nVidia GT200 Series Review Thread

[bryanW1995]

Originally posted by: keysplayr2003
So, I was taking a look at the AT Crysis benches. And then looked at mine.

AT bench had a 3.2GHz Intel quad core. Mine was a 2.4GHz Intel quad core
AT bench had Forceware 177.34's. Mine had 177.26's.

So, I decided to o/c my CPU to 3150MHz and update to 177.34's.

This is what I got:

Crysis 1920x1200 0xAA 0xAF All settings High on GTX280


Previous scores with 2.4GHz Q6600 & 177.26's 1920x1200 All Settings High
Min. 25 Avg. 34.49 Max. 49

Updated scores with 3.15GHz Q6600 & 177.34's 1920x1200 All Settings High
Min. 26 Avg. 39.19 Max. 51

Anandtechs score with 3.2GHz QX9770 and 177.34's 1920x1200 Settings Unknown
Min. Unknown Avg.? 34.3 Max. Unknown

AT score (if average is shown) appears to be lower than what my system did with
similar CPU clock speed and identical driver.

P.S. Not sure if this matters, but my system also runs 2GB less memory than AT's test rig.

P.S.S. Also tried World In Conflict at these system settings.
1920x1200 4xAA 16xAF Every conceivable setting on and/or maxxed.
Min. 18 Avg. 37.26 Max. 132

P.S.S.^2 Also tried Call of Duty 4 at 1920x1200 4xAA Full AF.

My score: Min. 52 Avg. 105.33 Max. 227.00
AT score: 90.9

did you shoot that over to derek?

 

[golem]

Originally posted by: munky

Originally posted by: golem
4 Gpus don't scale as well as 2 gpus. So 2 4870x2 in crossfire might not necessarily be as fast as 2 gtx280 in sli.

OTOH, it might be as fast or faster than gtx280 sli... we won't know until the actual product is released. I've always been opposed to multi-gpu products due to all the negative issues inherent in that setup (and which, BTW, almost no one on these forums cared to discuss until recently ... :roll, but if Ati is so heavily invested in multi-gpu products for the high end market, it's possible that the 4870x2 will incorporate some new features to combat the issues of micro-stutter, AFR lag, bad scaling, etc.

If ATI were able to make multi-gpu products significantly scale better, I think that would be the biggest thing/news item to come out of this generations launch from either side. That's always been the biggest knock against Xfire/SLI.

If ATI could do this, then the Multi-GPU setups would take a big step towards becoming mainstream.

Tho. I think Nvidia gpu acceleration of video encoding is also cool.

Everything else just just bigger, faster which comes with every new generation.

 

[bryanW1995]

Originally posted by: Ocguy31
Well it is happening a little faster than I thought....PNY has one for $599 AMIR @ the Egg. Come on price drops!!!

Edit: Is it true that they have to say "Add to cart to see price" on the $599 because of Nvidias advertised pricing controls?

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/...OSwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA

yes, that is VERY annoying. I went to the 8800gt page on newegg the other day, 1/2 the cards didn't show a price!!

 

[bryanW1995]

dp

 

[bryanW1995]

Originally posted by: JACKDRUID

Originally posted by: Extelleron

In general HD 4870 will compete with the GTX 260. In certain situations it may be faster or slower. In a small number of situations, such as Crysis (which I was talking about in another thread) it will likely be about equal, or a bit faster, than the GTX 280. I'll refer you to these benchmarks: http://www.nordichardware.com/news,7854.html
GTX 280 > HD 3870 by 50%. The HD 4870 will be at least 50% faster than the 3870, that is for sure, and thus it will equal the GTX 280 (or likely beat it).

please indicate you are basing these observations on pure rumors..

to mod, can you please get Extelleron to stop baseless fud for godsake? with absolutely no benchmark nor data to back it up...

extelleron has been here a LOT longer than you and your ocguy buddy. I think that the mods are much more likely to give him the benefit of the doubt than people who only show up when nvidia needs some shilling.

 

[bryanW1995]

Originally posted by: Ryl3x
lol at you guys and graphics talk. There is more drama here than politcal boards discussing the war.

280 is the fastest single card out there and it comes with a price. The ones who cant afford it cry. The ones who can have it running in their rigs.

No one is putting a gun to your head forcing you to buy anything. If you like the idea of a cheaper dual card solution then go for it. Simple.

