Thoughts on ATI/NVidia, 5850/5870....

[videogames101]

Originally posted by: flexy

Originally posted by: error8

Originally posted by: IlllI

Originally posted by: Golgatha
Here's a thought. I'd love to upgrade to the HD 5870, but I just realized that at 11 inches long, it probably won't fit in my case.

thats what she said!

I like it when people avoid buying 400$ videocards, just because they don't fit into 40$ cases. Very smart indeed.

you have a point, but...

replacing a video card is infinitely easier than replacing a case...some people might not want to/be able to move all their components into a new case.

Dremel.

 

[flexy]

Originally posted by: videogames101

Originally posted by: flexy

Originally posted by: error8

Originally posted by: IlllI

Originally posted by: Golgatha
Here's a thought. I'd love to upgrade to the HD 5870, but I just realized that at 11 inches long, it probably won't fit in my case.

thats what she said!

I like it when people avoid buying 400$ videocards, just because they don't fit into 40$ cases. Very smart indeed.

you have a point, but...

replacing a video card is infinitely easier than replacing a case...some people might not want to/be able to move all their components into a new case.

Dremel.

such a mod would not be easier than just getting a new case....despite that it would render my HD cage useless

See Coolermaster Mystique case <---- i fricking HATE it. Working in that case is such a pain...and i am pretty certain that those new cards will exceed GTX275 size

http://i41.photobucket.com/alb...olerMasterMystique.jpg

 

[videogames101]

Originally posted by: flexy

Originally posted by: videogames101

Originally posted by: flexy

Originally posted by: error8

Originally posted by: IlllI

Originally posted by: Golgatha
Here's a thought. I'd love to upgrade to the HD 5870, but I just realized that at 11 inches long, it probably won't fit in my case.

thats what she said!

I like it when people avoid buying 400$ videocards, just because they don't fit into 40$ cases. Very smart indeed.

you have a point, but...

replacing a video card is infinitely easier than replacing a case...some people might not want to/be able to move all their components into a new case.

Dremel.

such a mod would not be easier than just getting a new case....despite that it would render my HD cage useless

See Coolermaster Mystique case <---- i fricking HATE it. Working in that case is such a pain...and i am pretty certain that those new cards will exceed GTX275 size

http://i41.photobucket.com/alb...olerMasterMystique.jpg

Depending on how neatly you do it, it isn't that hard.

Also, do you need ALL of your HDD cages? I doubt it!


Also, 99x more fun.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Originally posted by: error8

Originally posted by: IlllI

Originally posted by: Golgatha
Here's a thought. I'd love to upgrade to the HD 5870, but I just realized that at 11 inches long, it probably won't fit in my case.

thats what she said!

I like it when people avoid buying 400$ videocards, just because they don't fit into 40$ cases. Very smart indeed.

Uhhh Antec's P182/P183 is not a $40 case. 11" cards are difficult for a lot of cases that also feature removable drive cages.

Also to the guy saying do you need all your drive cages? I have 2TB of storage thanks to my Raptor 74gb, Seagate 320, WD 640gb, WD 1TB. Sure I can go out and snag a new $300 WD 2TB drive but seriously? Let me use my old drives first.

 

[error8]

It doesn't matter what case you have and how long it is. If you want to buy the card it seems silly that the case will stop you from doing it. Cut the hard drive cages, put the drives somewhere else or just get a longer case, it's just as simple as that. There are countless of cheap cases that have the airflow and possibilities to "shelter" a 5870 long card. And I don't know, but putting everything else inside a newer case, it's just pure fun. I would love doing it.

 

[BenSkywalker]

It doesn't matter what case you have and how long it is. If you want to buy the card it seems silly that the case will stop you from doing it.

Look at it from an opposing angle, total cost. Instead of buying say a $400 graphics card, you now need to buy a $400 graphics card, a $40 case and drop easily over $50 worth of labor to get it going(yes, my time is worth money, if yours isn't, perhaps $400 graphics cards aren't what you should be buying). Compare that to say the next step down on the ladder for $300 which will fit in the current users setup. When you compare a $300 solution to a $500 solution the performance metric changes considerably, instead of a 33% price premium you are paying a 67% price premium, that won't be worth it for most people.

Those that really care about being able to house anything that comes out will already be running a monster case anyway, so they will already be prepared. The amount of people that will swap cases to fit a video card is utterly miniscule at best. I am still running a XaserIII SuperTower, I think I'm good up until about 18" boards, if they do go bigger then that, I won't be swapping cases just to fit it, that's for certain.

