No buzz about GTX 260?

[ochadd]

Originally posted by: Powernick50
Ochadd..roflkopter's...looks almost exactly like my rig.

I got the XFX Vanilla 260GTX and its huge...Instantly overclocked to 690mhz no problem..load temps around 65C

Mine is idling at 43 and load is in the mid 60s as well. Have the fan set at a fixed 60% which isn't any louder than the rest of the case.

I haven't cranked it up yet. Saving that for this weekends project. So far it's been a successful plug and play job. I love the EVGA precision app as well. Shows only what you need to see.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: ochadd

Originally posted by: dds14u
Perhaps you could do a review of your own to help us all out. :-D

Installed Pic

It's massive.

It was much larger than I expected. Had to remove a fan to make it fit.

Here was the same setup with the 3870:

3870 installed

Pulling 30 FPS in Crysis @ 1920x1200, everything on high, 4xAA. This was at 666 on the core running and gunning.

Nice pics. Its definitely a big card, its not any longer than the 8800GTX but it seems much larger because of the full shroud. It is actually *slightly* longer and wider due to the shrouding and intake on the end and the back shroud plate. I had to remove the passthrough fan and housing on my 900 to fit the GTX 280. I also barely had enough clearance to install an OCZ XTC memory cooler. Good thing that shroud is there because the XTC is pressed right up against the shroud. Without a shroud it would definitely be touching some ICs on the video card.

Interested to see how high these GTX 260s go, my GTX 280 caps around 1414 on the shaders for sure (minor artifacting above that), haven't pushed core beyond 670 and memory is at 1214 now with no problems.

 

[fierydemise]

Now that nVidia has lowered the GTX 260 price to $300 its a very close call and in many cases will come down to which card has a better deal on it at the time. I ended up choosing the HD4870 because from looking at benchmarks it looked to me that when the 4870 won more benchmarks then it lost and when it lost it lost by less then 260. Those are just my informal observations based on looking at a numberr of reviews.

 

[idiotekniQues]

it is a close call. id like to see each cards benchies in several games with their next iteration of drivers.

 

[RollWave]

Originally posted by: jamesbond007
Anyone else see the ASUS Radeon 4870 for $275 shipped at NewEgg? After MIR, of course.


In regards to the heat, the Accelero S1 Rev2 is apparently the cream of the crop. Plus, it is passive, so I guess cooling is optional? Hah, well, I wouldn't run the GPU passive, but it does leave options open for a 120mm fan to keep things cool and silent. People say their idle and load temps are nearly cut in half! Almost makes me wonder if the HSF on the 4870 needs some new thermal pads or Arctic Silver under there...

~Travis

I thought the VF1000 did the best. A forum showed a comparison using 4850s and the VF1000 won handily

 

[ginfest]

Just replaced my 4870 with my "Step-up" 260. This card runs a lot cooler and quieter, both at the desktop and playing games. Also, the "flickering" is gone in AoC and ME :thumbsup:
All in all a good deal.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

Originally posted by: RollWave

Originally posted by: jamesbond007
Anyone else see the ASUS Radeon 4870 for $275 shipped at NewEgg? After MIR, of course.


In regards to the heat, the Accelero S1 Rev2 is apparently the cream of the crop. Plus, it is passive, so I guess cooling is optional? Hah, well, I wouldn't run the GPU passive, but it does leave options open for a 120mm fan to keep things cool and silent. People say their idle and load temps are nearly cut in half! Almost makes me wonder if the HSF on the 4870 needs some new thermal pads or Arctic Silver under there...

~Travis

I thought the VF1000 did the best. A forum showed a comparison using 4850s and the VF1000 won handily

The VF1000 is an excellent cooler (easily one of the best double slot air coolers out there), but it isn't passive, and thus not silent...and when you strap on your own fan (or set of fans) to an S1, its easily one of the best aftermarket cooling solutions out there, especially for the price, seeing as how its cheaper than the VF900 let alone the VF1000.

There is no single best cooler as there are far too many factors to consider - cost, cooling performance, noise performance, modibility, ease of installation, compatibility, extra features, size, even form (some people do buy for looks)...

