to that:

Basically when the GTX and 4870 came out the 4870 was so much cheaper that every expert said "there is absolutely no reason to buy the GTX at that price point". However people took it as "there is absolutely no reason to buy the GTX". To the point where the GTX is actually cheaper to buy, cheaper to operate, has better feature set, and comes from a better companies in terms of service and warranty. Yet people STILL say that there is no reason to buy the GTX... Their loss, my win. I was going to buy the 4870 cause it was cheaper, more bang for the buck, but with the GTX prices being actually lower I snapped one up for myself.

at 225$ how could I not get one.

And I am not biased towards the GTX, several of my points clearly show why it is over hyped, specifically physX and its higher vram.
The reason why I had more marks against the 4870 is because there is more untrue hype about it then there is about the GTX. But it exists for both. Not my fault.

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: Azn

Originally posted by: taltamir

Originally posted by: Azn

Originally posted by: taltamir
so. To summerize things:

4. The GTX will OC a lot higher and benefit a lot more from that OC.


7. The GTX takes a lot less power in both idle and load, it will cost you less to own in electricity.
8. The GTX runs more quietly and much cooler, and thus less likely to break (most likely because nvidia partners actually offer good warranties, it will cost them too much to replace a ton of cards later on, AMD partners don't have that problem, it will be out of warranty and the customer loses)

I love how you mention more overclocking on 260 and imply GTX 260 uses less electricity. Once it's overclocked I don't think you will be saving much electricity. They are about even in terms of power consumption. 260 uses less at idle.

Just because a chip runs little warmer doesn't mean it's going to break either.

they are both correct, just not necessarily at the same time.

I think you are favoring 260 because you got one or getting one. Trying to justify your purchase? Fair enough. I would have gotten it too just because of more vram.

What the......

 

[LAX182]

I think you are favoring 260 because you got one or getting one. Trying to justify your purchase? Fair enough. I would have gotten it too just because of more vram.

This seems like such a weak argument. I'm going with keys on this one, both are even at the 255 dollar segment for now. As my first two posts say, go with what the top review sites say about the games you play. In 6 to 8 months we are all going to move on to the latest and greatest neway =p

 

[OCGuy]

At this point:

People who like ATi and thier partners are going to buy the 4870/4850.

People who like NV and thier partners are going to buy the 260/9800GTX+

People who want the best single-gpu are going to buy the 280.

People who want the best single video-card are going to buy the X2 soon.


Calling someone an "idiot" or "fanboy" for buying any of them is childish. There is something at every price-point for everyone right now. Its a great time to be in the market for a new card!

 

[dadach]

yup...great that ati showed up and made nvidia prices go way down...dont think nvidia likes it, and dont think that poeple who recently paid top dollar for gfx card like it, but at least they can now get more performance for half the price on their next purchase

 

[SolMiester]

Originally posted by: deerhunter716
Well I see 4870's on new egg right now for $255 and the cheapest 260 is $255 so NOT cheaper that is for sure. Like I said in my original post when you turn ON FULL AA and all the eye candy the 4870 blows the 260 out of the water and it is not close. When the AA is turned OFF and the extras that is when you see them neck and neck. So again I game at 1920 x 1200 and it is a no brainer to go with the 4870 even if they are the same price today. The reason is same cost; BUT better performance WITH AA turned on.

Hmm, look at the these reviews and the 4870 priced the same beats the 260 by >10% in MOST games benched at 1920 x 1200; just about dead even at 2560x1600; BUT who the hell games at that resolution, lol There are not many who game at 1920x1200. Like I said look at the #'s WITH AA and the 4870 wins a hell of a lot more than it loses. So no brainer like I said

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3341&p=14

Duh, have you checked out the heat issue with the ATI yet, and alot of people also prefer the NV drivers....

 

[bryanW1995]

where have you been? for the past couple of years amd drivers are considered equal or better than nvidia, plus you get a new cat every month instead of doing the 6-month shuffle from nvidia.

right now the gtx 260 for $225ar (see tal's hot deals post) is the best deal in the high end, and the sapphire 4850 for $140ar is the best deal in the midrange. the 4850 in particular is nice because it's competing against g92 instead of a gt 200 midrange derivative.

 

[MichaelD]

Originally posted by: Ocguy31

Calling someone an "idiot" or "fanboy" for buying any of them is childish. There is something at every price-point for everyone right now. Its a great time to be in the market for a new card!