 

[error8]

I really don't understand what is such a great deal to just buy and install a fricking video card. I have a poor antec 300 which will fit this card and it's a cheap case. Two hours will probably take me to dismount everything and put it into another case if I was in this situation and I do that for free, because it's my free time and it doesn't cost me money. It really is that simple. If you can spend the 400$ for the card and you want to do it, then a stupid case won't stop you from doing it and you don't need to spend a fortune to swap it. To wait for Nvidia's cards to come out and let the prices settle, that seems like a good reason not to get this card now, but just because of the case, let's be serious, that is not a reason.

 

[ayabe]

The performance looks good but the load temps and noise kill it for me.

Just as with the last go around, I'll probably be going Nvidia for this gen as long as the performance/$ is close.

My 260 is quiet and there's no way I'm going back to a noisy card.

Edit - Is that a better reason? It will fit in my case :evil:

 

[KeithP]

Originally posted by: Golgatha
Here's a thought. I'd love to upgrade to the HD 5870, but I just realized that at 11 inches long, it probably won't fit in my case.

My problem as well. I am currently running a 4870 and there isn't a lot of extra room. I will have to check but I think both the 5870 and 5850 won't work for me.

-KeithP

 

[error8]

Originally posted by: ayabe


Edit - Is that a better reason? It will fit in my case :evil:

It's a better reason then not fitting inside a case.

Let's see if Nvidia brings a quiet and fast card on the shelfs first.
What annoys me is that anandtech brings 64 dBA at full load, which is like a jet taking off, really making the card unusable, while guru3d for example, says that it only hits 42 dBA at load. So which is it? I like to believe anandtech, but, 64 dBA is soooo much. We need someone to be the guinea pig and tell us.

 

[plonk420]

Originally posted by: flexy
I just encoded a few videos to H264 with 60-70 FPS, about 20x speed of normal CPU based encoding..it just fricking rocks. There is still potential since CUDA development/support is still in early stages...would just hate to get a new DX11 ATI card and not have CUDA ;(

please don't think nvidia or ATI's hardware h.264 encoder is indicative of its capability. just wait til x264 gets CUDA (and hopefully OpenCL/DX11) accelleration.

you can usually get DVD transparency at 1200-1700kbps (cropping, no crap resizing) with x264. also, nearly universally supported resizing (SAR, sample aspect ratio), rather than something hacked into AVI that only ONCE in a while works.

 

[WaitingForNehalem]

I don't see anything to get excited about when no games take advantage of it. The 5870 can't even run on Crysis on Very High so what's the point? My GTX 260 maxes almost every game out there so where is the incentive other than wasting money? ATI/Nvidia need to start pushing to devs to make PC exclusives, otherwise PC's are going to turn into glorified consoles.

 

[OCGuy]

Originally posted by: error8

Originally posted by: ayabe


Edit - Is that a better reason? It will fit in my case :evil:

It's a better reason then not fitting inside a case.

Let's see if Nvidia brings a quiet and fast card on the shelfs first.
What annoys me is that anandtech brings 64 dBA at full load, which is like a jet taking off, really making the card unusable, while guru3d for example, says that it only hits 42 dBA at load. So which is it? I like to believe anandtech, but, 64 dBA is soooo much. We need someone to be the guinea pig and tell us.

I think more people care about performance and temps than noise, so I really hope they concentrate on those first.

I'm not sure why gamers care how loud the cards are when they should have sound coming out of their speakers or using headphones.

The only time I notice my cards is when the spin up to 100% on boot.

 

[SonicIce]

lol it still cant play crysis

 

[error8]

Originally posted by: SonicIce
lol it still cant play crysis

That is sad indeed.

 

[ayabe]

Originally posted by: OCguy
I think more people care about performance and temps than noise, so I really hope they concentrate on those first.

I'm not sure why gamers care how loud the cards are when they should have sound coming out of their speakers or using headphones.

The only time I notice my cards is when the spin up to 100% on boot.

I think compared the last 3 gen's of ATI cards your 280's are pretty quiet.

I would be risking hearing damage if I tried to drown out my X1900XT's fan with my headphones, which is why my 260 was such a revelation.

Sure ultimately I agree that for the enthusiast, performance trumps all and I'm sure in a few weeks or months we'll get some decent coolers.

But I really think Nvidia has been putting a focus on keeping the noise levels down and all else being more or less equal, I would choose the quieter card every single time.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

I personally have some misgivings about the card itself, which I don't fully understand. Perhaps we can start a discussion here:

Given the fact that the card literally doubles the 4890, keeps the same core clock and bumps up the memory clock significantly, it seems a bit off that the card tends to top it by "only" ~40%-50%. Hell, it often competes very closely to the 4870x2 (keep reading before you start wailing "BUT ITS TWO GPUs!"), which is a card that's clocked lower on old tech with driver level crossfire overhead.