I love my 280. Am i dumb for spending the money? Before you answer.....are you dumb for buying bottle water? Premium gas? $80 at the strip bar last night?

even when I was poor I couldn't get out of a strip club for $80. What does that say about you who spend 8x as much on a gpu as on nekkid chics ...

 

[RussianSensation]

Originally posted by: sourthings

It's really quite impressive, considering how long they have been in a lackluster position performance wise.

I haven't owned ATI since 9800pro, but I'll be getting two 4870x2s in August.

Because it will be the best, and what's more, it will be cheaper than getting less from nv.

:beer:

Good post and all but ATI has been at least as good or faster than NV for every generation past 9800Pro up to HD 2900 / HD 3800 series unless you count the one time when 7800GTX 512mb destroyed X1800XT. (So you have 9700/9800 (1), X800/X850 (2), X1800/X1900 (3) generations of ATI's dominance. NV was actually the one who got a break with GF8 series )

 

[Extelleron]

Originally posted by: Azn
The ones that are shader dictated is where GT200 does well but gamers want instant gratification not future games to come which GT200 doesn't do so well.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3334&p=8

I think nVidia took the right direction in prioritizing shading processors over texture processors. If you look at per-clock performance, it is 50-70% faster than G80, and here are the increases over the G80 in specs:

Shader Processing Power: +87.5%
Texture Processing Power: +25.0%
Pixel Processing Power : +33.3%
Memory Bandwidth : +33.3%

We would not be seeing 50-70% gains if the shading processors were not the limiting factor in G80 performance. There are some optimizations found in GT200 that could also affect per clock performance, but it is clear that the shading processors are the biggest change and they have affected performance the most.

As I said before, you can't have it both ways. Either you have 240 SP / 80 TMU or something like 192 SP / 96 TMU. To have a 2:1 ALU:Tex ratio, you would need to reduce the number of SPs in GT200. I don't think that would bring a positive gain in performance in games, and it would certainly reduce performance in GPGPU applications.

Remember the GT200 architecture is likely going to have to last nVidia until they launch a DirecX 11 GPU sometime in (probably late) 2009. You will see a die shrink (GT200b @ 55nm) but GT200's basic architecture will have to perform well in advanced DX10 games released this year and next. So it makes sense if nVidia is looking forward in the design of GT200 and its prioritizing of shading power.

 

[AzN]

Originally posted by: Extelleron

As I said before, you can't have it both ways. Either you have 240 SP / 80 TMU or something like 192 SP / 96 TMU. To have a 2:1 ALU:Tex ratio, you would need to reduce the number of SPs in GT200. I don't think that would bring a positive gain in performance in games, and it would certainly reduce performance in GPGPU applications.

It would surely be better than what Nvidia performance now with current crop of games. With 192 SP the chip would have been a lot smaller too and wouldn't be such a power hog and cost less. Gamers want that performance now instant gratification. Same reason why 9600gt does so well. Let's hope Nvidia fix this issue with the refresh by raising up the texture address/filter.

Just look at all the games today. 260gtx got a whopping 3 fps faster than 9800gtx. That's not what I really call faster. http://techreport.com/r.x/gefo...ysis-veryhigh-1920.gif

 

[sourthings]

Originally posted by: chizow

Originally posted by: sourthings

Originally posted by: chizow

Originally posted by: sourthings
Just so folks can have an informed decision who are debating getting a 280. Here are benches showing that a pair of crossfired 4850s outperform a gtx280 for high res gaming, as well as low res of course. Done by someone here on at. Link to his post at the top of the page:

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...AR_FORUMVIEWTMP=Linear

and here are more benches from another website again showing CFed 4850s outperforming the gtx280:

http://www.abload.de/image.php?img=crysis4xaaql2.jpg

Of important note here, look at the crysis benches, the first set is 1920x1200 dx9 high settings and 4xAA, the 4850s beat the gtx280. The second link is 1920x1200 _very_ high settings in _DX10_ with _4xAA_ the 4850s handily beating the gtx280 with an avg framerate of 23.

Suffice to say, I guess we can count on two 4870s crossfired and the single slot 4870x2 when it arrives really overtaking the gtx280. Just going on what we've heard about the difference between the 4850 and 4870, a fair guess might be 30-35fps at 1920x1200 dx10 very high 4xaa in crysis and 40-45 dx9 high settings 4xaa.