 

[Wreckem]

Originally posted by: chizow
It is a very good deal and a very good card for sure. I think the problem was that it launched with the GTX 280 but wasn't available for another 8-9 days. Although some sites reviewed it, many did not and didn't bother to do follow-ups or dedicated reviews when it hard launched a week later. It does seem well covered in the 4870 reviews though.

But ya after the price drops to $299 this basically made the 9800GTX+ pointless at $229, which may be why we haven't seen any 9800GTX+ available yet. It still makes sense for NV to sell 55nm G92 chips, but they might just quietly transition it into the existing 9800GTX line.

9800+'s will be under $199.99.

EVGA has the 9800+ listed at $199.99.

 

[ArchAngel777]

Originally posted by: Rhino2

Originally posted by: BlueAcolyte

Originally posted by: ViRGE

Originally posted by: abubakarm

Originally posted by: Rhino2
.... but the wider bus doesn't actually translate into higher memory bandwidth, so it's not a "pro", .....

this cant be true is it?

It's not. That statement is in error. The width of a memory bus is a direct factor of overall memory bandwidth.

Ah, but the GDDR5 makes up for it on the HD 4870. This might be what he was going for.

That is exactly what I meant, taking the statement alone out of context with the rest of the post, of course it doesn't make any sense. In comparison between the 260 and 4870 though, it makes perfect sense, as the 260's 448 bit bus doesn't net it any memory bandwidth over the 4870's 256 bit bus due to GDDR5 on the 4870.

Yep, I knew what you meant. I think almost everyone did, to be honest. It is like saying a V-8 produces more power than a I-4, which isn't neccessarily true. It can be true, and is often more true than not, but it does mandate that type of conclusion. 512 bit bus is meaningless if it is paired with GDDR2.

 

[RussianSensation]

Even with the price cuts, GTX260 is uncompetitive with regard to pricing:

GTX 260 = $299 without MIR lowest on Egg, $269 lowest with Rebate

4870 = $275 without MIR lowest on Egg, $259 lowest with Rebate

Also HD4870 has the ability to pass 7.1 sound through HDMI and it is vastly superior with 8AA enabled.

However, we shouldn't disregard that NV still holds an advantage in certain games like UT3, Mass Effect and flight sims, whereas ATI has an advantage in games like Test Drive Unlimited, GRID, Bioshock. So it's important to consider what games one is interested in playing as well.

 

[raddreamer3kx]

Im going with a 260 just because of the partners such as XFX and EVGA, there great.

 

[Dankk]

I was originally gonna buy a 4870 for my new PC build - which should arrive next week - but I decided to go with the $299.99 XFX 260 instead, which comes with a free copy of assassin's creed. This is a very insightful thread... I agree that it is a very hard decision to choose between the HD 4870 and the GTX 260. They are very close.

 

[ginfest]

Very close
I'm happier with my 260 than I was with my 4870 but they are both great cards at the $300 (or less ) price range. Either way, a win-win for consumers.

 

[taltamir]

very interesting:
http://www.driverheaven.net/re...?reviewid=585&pageid=1

This review compares the GTX260, 4850, 4870 in a plethorea of games and tells us the min frame rate for each... the result? the GTX 260 consistantly wins in min frame rate over the 4870.
When going to 2560x1600 the 4870 crashes and burns due to lack of vram.
And according to every other review I saw (they don't test in this one), the 4870 takes about 50 watt more in idle and 50 watt more in load. And is noiser, and runs hotter. And the geforce comes with board partners like XFX and eVGA and BFG, which are pure awesomeness. Compared to horrible board partners for AMD.

@ 300$ the GTX260 seems to be clearly the better choice then.

It is very tempting to give the 4850 to my little brother and buy myself a GTX260 right now.

