GTX 260 for $330. Thoughts?

good

aahhahahahahaha, that's what those arrogant fools deserved, power to the people, long live competition!!!!!

Well considering the 4870 beats the 260gtx hands down in benchmarks I say it's not enough of a price drop .... the 260gtx should sell for 250-275. Any more than that and the 4870 becomes the better choice !

Not bad, but Ive seen even better prices on those

Not bad, but the 4870 is still faster and cheaper  

you dont want to go for the 260, the 4870 is faster

Advice: screw the GTX200 series. Get a 4870 and smile.

Still a waste of money, except if you have some nvidia fetish

I am surprised that a GTX260 dropped down to $330. However that still is not enough. Even matching the price of a 4870 is not enough.

This is bad news for Nvidia. The yields for the GT200 chips have been very, very poor (low as 40% in some cases) where as the yields for the R770 chips have been unbelievably good.

Nvidia and their partners are getting ready to lose a lot of money. The GT200 chips will never be able to beat the R770 chips on a price to performance ratio. Just because of the yields alone ATI has a whole lot more headroom to drop prices and still make profit than Nvidia does.

Wow... ATI finally has won this round hands down. Absolutely no reason to get a GTX260 when the 4870 is faster and cheaper even after the price cut... Although those that are financially endowed enough could go for a GTX280, a 4870 Xfire setup would really be ideal.

i would go with ATI right now if only i had a crossfire board but instead i have a sli board so im going with nvidia! But no harsh feelings toward ATI really..

4870

....or two 4850s in crossfire.   That would give you a setup faster than the GTX280 by a decent amount.

john: iv got a fetish

ann: what is is john, whipps, leather mask, getting tied up, feet, hanging a large weight of ur balls

john: no ann every time i see an nvidia gfx card i touch myself

ann: oooh kinky

What I think is interesting that several reports are saying that the 4870x2 is up to 15% faster than two 4870 running in X-Fire mode.

I thought about getting two 4850s myself because I have an xfire motherboard. But if you can get 15% better gains while using less power why not go for a 4870x2 or a 4850x2 card?

Yeah, it is lot of cash upfront (still less than a GTX280), but if you planning on buying a 2nd one anyway it may be worth to wait until august and save the money to get X2 series card.

wtf lol?

Yeah, I ordered the VisionTek HD 4870 from Tiger (stupid newegg was charging $10 more  ) I think I'm still happy with my purchase regardless of the price drops.

Got mine from Tiger also. Bought it through my AMEX worldpoints mall and they quadruple the dollar amount towards my points. Now i get a 50 dollar gift card from Amex from the extra points i got from buying it from tiger direct.
WIN WIN WIN. Cant wait to try this 4870 Card, its replacing an old 6800 Ultra. Woohoo.

WHOA!!! What an upgrade that is going to be!!

Did any1 bother to ask him if he has a sli board? or a CrossX board?

he only got one card so crossfire and sli wont come in to it

looking to the future has nothing to do with buying a card then?
I think throwing in another 260 or 4870 later on would benefit him more, so if he has the wrong motherboard, buying another card and motherboard is a waste.

If single gpu is the only option, then anything less than gtx280 or 4870x2 is a bit of a waste of money, as anything below that perf level becomes outdated too rapidly in single gpu...

Nvidia has to drop down the GTX260 price because 4870 is around the level of GTX260 (4870 better in gaming but poorer in 3DMark benchmarking) and with better HD video placyback peformance.

You know really, Nvidia only has to much AMD's price; its not like they have to undercut them.

The difference between the 4870 and the gtx260 is very nominal; its not like the 4870 is astronomically better :S

I mean one company has to have the better product, its not like the other one just rolls over and dies cause they aren't "the winner", otherwise AMD would've packed up and gone home quite some time ago :x

From Tom's its about 6% better than the 260 GTX, not much, but the price bloats the results ...for now.

But like any card, it shines in certain games over other Graphic cards in certain games. (GRID)

Theres a store here in Toronto that sells the 4870 for 289.99 check out the site, www.filtechcomputer.com under specials 

Tell me about it; I know you read my gtx260 SLI benches and I gotta say being able to run basically every game on my PC except Crysis with 16xQAA and TRSAA really does add a lot to the image quality of my gaming =P

The cool thing about 16xQAA is that you practically have to get your face 2 inches from your screen to even find the aliasing that is being corrected, lol

Anyways, i'm not trying to blow the gtx260 out of proportion or devalue the 4870 - I just think that they are so close in perf that once nvidia drops the gtx260 to 299$ you could really go either way and not be missing out on much of anything :x

Don't sweat the lack of MSAA in Crysis, it doesn't work on the foliage anyway. To compensate for this, when shader quality is set to at least high an "edge AA" effect is applied . Edge AA does work on the foliage, giving it a softer, more natural appearance. Edge AA is not compatible with MSAA, so in an interesting turn of events the cool jungle scenes in Crysis actually looks worse with MSAA  

Now where were we? Oh yes, HD4870 > GTX260

I think that the GTX260 does need to be priced under the 4870 out of necessity.

The 4870 has so many more technologies that are exclusive to it:

55nm fabrication (less power consumption)

DDR5 Ram

ATI’s Exclusive Anti-Aliasing edge detect filter http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/ati_radeon_4850_487...