From what I've read in some other posts from folks who understand hardware, due to the size and heat output and bus width of the 280 we won't be seeing a 280gx2 type card and it will be left to SLI options only.

So, looks like ATI has likely done it. 4870x2 will be the fastest single slot card available and two 4870x2s in quad CF may very well beat out tri slied 280s. At the least, ATI is going to win the single slot best performing card this round.

:beer: good on them, and good for gamers all round, unless prices change they'll also be giving more performance for a cheaper price. gg.

I love how the folks lauding ATI or the 9800GX2 just love to ignore the fact you could SLI 2 cards for greater than GTX 280 performance for much less months ago. 2x 9600gt close, 2x 8800gt faster without a doubt, 2x 8800gts even faster, 9800gx2 about the same as gt and gts, 2x 9800gtx slightly faster and even offers tri-sli.

Finding 2 cheap cards and slinging them together for faster performance than a single-card single-GPU solution isn't anything new, that's one of the main draws of CF/SLI. While its great that 2x4850 perform about the same or better than a GTX 280, that doesn't make the problems with multi-GPU go away and its certainly not that exciting when you compare it to say, a pair of 8800GTS 512MB that may very well outperform it for less money.

Judging from Steel Six's results, it looks like he's 1) running a significantly faster CPU than AT and 2) already running into CPU bottlenecking (look at Crysis 1680 and 1920 no AA). Honestly I don't think those 4850s are any faster than any of the other SLI/multi-GPU solutions that have been around for the last 7-8 months. I think most folks here can make an inforrmed decision though. If you have an NV board and a G92 class GPU you're probably better off just doubling up if you're ok with SLI. If you have an Intel/AMD board and want to upgrade and you're ok with CF, then you're probably better off with ATI.

As I've said before, when it comes to video cards, and for people like myself who simply want the -BEST- playable performance available, what combination, configuration, what have you that deliver that is unimportant. It's simply that it is the best.

We've all seen that yes the 280 can beat a gx2 in average fps at very high res with AA, we've also seen that it's at a completely unplayable framerate, regardless of which card, the 280 or gx2 is being benched.

At playable frames at high res, the gx2 is still the better performing single slot card.

As for the 4850s besting the gtx280 in the bench that matters these days, which is Crysis. Not only at 1920x1200, but also beating the gtx280 handily with 4xAA and beating the gtx280 at -VERY- high -DX10- settings at 1920x1200 with 4xAA. It seems obvious that is what they can do. So unless you SLI two 280s, two 4850s beat it.

That said, why this matters to me is because it makes it obvious that two 4870s crossfired will perform even -higher- than the gtx280 will. And moreso when the 4870x2 is released, that -single- slot card will also perform much better than the gtx280.

And if you buy a second 4870x2 and run it in crossfire with another one, it looks like that will be the fastest performing graphics card setup on the market available this release refresh.

May not matter to you, but oddly, it has always seemed to matter to most everyone. As for a long time now, it's been nvidia that has held that crown.

And this refresh they no longer will be offering the fastest available graphics performance. ATI will have that position.

I could care less crossfire or not, or a single card with 2 gpus on it. It's no different than nvidias 9800gx2 being the best card available and still atm, the 9800gx2 is the best single slot card available.

Well now ATi is going to have that position again when the 4870x2 hits.

It's really quite impressive, considering how long they have been in a lackluster position performance wise.

I haven't owned ATI since 9800pro, but I'll be getting two 4870x2s in August.

Because it will be the best, and what's more, it will be cheaper than getting less from nv.

:beer:

All that and you once again, ignored water under the bridge. The 4850 in CF would need to convincingly beat 2 x 8800GT/S in SLI before any of the rest of what you wrote mattered. From what I'm seeing from people who actually own the card and aren't under NDA or guise of breaking NDA (not Inq or German sites etc.) it may be challenged even in that task. 4870 should do it but then you lose much of the cost-benefits and will still end up paying "more for year old tech". As for the rest about owning the best at any price...I find that hard to believe as you'd already have some kind of NV GPU in your rig and wouldn't need to commit another $1000+ months in advance for an ATI solution.

I have an 8800gtx in my current gaming pc. I play at 1920x1200 and there has been nothing that gives appreciable, playable gains released since. I have not gone SLI because nv makes terrible MBs, and your mb is imo the most important piece, the base of the rest of your rig. So I have been loathe to use one nv's feeble motherboards.