Well-said; I agree. :beer: When the 4870X2 hits and NVidia (most probably) fires back with something of their own...and then ALL the prices on ALL the sub-$300 cards plummet...well, that's going to be a good time, man!!! :thumbsup:

 

[taltamir]

A lot of people prefer nvidia's drivers, a lot prefer AMDs... most, I think, are ok with both.

i know AMDs drivers are supposedly better then nvidia now. But i have had some bugs with the 4850 and the drivers, downgrading has been overly complicated, and the drivers even failed to install once and I had to try again (actually it installed the driver and failed to update CCC, then on second try it upgraded it).

and clicking through a pages on pages, deselecting spam (registration reminder and shortcuts) are not too pleasant. the nvidia approach of "run, click once to accept eula, drivers will then install and overwrite old drivers without any junk or user intervention" is a very clean one IMAO. not to mention the actual driver control center runs faster. (the AMD one still lags, it was a huge mistake to use .net, which is utter shit).
You can also manually create SLI profiles for unprofiled games. and AFAIK I can't set the monitor resize method to keep aspect ratio (with black bars) in AMD drivers like i can with nvidia.

So, I understand why some people prefer the nvidia drivers still.

On the other hand, AMD drivers actually allow multi monitor on multi GPU (in the non overpriced "commercial" version), update monthly instead of bi-yearly, actually support multi gpu in linux, and a few other neat things that nvidia does not have.

Personally I think they both have pluses and minuses, so I can't clearly point at one and say "inferior". And moreover, both are the best drivers in the entire industry, aside from microsoft's own generic drivers (generic mouse driver, generic keyboard driver). And almost every other company fails miserably when compared to those two in terms of drivers.

The way I view drivers right now, nvidias are cleaner and I like them more. But it takes an unacceptable 6 months period for updates to arrive.
AMD actually cares enough to release monthly.
Both are good enough that they do not impact my purchase decision.

Originally posted by: bryanW1995
right now the gtx 260 for $225ar (see tal's hot deals post) is the best deal in the high end, and the sapphire 4850 for $140ar is the best deal in the midrange. the 4850 in particular is nice because it's competing against g92 instead of a gt 200 midrange derivative.

You can say that again. I mean... 140$ for a card of this caliber is insane! the 9800GTX+ is too expensive compared to that...

 

[RanDum72]

Originally posted by: fierydemise
I posted this in another thread:
Overall the HD4870 and GTX 260 are the most evenly matched cards we've seen in a long time, they perform near identically and each have their own (counterbalancing) advantages, the H4870 has HDMI, DX10.1 and scales incredibly well with AA and the GTX 260 has PhysX, overclocks very nicely and has better board partners. For my money unless one of those advantages is a big deal to you the best bet is to get whichever card is cheaper when you buy. For me that was the HD4870 and for someone else it may be the GTX 260 (we've seen some great deals recently) can we quit trying to crown a winner, declare this round a tie and thank god for having two competitive companies again which gives us these wonderful price wars.

I couldn't agree more. ATI/AMD DOES have lousy board partners and their warranties are not up to par compared to eVGA, XFX, BFG, etc.. On a persoanl experience, I had a Visiontek ATI 9600xt crap out two days AFTER the two year warranty ran out..and it was on a hardly used spare machine. A Sapphire 3850 256mb card recently went bad after less than a year..and it was a replacement for a Diamond card that went pfftt 4 days after getting it from Newegg. And I had to pay a 15% restocking fee just to get it exchanged for the Sapphire.
For me, I went with an eVGA 260. $255 - 30 MIR = $225.00. Awesome warranty, and I have a feeling the 260 has more in the tank for the future than the 4870. Physx is a good indication plus the 260 runs cooler despite an older 65nm process. But another one of my machines needs an upgrade too so maybe I'll get a 4870 for that one..

 

[GeordieLife]

People reporting issues with AMD and WoW made this a more complicated affair for me. My heart told me 4870...my head told me 260. So I went for the 260.

 

[oddity21]

Another thing to take into consideration: 260 is still retailing in many countries at its original price point.

Then again, that would make the 4870 a clear winner, right?

 

[ochadd]

Performance wise these cards are so close it doesn't matter. After reading every enthusiast card review I've seen since the GTX series was released it's pretty obvious that you are talking 10% either way.

Take vendor support into consideration, who you would rather give your money to, power consumption, and heat.

IMO Nvidia wins 3 out of the 4 considerations of what I look for outside of performance when things are tight. I'd rather give my money to DAAMIT but not this time. I still think these 4000 series are going to have longevity issues but that remains to be seen and probably isn't at the top of the list of what most people buying enthusiast cards are worried about.

If you are still waiting for max FPS to determine what card you are going to buy might as well do slightly cheaper cards in SLI or Crossfire.