 

[ArchAngel777]

Originally posted by: taltamir
very interesting:
http://www.driverheaven.net/re...?reviewid=585&pageid=1

This review compares the GTX260, 4850, 4870 in a plethorea of games and tells us the min frame rate for each... the result? the GTX 260 consistantly wins in min frame rate over the 4870.
When going to 2560x1600 the 4870 crashes and burns due to lack of vram.
And according to every other review I saw (they don't test in this one), the 4870 takes about 50 watt more in idle and 50 watt more in load. And is noiser, and runs hotter. And the geforce comes with board partners like XFX and eVGA and BFG, which are pure awesomeness. Compared to horrible board partners for AMD.

@ 300$ the GTX260 seems to be clearly the better choice then.

It is very tempting to give the 4850 to my little brother and buy myself a GTX260 right now.

Careful, I said the same thing about 4-5 days ago in regards to the minimum frame-rate of the 4870 and was pounced on by about 3-4 people. With that said, I don't particular care for the GT200 series either. It seems the GT200 series took the brute force approach. Nice card, performs well, but the noise would drive me crazy. Even my 8800GTS 512MB can be loud under load. I don't need something nearly double that in my home office.

 

[taltamir]

well, with my E8400 OC being such a bottleneck, I should probably keep the 4850 until nehalem. And then combine a nehalem quad with whatever is out by then (probably a 55nm GTX260+)

 

[toslat]

With the success of the 4800 series and the bar set by NV partners, I expect ATi partners to improve their offerings, otherwise we might see some new entrants. It would be really sad for AMD, if they couldn't capitalize on the success of their engineering cos of some poor vendor support.

I think both AMD and Nvidia still have a few more cards to play in this round. Particularly when the X2 and 1GB 4870 arrive, we might see some more price cuts.e.g 4870 1GB at $300 and 512MB at $250. I expect 4870 512MB CF to be cheaper than X2

 

[fierydemise]

Originally posted by: taltamir
very interesting:
http://www.driverheaven.net/re...?reviewid=585&pageid=1

This review compares the GTX260, 4850, 4870 in a plethorea of games and tells us the min frame rate for each... the result? the GTX 260 consistantly wins in min frame rate over the 4870.
When going to 2560x1600 the 4870 crashes and burns due to lack of vram.
And according to every other review I saw (they don't test in this one), the 4870 takes about 50 watt more in idle and 50 watt more in load. And is noiser, and runs hotter. And the geforce comes with board partners like XFX and eVGA and BFG, which are pure awesomeness. Compared to horrible board partners for AMD.

@ 300$ the GTX260 seems to be clearly the better choice then.

It is very tempting to give the 4850 to my little brother and buy myself a GTX260 right now.

Looking at that review I don't really see what you're talking about, what I see is the HD4870 winning some games and the GTX 260 winning some games on both averages and min frame rates. For the most part the HD4870 and GTX 260 are even with only Lost Planet-Colonies showing a major advantage for one card over the other (GTX over the HD4870). Also not to restart an old argument but it is important to note their benchmarking method.

Driver Heaven does not use benchmark scripts. We play the games for long periods of time on various levels and report any unusual findings we see. Then we record with FRAPS across several in game levels recording the averages.

Also I'm not sure where you're getting the significantly higher load numbers with the HD4870, while it does use a lot more power at idle (something that will hopefully be remedied in the future) at load it is relatively similar to the GTX 260 with Anandtech showing only 16.1 more watts used by the HD4870. Finally on noise, look at Guru3d's reviews of the HD4870 and GTX280 (which has the same cooler as the GTX260) both cards are about 44db at full load and inaudible at idle.

Also I would just like to give a big :thumbsdown: to driverheaven (and every other site that does this) for flash based graphs that make me wait before I can see the data.

 

[idiotekniQues]

Originally posted by: fierydemise

Originally posted by: taltamir
very interesting:
http://www.driverheaven.net/re...?reviewid=585&pageid=1

This review compares the GTX260, 4850, 4870 in a plethorea of games and tells us the min frame rate for each... the result? the GTX 260 consistantly wins in min frame rate over the 4870.
When going to 2560x1600 the 4870 crashes and burns due to lack of vram.
And according to every other review I saw (they don't test in this one), the 4870 takes about 50 watt more in idle and 50 watt more in load. And is noiser, and runs hotter. And the geforce comes with board partners like XFX and eVGA and BFG, which are pure awesomeness. Compared to horrible board partners for AMD.