When the 4870x2s hit, it is a no brainer. No need for a new motherboard. The best performance available. Meaning no system will bench higher average fps most likely. It's already looking as if a single slot 4870x2 will be about 130%-150% of the performance of a single slot 280gtx. Putting two of them together will likely net you the same gains in performance over SLI 280s.

I have no reason to commit to sub-par performance in a 280 atm, at the cost of $700, when I can wait a month or two and pay $1000 for much better performance than I will see from two 280 cards, or $500 for better than I will see from one 280.

ATI won this round, performance wise, and likely price wise. Sure the 4870x2s will not be cheap, but that is usually the case with the best card on the market. :beer:

 

[OCGuy]

Originally posted by: bryanW1995

Originally posted by: JACKDRUID

Originally posted by: Extelleron

In general HD 4870 will compete with the GTX 260. In certain situations it may be faster or slower. In a small number of situations, such as Crysis (which I was talking about in another thread) it will likely be about equal, or a bit faster, than the GTX 280. I'll refer you to these benchmarks: http://www.nordichardware.com/news,7854.html
GTX 280 > HD 3870 by 50%. The HD 4870 will be at least 50% faster than the 3870, that is for sure, and thus it will equal the GTX 280 (or likely beat it).

please indicate you are basing these observations on pure rumors..

to mod, can you please get Extelleron to stop baseless fud for godsake? with absolutely no benchmark nor data to back it up...

extelleron has been here a LOT longer than you and your ocguy buddy. I think that the mods are much more likely to give him the benefit of the doubt than people who only show up when nvidia needs some shilling.

....

So this is what I am gathering :

1. Baselessly bashing the NV cards to trump up the ATI cards in the GT200 thread is OK.
2. Say something negative about the ATI cards that is backed up by leaked benchmarks in the ATI thread, and you are "thread crapping" and "shilling for NV". (Even got me a mod warning)
3. Oh, and make sure if you are going to break thread rules by personally attacking someone, even though he has never attacked your personally, make sure your "Join Date" is before his and it will be OK.


I think im over "Video Cards and Graphics" on this site. Ill head on back up to "CPUS and Overclocking" where, amazingly, there is less emotional discussion - it is mostly fact-based.

 

[Extelleron]

Originally posted by: Azn

Originally posted by: Extelleron

As I said before, you can't have it both ways. Either you have 240 SP / 80 TMU or something like 192 SP / 96 TMU. To have a 2:1 ALU:Tex ratio, you would need to reduce the number of SPs in GT200. I don't think that would bring a positive gain in performance in games, and it would certainly reduce performance in GPGPU applications.

It would surely be better than what Nvidia performance now with current crop of games. With 192 SP the chip would have been a lot smaller too and wouldn't be such a power hog and cost less. Gamers want that performance now instant gratification. Same reason why 9600gt does so well. Let's hope Nvidia fix this issue with the refresh by raising up the texture address/filter.

Just look at all the games today. 260gtx got a whopping 3 fps faster than 9800gtx. That's not what I really call faster. http://techreport.com/r.x/gefo...ysis-veryhigh-1920.gif

The GTX 260's performance versus the G92/G80 cards is not very impressive, I agree. But that is because it doesn't have much of an advantage in processing power.

GTX 260 vs. 9800GTX
Shader Processing Power: 1.11x
Texture Processing Power: 0.85x
Pixel Processing Power : 1.49x
Memory Bandwidth : 1.59x

The GTX 260 only has 11% more shading power than the 9800GTX, and it has less texture processing power. The biggest advantages it has are in pixel processing (ROPs) and memory bandwidth. The GTX 260 will see a large performance increase over the 9800GTX when bandwidth/pixel pushing power, not compute power, are required. That is why it does better compared to the 9800GTX in high resolution settings with AA/AF. When you move to a lower resolution without AA/AF, the GTX 260 doesn't do much better because it provides only a marginal gain in shader & texture processing power over the 9800GTX. In certain situations these advantages are further enhanced by the tweaks made to improve per clock performance in GT200, so in general GTX 260 is a good deal better than the 9800GTX.

As for GT200 in general, I can almost guarantee you that a 192 SP / 96 TMU configuration would not provide better performance than the current 240 SP / 80 TMU configuration. G80 needs more shading power more than it needs more texture power, as shown by GT200's clear improvement in performance despite having only 25% more texture power.