The review speculates that the 256-bit bus might be throttling the card despite the increased memory speed. If this is the case then ATI's engineer's most definitely knew it, but they went ahead with 1600 SPs instead of 1200 sp's or some other number that would give the same performance given the bandwidth constraints.

Why? Where is the "extra" performance of that card disappearing? I'm not buying the "wait for the drivers to mature" line given the card simply expands on the architecture laid out in the 4xxx series, so its performance should increase AT LEAST linearly, perhaps more with driver refinements. Did they keep the extra shaders for compute performance only?

Do any of the forum know-it-alls have any ideas or speculation?

 

[sbuckler]

Originally posted by: bunnyfubbles

Originally posted by: dguy6789

Originally posted by: Dribble

Originally posted by: videogames101

Originally posted by: AyashiKaibutsu

Originally posted by: Lonyo

Originally posted by: dguy6789
"*) early benchmarks look impressive, but tell me the number of people who run 2560x 8AA 16AF....respective the nr. of people who own displays who can even take such a resolution... "

You know, there was a time when people would ask that same kind of question about 640x480. The reason many people don't run at those settings is because a monitor that can do that is expensive and a card that can do that is expensive. Eventually they will both be more affordable due to progress and competition.

Cheaper to buy 3x24" monitors and do a triple monitor setup than it is to buy a single 30" monitor that does 2560x1600.
But then the new ATI cards can do either/both.

and have 2 lines running down my screen. If I bought a monitor that had a black line running down at the 1/3 and 2/3rds mark I'd return it and maybe never buy from that company again. I'll stick with my 32" tv and hopefully eventually get a 19" for webbrowsing (used to have a 17" that I liked having a lot for secondary tasks)

If you had read any reviews, most people say the lines are hardly noticeable, because most of the action happens on the center screen. Also, have fun with your 1080p TV, i'll take a 5760 x 1200 screen, tyvm.

It's easy to simulate:
1) cut some strips of black card and tape them to your current screen for the bezels.
2) game windowed using only the top third of the screen to simulate the aspect ratio.
3) move the screen closer too you to simulate the size.

Other then resolution the effect will be identical. See how you get on, if you don't like it then you can thank me later for saving you the cost of 2 screens and a very expensive graphics card

Do you have any idea how big of a single monitor you'd have to try that on for each "section" to not be insanely small? Your idea will make people not like it exclusively because of how small each section will be. Not to mention everything would be displayer wrong proportionally across the three sections.

With the Eyefinity, people will be using 3 22" monitors, 3 24", or 3 30" most likely. Your game view isn't hindered in any way when you do this either. Your center screen will display the exact same thing that you see already when playing a game with a single monitor, the side screens will just display extra peripheral view. Human peripheral view is already much less focused as well, you won't be bothered by the sections between the monitors much at all. You're never supposed to look directly at any screen but the center one.

placing black strips over a screen is also flawed logic because it will cover up pixels, whereas with Eyefinity you won't be missing any pixels, so nothing is obstructing your view of the game world, its just separated.

Not missing any pixels is flawed as when an object crosses over 2 screens it will seem to distort and stretch - try it dragging a normal window across 2 screens in windows to see what I mean. To work correctly eye infinity needs to insert invisible pixels in between the screens to simulate the space taken up by the dremels. Other multi monitor gaming solutions can do this, eye infinity doesn't right now - this is a bug. Hence I was being generous - using the black strips actually works better then eye infinity right now - it still has to catch up with the card and tape technology


dguy6789 - if I look to the horizon I can see a sky scraper- if I hold my thumb up in front of me it looks as big as that building - that's perspective for you. A small monitor close to you seems the same size as a large monitor further away (i.e. it fills the same amount of your field of view). Proportions would be identical - you have the equivalent of 3 screens with exactly the same aspect ratios, you will see exactly what you would see with real eye infinity, just at a lower resolution.

 

[Extrem1st]

Originally posted by: flexy
*) early benchmarks look impressive, but tell me the number of people who run 2560x 8AA 16AF....respective the nr. of people who own displays who can even take such a resolution...

*) $399 is actually surprisingly cheap....wonder how much NV wants for their DX11 cards

*) DX11 is not getting interesting for a few months ----> expect even more price drops. Dont tell me graphics cards get more expensive....usually they DONT

*) You will laugh, but i really started to <3 CUDA on my 275, and together with lack of "3d Vision" i think the lack of CUDA seriously sucks for the ATI cards.