@ 300$ the GTX260 seems to be clearly the better choice then.

It is very tempting to give the 4850 to my little brother and buy myself a GTX260 right now.

Looking at that review I don't really see what you're talking about, what I see is the HD4870 winning some games and the GTX 260 winning some games on both averages and min frame rates. For the most part the HD4870 and GTX 260 are even with only Lost Planet-Colonies showing a major advantage for one card over the other (GTX over the HD4870). Also not to restart an old argument but it is important to note their benchmarking method.

Driver Heaven does not use benchmark scripts. We play the games for long periods of time on various levels and report any unusual findings we see. Then we record with FRAPS across several in game levels recording the averages.

Also I'm not sure where you're getting the significantly higher load numbers with the HD4870, while it does use a lot more power at idle (something that will hopefully be remedied in the future) at load it is relatively similar to the GTX 260 with Anandtech showing only 16.1 more watts used by the HD4870. Finally on noise, look at Guru3d's reviews of the HD4870 and GTX280 (which has the same cooler as the GTX260) both cards are about 44db at full load and inaudible at idle.

yeah i just lookeed at each of those benchies and i dont see what that guy is talking about either. it seems like a wash. i was looking at the 1920x1200 numbers and sometimes the 4870 wins sometimes the 260 wins in minimum framerates, and besides lost planet where the GTX wins bigger and GRID where the 4870 wins big, the disparity for both cards is not much.

the 4870 wins in WIC which is what i play now

but i really dont see either card running away with it or even close. feels pretty even steven to me even in the higher resolution. the 4870 wins a couple and loses a couple in the 2560 resolution arena. i think the poster who claimed the 260 was a clear winner in framerates is not playing wiht a full deck of cards.

but ati has one thing nvidia does not (that i know of) hdmi out with audio out of the card. and that is a deal-breaker for me. streaming HD content from my PC to my plasma tv is a godsend.

but nvidia wins on the noise/heat front which is also kind of important to me.

 

[RussianSensation]

Originally posted by: taltamir
well, with my E8400 OC being such a bottleneck, I should probably keep the 4850 until nehalem. And then combine a nehalem quad with whatever is out by then (probably a 55nm GTX260+)

E8400 OC is NOT a bottleneck for a 4850. One game such as Mass Effect that scales horribly with ATI cards has nothing to do with E8400 being a "bottleneck". If you think E8400 OC bottlenecks 4850, then people shouldn't buy GTX 280 until 2010 then...when Nehalem hits 6.0ghz.

Also 4870 both consumes less power at load and is significantly quieter - Noise + wattage

 

[alkalinetaupehat]

Meh, it was two weeks ago today that I bought my new rig. At the time the 4870 was topping the 260 by something like 6% and was $20-$70 cheaper, but instead of logically getting the card which was both FASTER and CHEAPER, I got the more-expensive card borne of a behemoth GPU.

The reasoning behind the illogicality of such a decision?

A multi-faceted understanding.

1. Board Partners
Nvidia has the cream of the crop for board partners, Evga has a Step-Up program to help consumers cope with the rapidly changing GPU market, XFX has a sweet package outlined below, BFG makes solid cards/lifetime warranty, and MSI offers factory OC'd cards for very small (~$5-$10) premiums, and in general a higher bar of quality. Well, if you take the skizzy 8800GT launch coolers and current QC problems with chips, mobile GPUs, and their top-tier GPUs with a grain of salt.

ATI's partners, well, er, Powercolor I believe went bankrupt in past years and somehow re-emerged, and Visiontek doesn't support OC'ers/modders and has a SINGLE Lifetime Warranty, causing your reincarnation to not have any warranty (or whatever schmuck you sell the card to later), all of which es no bueno. HIS does make nice coolers, but only after the card has been out for a right long time in tech time. Most of the others simply goof off with competing sticker designs (did anyone check out Diamond's sticker on the 4850?). The lackluster performance of ATI's board partners is indeed hindering ATI's comeback and will until the board partners come up with GOOD and ORIGINAL ideas/coolers/anything but more stickers, gah.