 

[ajaidevsingh]

http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_medusa_videos.html


is here woo i am downloading now

 

[AzN]

What are you talking about? 260gtx has much more shader processing power than 1.11x when you consider MUL.

9800gtx 432 GFLOPS

260gtx 714 GFLOPS

 

[Extelleron]

Originally posted by: Azn
What are you talking about? 260gtx has much more shader processing power than 1.11x.

9800GTX = 1.675GHz * 128 SP * 3 = 643.2 GigaFlops
GTX 260 = 1.242GHz * 192 SP * 3 = 715.4 GigaFlops
GTX 260 = 1.112x 9800GTX

This does not consider the variable that is the MUL unit found in the G80/GT200 architecture; G80-based GPUs were not able to access this MUL unit in a number of scenarios and this reduced performance from where it could have been. GT200 corrects this and there is a measurable performance gain, but it is not anything more than 10-20%.

 

[bryanW1995]

Originally posted by: Ocguy31

Originally posted by: bryanW1995

Originally posted by: JACKDRUID

Originally posted by: Extelleron

In general HD 4870 will compete with the GTX 260. In certain situations it may be faster or slower. In a small number of situations, such as Crysis (which I was talking about in another thread) it will likely be about equal, or a bit faster, than the GTX 280. I'll refer you to these benchmarks: http://www.nordichardware.com/news,7854.html
GTX 280 > HD 3870 by 50%. The HD 4870 will be at least 50% faster than the 3870, that is for sure, and thus it will equal the GTX 280 (or likely beat it).

please indicate you are basing these observations on pure rumors..

to mod, can you please get Extelleron to stop baseless fud for godsake? with absolutely no benchmark nor data to back it up...

extelleron has been here a LOT longer than you and your ocguy buddy. I think that the mods are much more likely to give him the benefit of the doubt than people who only show up when nvidia needs some shilling.

....

So this is what I am gathering :

1. Baselessly bashing the NV cards to trump up the ATI cards in the GT200 thread is OK.
2. Say something negative about the ATI cards that is backed up by leaked benchmarks in the ATI thread, and you are "thread crapping" and "shilling for NV". (Even got me a mod warning)
3. Oh, and make sure if you are going to break thread rules by personally attacking someone, even though he has never attacked your personally, make sure your "Join Date" is before his and it will be OK.


I think im over "Video Cards and Graphics" on this site. Ill head on back up to "CPUS and Overclocking" where, amazingly, there is less emotional discussion - it is mostly fact-based.

have you even been reading extelleron's posts? He BOUGHT a 280 gtx. He just got it for a reasonable price (under $450) instead of a stupid price: $649.

 

[AzN]

Originally posted by: Extelleron

Originally posted by: Azn
What are you talking about? 260gtx has much more shader processing power than 1.11x.

9800GTX = 1.675GHz * 128 SP * 3 = 643.2 GigaFlops
GTX 260 = 1.242GHz * 192 SP * 3 = 715.4 GigaFlops
GTX 260 = 1.112x 9800GTX

This does not consider the variable that is the MUL unit found in the G80/GT200 architecture; G80-based GPUs were not able to access this MUL unit in a number of scenarios and this reduced performance from where it could have been. GT200 corrects this and there is a measurable performance gain, but it is not anything more than 10-20%.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/14934/6

This doesn't show exactly 11% gains. You can see where the GT200 has quite a bit of advantage in a synthetic benchmark testing shader.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: sourthings
I have an 8800gtx in my current gaming pc. I play at 1920x1200 and there has been nothing that gives appreciable, playable gains released since. *snip*

Really? Then what exactly are you basing your opinion GTX 280 isn't worth the price? Not the 9800GX2, which most certainly gives an appreciable, playable gain over an 8800GTX.... It also doesn't have any of the chipset related problems you alluded to. You sure are assuming a lot of future parts while ignoring older parts that fill all your criteria.

 

[Extelleron]

Originally posted by: Azn

Originally posted by: Extelleron

Originally posted by: Azn
What are you talking about? 260gtx has much more shader processing power than 1.11x.

9800GTX = 1.675GHz * 128 SP * 3 = 643.2 GigaFlops
GTX 260 = 1.242GHz * 192 SP * 3 = 715.4 GigaFlops
GTX 260 = 1.112x 9800GTX

This does not consider the variable that is the MUL unit found in the G80/GT200 architecture; G80-based GPUs were not able to access this MUL unit in a number of scenarios and this reduced performance from where it could have been. GT200 corrects this and there is a measurable performance gain, but it is not anything more than 10-20%.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/14934/6

This doesn't show exactly 11% gains. You can see where the GT200 has quite a bit of advantage in a synthetic benchmark testing shader.