I just encoded a few videos to H264 with 60-70 FPS, about 20x speed of normal CPU based encoding..it just fricking rocks. There is still potential since CUDA development/support is still in early stages...would just hate to get a new DX11 ATI card and not have CUDA ;(

(I know there is an ATI equivalent...but i dont know how many codecs/apps support this)

F.

$399 is not cheap, it was suppose to be $299, but AMD wanted to price gouge, screw you AMD.

 

[Extrem1st]

Originally posted by: Valis
I run my games on an EIZO 17" CRT with 1280x1024 Res. Have a HD 38xx series card X2.

How long are you going to play with that 17" ?

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: Extrem1st

Originally posted by: flexy
*) early benchmarks look impressive, but tell me the number of people who run 2560x 8AA 16AF....respective the nr. of people who own displays who can even take such a resolution...

*) $399 is actually surprisingly cheap....wonder how much NV wants for their DX11 cards

*) DX11 is not getting interesting for a few months ----> expect even more price drops. Dont tell me graphics cards get more expensive....usually they DONT

*) You will laugh, but i really started to <3 CUDA on my 275, and together with lack of "3d Vision" i think the lack of CUDA seriously sucks for the ATI cards.

I just encoded a few videos to H264 with 60-70 FPS, about 20x speed of normal CPU based encoding..it just fricking rocks. There is still potential since CUDA development/support is still in early stages...would just hate to get a new DX11 ATI card and not have CUDA ;(

(I know there is an ATI equivalent...but i dont know how many codecs/apps support this)

F.

$399 is not cheap, it was suppose to be $299, but AMD wanted to price gouge, screw you AMD.

Who said it was supposed to be? Link me a PR note from AMD that said $299 for the 5870.

 

[OCGuy]

Originally posted by: Extrem1st

Originally posted by: Valis
I run my games on an EIZO 17" CRT with 1280x1024 Res. Have a HD 38xx series card X2.

How long are you going to play with that 17" ?

Until I go blind or it falls off.

 

[SlowSpyder]

Originally posted by: Extrem1st

Originally posted by: flexy
*) early benchmarks look impressive, but tell me the number of people who run 2560x 8AA 16AF....respective the nr. of people who own displays who can even take such a resolution...

*) $399 is actually surprisingly cheap....wonder how much NV wants for their DX11 cards

*) DX11 is not getting interesting for a few months ----> expect even more price drops. Dont tell me graphics cards get more expensive....usually they DONT

*) You will laugh, but i really started to <3 CUDA on my 275, and together with lack of "3d Vision" i think the lack of CUDA seriously sucks for the ATI cards.

I just encoded a few videos to H264 with 60-70 FPS, about 20x speed of normal CPU based encoding..it just fricking rocks. There is still potential since CUDA development/support is still in early stages...would just hate to get a new DX11 ATI card and not have CUDA ;(

(I know there is an ATI equivalent...but i dont know how many codecs/apps support this)

F.

$399 is not cheap, it was suppose to be $299, but AMD wanted to price gouge, screw you AMD.

Did AMD ever say it was supposed to be $299? I agree that it certainly would be nicer if it was $50 cheaper, I think we are all kind of spoiled by what $200 buys right now. While $379 isn't cheap, I don't think it's a 'bad' deal by any means for what you get either.

 

[gorobei]

waiting for juniper and better/custom cooling from xfx or sapphire.

 

[MODEL3]

Originally posted by: GodisanAtheist
I personally have some misgivings about the card itself, which I don't fully understand. Perhaps we can start a discussion here:

Given the fact that the card literally doubles the 4890, keeps the same core clock and bumps up the memory clock significantly, it seems a bit off that the card tends to top it by "only" ~40%-50%. Hell, it often competes very closely to the 4870x2 (keep reading before you start wailing "BUT ITS TWO GPUs!"), which is a card that's clocked lower on old tech with driver level crossfire overhead.

The review speculates that the 256-bit bus might be throttling the card despite the increased memory speed. If this is the case then ATI's engineer's most definitely knew it, but they went ahead with 1600 SPs instead of 1200 sp's or some other number that would give the same performance given the bandwidth constraints.

Why? Where is the "extra" performance of that card disappearing? I'm not buying the "wait for the drivers to mature" line given the card simply expands on the architecture laid out in the 4xxx series, so its performance should increase AT LEAST linearly, perhaps more with driver refinements. Did they keep the extra shaders for compute performance only?

Do any of the forum know-it-alls have any ideas or speculation?

There are 4 reasons imo:
1.Geometry/Vertex performance
2.Geometry/Vertex shading performance
3.memory bandwidth
4.drivers