DX10.1

Cinema 2.0

The 4870 even beats the GTX280 in new games like GRID:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-4870,1964...

Why would you pay the same amount for a GTX260 card and deny yourself all of the above technologies plus voluntarily take the performance hit on top of that?

I think Nvidia has no choice but to price the GTX260 under the 4870 if they can afford to do so.

WEll they rely on fanboys 

Which actually seems to be working quite well for them. Fine with me, let the fanboys keep the competition alive   (not that NVIDIA will be dieing any time soon).

Hm, ya know I bet thats where a lot of the performance hit in Very High with AA enabled is coming from, the TRSAA that the Crysis engine is using.

Kinda interestin, I might have to look into this a bit more to see if Nvidia TRSAA+in game MSAA gives a better IQ and if it is possible to disable Crytek's TRSAA

yup love the idea, either way I'm switching to Crossfire if I have the cash and putting down some money and saving for the 4870 X2, which should outshine my GX2 by enough.

QUESTION: What about your 9800GX2 makes you feel the need to upgrade? I am just curious. You got one helluva of a video card right now. Of course a 4870x2 would be much better but what games do you have right now that you can't not run at full graphics?

I would think that a 9800GX2 would be able to handle anything out there but I have never owned an elite video card like that so I really wouldn't know.

I am not critizing you in any way for wanting a 4870x2, I was just curious what games you are playing now that you can't max out with your 9800GX2.

Wouldn't it be awesome if EVGA started manufacturing BOTH Nvidia and ATI cards? Imagine how useful their 90 day step up plan would be right now? Buy a 9800GTX then step up to a 4870x2.

Gainward started making ATI cards. Maybe others will follow suit with the new 4XXX series.

Okay, hate to quote myself but it was necessary =P

I did a few benches, 1680*1050 Very High with TRSAA/Edge AA/No Edge AA No TRSAA

In all 3 tests, the FPS in "benchmark gpu" was within 0.5 frames of each setting. IQ was definitely better with either TRSAA or Edge AA enabled

Hate to ask, but wtf is TRSAA? Closest thing I can think of is "transparency supersampling AA"  

In any case, if MSAA is disabled you can force a higher level of edgeAA in Crysis by typing in the console "r_edgeAA 2". Without the quotes of course, and you first have to unlock the console by typing "con_restricted 0"

Well in all honest, I'm an enthusiast, So really I just like seeing those frames high . I dream of a world where every game is played at alteast 72 fps  just as though you were playing CS 1.6 LOL.

For now there is nothing that makes just 1 9800 GX2 sweat (Crysis excluded). But Its always nice to be on top. I'm still suprised the GX2 lasted around 3-4 months on top lol .

I'm just rambling on, I doubt I'll commit to purchase but its also nice to think about it. I just want to see DDR3 (RAM, not VGA RAM ) become mainstream and the new Intel CPU to be fitted  I already have a buyer for my Asus striker 2 and might go to Extreme DDR3, or I might just use my old Asus with my 5000+ BE for a while and see what Christmas has to offer.

EDIT: Spelling and my Stupidity

Is that 19" LCD on your Avatar what you use for your 9800GX2? Does your videocard cause any ghosting or artifacting because the fraps are so high at that resolution?

Yea, actually "Very High" settings defaults to r_edgeAA 2, that was what I benchmarked with.

I used TRSAA with r_edgeAA 0 to do the NV control panel transparency super sampling comparison - they are pretty well identical as far as I can tell and the fps is more or less identical.

17", no ghosting or artifacting, The Temps of each GPU is around 45 Degrees, and 60 on load.

I would almost swear on my mother's grave that high and very high both set edgeAA to 1. Checking...

Yup, both set to 1. Uhh, what do I win?  

I set it to 1 with the crysis benchmark tool and when I loaded the game it said "custom" settings instead of "Very High Spec"

When specifically set to 2 with CBT, it says "Very High Spec"

Thats the only reason I claimed that, but it seemed like a logical conclusion based on that observation; seems odd, but okay.

I did benchmark with r_edgeAA=2 forced anyways just to be sure and it produced the same results.

....Instead of spending some extra money on a graphics card think about getting a larger monitor and letting your 9800GX2 out of the cage. I'm almost positive it weeps at night dreaming about playing at 1920x1200res. Then I'm sure it'll live a better life.  

LOLZ

+1

yeah but you can't by gainward card's here in the states, or can you?

Or your someone like me and have a friend who lives down the street who may kill you for using an AMD processor or non-nvidia GPU. Or worse, not being invited to the big BBQ's they have or the all you can eat superbowl party.  

Dam it sucks being friends with those loyal intel/nvidia fanboys.

These people exist in real life? I thought they were just forum trolls or something.

Yeah they exist, though I exagerated a little bit, they wouldn't kill or disown me yet for that, but they would give me hell for it every time I see them and I would never hear the end of it if the part broke even if I had it for 20years. Though I may end up with a 4870x2 and when I do I bring my computer over and get him drunk and compliment how good the graphics card is, I be able to hang that one over his head for years to come, I just have to get it recorded so he couldn't deny it   .