Those benchmarks do show big gains, I don't see how those gains are supported through the specifications however. The MUL unit tweak cannot make nearly that much of a difference in per clock performance, so there must be something else affecting those benchmarks for GTX 260 to be scoring nearly ~2x G80.

 

[njdevilsfan87]

I think the problem is...

128SPs clocked at 1800-2000Mhz after overclocking on the G92
vs
240SPs clocked at 1400MHz tops it seems

They need to move this to 55nm and get those shader clocks up.

 

[AzN]

Originally posted by: Extelleron

Originally posted by: Azn

Originally posted by: Extelleron

Originally posted by: Azn
What are you talking about? 260gtx has much more shader processing power than 1.11x.

9800GTX = 1.675GHz * 128 SP * 3 = 643.2 GigaFlops
GTX 260 = 1.242GHz * 192 SP * 3 = 715.4 GigaFlops
GTX 260 = 1.112x 9800GTX

This does not consider the variable that is the MUL unit found in the G80/GT200 architecture; G80-based GPUs were not able to access this MUL unit in a number of scenarios and this reduced performance from where it could have been. GT200 corrects this and there is a measurable performance gain, but it is not anything more than 10-20%.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/14934/6

This doesn't show exactly 11% gains. You can see where the GT200 has quite a bit of advantage in a synthetic benchmark testing shader.

Those benchmarks do show big gains, I don't see how those gains are supported through the specifications however. The MUL unit tweak cannot make nearly that much of a difference in per clock performance, so there must be something else affecting those benchmarks for GTX 260 to be scoring nearly ~2x G80.

I would have to sway with Memory bandwidth on top of MUL unit working on GT200 and tweaks as you can see 8800gtx with lower SP clocks sometime beating 9800gtx.

 

[sourthings]

Originally posted by: chizow

Originally posted by: sourthings
I have an 8800gtx in my current gaming pc. I play at 1920x1200 and there has been nothing that gives appreciable, playable gains released since. *snip*

Really? Then what exactly are you basing your opinion GTX 280 isn't worth the price? Not the 9800GX2, which most certainly gives an appreciable, playable gain over an 8800GTX.... It also doesn't have any of the chipset related problems you alluded to. You sure are assuming a lot of future parts while ignoring older parts that fill all your criteria.

There is no hope for this, you like to support nvidia cards, that is your choice. Enjoy your 280 it's a decent enough card. I just want to have more performance than it offers, so I'll be going the route of 4870x2.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: sourthings
There is no hope for this, you like to support nvidia cards, that is your choice. Enjoy your 280 it's a decent enough card. I just want to have more performance than it offers, so I'll be going the route of 4870x2.

I support whatever vendor meets my criteria and that's been NV for 3 generations in a row. If you did the same you'd already have a 9800GX2, but you like to support ATI cards, that is your choice. Unlike some of the sub-100 posters who only pop up around launch dates, I'll be around long after RV770 and R700 for better or worst. Will you?

 

[Ryl3x]

Originally posted by: sourthings

Originally posted by: chizow

Originally posted by: sourthings
I have an 8800gtx in my current gaming pc. I play at 1920x1200 and there has been nothing that gives appreciable, playable gains released since. *snip*

Really? Then what exactly are you basing your opinion GTX 280 isn't worth the price? Not the 9800GX2, which most certainly gives an appreciable, playable gain over an 8800GTX.... It also doesn't have any of the chipset related problems you alluded to. You sure are assuming a lot of future parts while ignoring older parts that fill all your criteria.

There is no hope for this, you like to support nvidia cards, that is your choice. Enjoy your 280 it's a decent enough card. I just want to have more performance than it offers, so I'll be going the route of 4870x2.

Thanks for the info sourthings. Im glad to know that your getting the 4870x2. Ill be sure to update my blog as well.

This card is due out when?

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: taltamir
It is still by far the fastest single chip on the market, and that says something.

Given IQ is comparable, that really says all you need to know.

Wants the fastest chip, be it GPU, CPU, or RAM? Pay the man.

Want some mid-range stuff that gets out dated sooner and has limitations? Save the coin.

This equation has never changed.