2. Package Deals
My card is an XFX GTX260 factory OC'd to 640Mhz core etc. and comes with a modder/OC'er-friendly Double Lifetime Warranty, which is enough marketing drool to fill up your next bowl of cereal AND help you sleep better at night. Which is good.
O YA I got COD4 with my card. Yay.

ATI's board partners' "packages" have been talked about above.

3. Specs
The GTX260 offers a larger 448-bit memory bus, more VRAM, better power management, arguably more OC'ing headroom, and Physx/CUDA. People who have tried out games with GPU Physx had somewhat lower framerates, but a better gameplay experience. CUDA support combined with F@H makes Nvidia finally competitive with ATI on GPU-accelerated processing (for lack of a better term)

ATI's 4870 has GDDR5 (which is coincidentally a five-letter acronym), the standard 512MB VRAM, more stream processors than you (800), DX10.1 (which so far has indeed show at least some degree of usefulness), 7.1 audio over HDMI, and should sometime have Havok/Physx.

I would probably call this either a draw or a close win by Nvidia. ATI here is ultimately becoming competitive again, rather than superbly spanking Nvidia or pulling off something crazy. I have hope for even better products from ATI in the future.

I really wanted to get a 4870 or crossfire two 4850s. They are indeed compatible with the Acceleros, and they have good performance. The lackluster support from board partners and lack of any incentive, outside of price and performance, of which ATI's engineering is responsible, is what really killed the purchase for me. SLI is on Nehalem, I have a solid card that is quiet and cool, and if I were to SLI two GTX260s with an upgrade to Nehalem, I would have a formidable rig for a good amount of time.

 

[Cookie Monster]

Nicely summarized. Im really surprised by just how "kind" nVIDIA's board partners are. Its amazing to see such act in the world that we know of as today. ATi's board partners on the other hand have always been lackluster and ive never seen them really get involved with the enthusiasts e.g to offer lifetime warranties, cover OCing/3rd party cooling etc.

That being said, i was going to get the GTX260 or the HD4870 (its so hard to believe that both cards dropped roughly 100 dollars in a matter of days in New Zealand!), but with the 55nm refresh imminent i opted to wait and in the meantime use the HD4850.

 

[amenx]

Another recent review comparing the new cards:

http://www.vr-zone.com/article...2C_GTX_280/5935-1.html

 

[taltamir]

@RussianSensation - on what basis do you say that? Me and a bunch of other people have found irrefutable proof that it is CPU bottlenecked.
http://forums.anandtech.com/me...id=31&threadid=2205375

@other two guys: If you can't see that data then you are obviously blind, if you said that you don't BELEIVE driverheaven and that it a crappy unreliabily site (i haven't used it long enough to know...) i would have said... maybe.
But saying you don't see the data clearly before your eyes just casts your claims in a bad light, not the site or the card. And you even bring in average FPS which were CLEARLY not related to ANYTHING I said.
The GTX won 9/11 games in MINIMUM FPS, and lost 2/11... I couldn't give a whiff about average, I want my games to be smooth, not have a ePenis contest with the owners of other hardware.

 

[RussianSensation]

Originally posted by: taltamir
@RussianSensation - on what basis do you say that? Me and a bunch of other people have found irrefutable proof that it is CPU bottlenecked.
http://forums.anandtech.com/me...id=31&threadid=2205375

Ok, what increases your framerates more: (1) getting an HD4870 or GTX280 or 4850 in CF and keeping E8400 @ 3.6ghz or (2) replacing your cpu with a 4.0ghz Quad core processor and keeping the 4850?

If the former is the answer, it is not cpu bottlenecked. People don't seem to understand the difference between CPU limited and CPU bottlenecked. A bottleneck means the part is the slowest/most limiting part in a gaming system. In other words, no matter what happens you cannot increase your performance unless you exchange that part.

CPU limitation just means with a faster cpu you can get higher frame rates -- that applies to almost every game in the world assuming your gpu is not the bottleneck.