Sapphire 5870 Toxic 2GB buffer testing

[Hauk]

Oh and Mike Fermington, Provantage is okay. They do however have to receive the product from California into their Ohio warehouse. An order is in tranist to them. They then have to ship from their Ohio DC.

Retail price is pretty high though. You may wait on reference 2GB cards, perhaps a price cut or something will occur. Little drop in these though, and the Asus Matix will be even more me thinks, that's if you can find one.

 

[Grooveriding]

OCGuy's okay, he's just testy right now..

Yar, the great green knight has fallen from his horse...

 

[Mike_fermington]

Im alright with the prices so long as its not over $600 or something. I personally wouldnt risk dealing with them, but good luck.

 

[tweakboy]

I would say yes with my experience with game engines... If you turn up details super high and use AA ,,,, AF is free btw use AF16x ,, and vsync on 120hz LCD sounds good

 

[Puffnstuff]

http://www.resellerratings.com/store/PROVANTAGE_Corporation
Never shop online with a retailer without checking them out first.

 

[Hauk]

http://www.resellerratings.com/store/PROVANTAGE_Corporation
Never shop online with a retailer without checking them out first.

Lemme check my thread title again. Oh yea, it's not about where I ordered from. Deep breaths, edited.

 

[OCGuy]

OCGuy's okay, he's just testy right now..

???

Not sure what you are implying.


A 1GB 5870 + SSD would kick the crap out of any performance gain you would ever get by paying more for a worthless 2GB of VRAM.

I tried to talk a friend out of two of the 2GB 285s because he has a 22 inch monitor. Didnt work.

 

[OCGuy]

Dp

 

[DominionSeraph]

I want a 2gb card mainly for future proofing as I dont plan on upgrading for 3-4 for years after this. With the 2gb cards are on the horizon and only going for $50 or so more, I would have to be crazy to not opt for doubling up my memory.

Except the additional memory isn't going to "future-proof" your card. Cards run out of horsepower before they run out of frame buffer.

I've run all of my cards for years: 16MB TNT lasted until the 64MB Geforce 2 GTS, then down to a 32MB Geforce 2 Go, a 256MB 6600, and a 320MB 8800GTS.
Never have I wished for more frame buffer. The cards' processing power/memory bandwidth always bring games down to unplayable well before they run out of RAM.

 

[kY]

???

Not sure what you are implying.


A 1GB 5870 + SSD would kick the crap out of any performance gain you would ever get by paying more for a worthless 2GB of VRAM.

I tried to talk a friend out of two of the 2GB 285s because he has a 22 inch monitor. Didnt work.

Slides from http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1405660&postcount=5733:

 

[Mike_fermington]

Except the additional memory isn't going to "future-proof" your card. Cards run out of horsepower before they run out of frame buffer.

I've run all of my cards for years: 16MB TNT lasted until the 64MB Geforce 2 GTS, then down to a 32MB Geforce 2 Go, a 256MB 6600, and a 320MB 8800GTS.
Never have I wished for more frame buffer. The cards' processing power/memory bandwidth always bring games down to unplayable well before they run out of RAM.

Instead of arguing how having more VRAM can come in handy, why don't you guys explain the performance advantages of having less?

Heh. It always seem like there is someone out there trying to convince people that less is better. Im all ears.

 

[OCGuy]

Yes Ky, we game with 3-6 monitors.

 

[Hauk]

Yes Ky, we game with 3-6 monitors.

Three is very dooable.

 

[Hauk]

if you have crysis, i have a map you could test. it uses over 3 gigs of system RAM and will easily max out the largest frame buffer I have which is only 512. I figure you could turn up draw distance and edgeAA on such a card.

I do and would be interested in running the map

 

[Hauk]

Mike Fermington, better hurry..

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-322-_-Product

 

[Mike_fermington]

Sweet. They are starting to show up on newegg. There is no vapor x though. Are you 100% sure thats what you ordered from provantage? They didnt seem to specify it on their listing.

 

[rolodomo]

???

A 1GB 5870 + SSD would kick the crap out of any performance gain you would ever get by paying more for a worthless 2GB of VRAM.

Interesting issue, I've been burned twice (at 256 and 512) underestimating the amount of VRAM I would need. Ryan Smith stated the 1GB 5870 is RAM-limited at times. I wonder if he had a 2GB 5870 in his hands (under NDA) when he wrote this:,

With that said, we have to take pause for a wildcard: AMD’s 2GB Radeon 5870, which will be launching soon. We know the 1GB 5870 is RAM-limited at times, and while it’s unlikely more RAM on its own will be enough to make up the performance difference, we can’t fully rule that out until we have the benchmarks we need. If the GTX 480 doesn’t continue to end up being the fastest single-GPU card out there, we’ll be surprised.

 

[Hauk]

Sweet. They are starting to show up on newegg. There is no vapor x though. Are you 100% sure thats what you ordered from provantage? They didnt seem to specify it on their listing.

Yep, just confirmed by part number on Newegg, it's the Sapphire reference version. So much for Provantage confirming it was a Vapor-X. Well at least they're on the way. I got for same price as the Egg so I'll be happy. I like the reference version too, plus it'll have programmable voltage controllers.

Pays to wait for the Egg, moral of the story. I'll admit I was hasty. Just freakin tired of waiting! All is good though..

 

[tweakboy]

Good stuff, sweet,, Im shure you can OC a lot on Fermi alto I dont knowl

Hows power consumption,, and temps,, thx,

 

[Mike_fermington]

Now I'm betting it's a Sapphire reference version. Their guy BS'd me probably. I may or may not keep them, the Vapor-X version is nice but not critical.

Yeah, agreed. Time to get my cred card out...

 

[venusiansky]

I see newegg has a Gigabyte 2GB listed as available. They also have a Sapphire 1GB on 24 hour sale @ 389.99. I am making the jump from Nvidia to Ati. I am just not sure which to go with. I play games on my 46" TV, so the extra memory would help for higher resolutions, right? It is hard to pass up the deal on that Sapphire though.

 

[Hauk]

I see newegg has a Gigabyte 2GB listed as available. They also have a Sapphire 1GB on 24 hour sale @ 389.99. I am making the jump from Nvidia to Ati. I am just not sure which to go with. I play games on my 46" TV, so the extra memory would help for higher resolutions, right? It is hard to pass up the deal on that Sapphire though.

You'd better jump on one of the deals soon. I'm not touching your question though. It's late, I'm tired and outnumbered.

 

[Hauk]

Yeah, agreed. Time to get my cred card out...

Did you grab one or are you gonna see what else surfaces?

 

[sciwizam]

I see newegg has a Gigabyte 2GB listed as available. They also have a Sapphire 1GB on 24 hour sale @ 389.99. I am making the jump from Nvidia to Ati. I am just not sure which to go with. I play games on my 46" TV, so the extra memory would help for higher resolutions, right? It is hard to pass up the deal on that Sapphire though.

However big your screen is, it is still 1920*1080, so I think you are better off with the 1Gig version.

 

[Mike_fermington]

Did you grab one or are you gonna see what else surfaces?

I was gonna grab one but I started thinking maybe I should wait for at least 1 review first. Im not a 100% on gigabyte. I went through the reviews on their other 5870 model on newegg and it seemed to have a problem with not idling or something.

If it was a sapphire I would have jumped on it as I hear they have outstanding build quality.