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Tom's Hardware > Forum > Graphics & Displays > Graphics Cards > Geforce 260 vs Geforce 9800 GX2 vs radeon 4850

Geforce 260 vs Geforce 9800 GX2 vs radeon 4850

Forum Graphics & Displays : Graphics Cards Geforce 260 vs Geforce 9800 GX2 vs radeon 4850

i have dual 24" lcds, and i want a card that does well at high resolutions. What do you guys think is the best? all three of these are around the 200-300 price point, which is what im looking at. thanks a lot.

Reply to bobloadmire

I was thinking about getting a 9800 GX2 but then I found an open box 4850 on newegg for $137 so I bought that and ill buy another 4850 when i need a good performance boost. that probably wont be a for a while tho

Reply to Quitoman

Average performance of common cards as follows, from highest to lowest:
4870x2 > 9800gx2 > gtx280 > gtx260 = 4870 = 3870x2 > 4850 = g92 8800gts > 8800gt > 3870 = 9600gt > 3850

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Reply to dagger

Where the hell did you hear a 4850 equals a g92 8800gts???

Reply to Quitoman

dagger wrote :

Average performance of common cards as follows, from highest to lowest:
4870x2 > 9800gx2 > gtx280 > gtx260 = 4870 = 3870x2 > 4850 = g92 8800gts > 8800gt > 3870 = 9600gt > 3850

4850 = g92 8800gts?????...........that....that......no comments

edited:
4850 = 9800gtx+ > 9800gtx

Message quoted 1 times
Message edited by sarwar_r87 on 08-17-2008 at 08:06:29 AM

------------------------------ AMD Phenom II x4 945; ASUS M4A785D-M PRO, AMD 785G;
xfx ATi 5770; 4GB DDR2 800bus; 1TB HDD
X-Fi XtremeMusic; 420W Thermaltake TR2 PSU

Reply to sarwar_r87

sarwar_r87 wrote :

4850 = g92 8800gts?????...........that....that......no comments

edited:
4850 = 9800gtx+ > 9800gtx

It depends on resolution. 4850 scales better, and its fps pull ahead at above 1600x1200 but drops behind below it. Of course, this also vary on different games. On average, it's about the same.
UT3
Call of Duty 4
Far Cry
Crysis

------------------------------ Q6600@3.6ghz, GA-EX38-DS4 motherboard, 8gb 800mhz ddr2 4-3-3-12, 8800GTS(g92)@780mhz, 1TB + 1.5TB hdds, 850watt psu
Reply to dagger

Wow... ok... Anyway either the GTX 260 or the 4870 are your best bets. The 4870 is better over all unless you really want to play Crysis.

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Reply to The_Blood_Raven

I wish w1zzard hadnt lowered the AA at low res' in those reviews, and then he ups it at high res. Looking at other sites, youll see that with eye candy cranked, the 4850 is the better card

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Reply to JAYDEEJOHN

The_Blood_Raven wrote :

Wow... ok... Anyway either the GTX 260 or the 4870 are your best bets. The 4870 is better over all unless you really want to play Crysis.

Would you stop spreading lies already? What makes you think gtx 260 perform better than 4870 in Crysis? It's the exact opposite, 4870 get higher fps by 1-4%, depending on resolution and aa settings.
http://en.expreview.com/2008/06/24 [...] d-4850/19/
The so called "Crysis skew" applies to older generation cards. So stop blaming everything on Crysis.

And as you can see, 4870 and gtx260 perform about the same overall, across multiple games and multiple resolutions. 4870 is slightly faster, but the 1.5% is not significant. Whatever you can get for cheaper is the better deal.

And of course, both will fall far short of 9800gx2, which outperforms a gtx280.

------------------------------ Q6600@3.6ghz, GA-EX38-DS4 motherboard, 8gb 800mhz ddr2 4-3-3-12, 8800GTS(g92)@780mhz, 1TB + 1.5TB hdds, 850watt psu
Reply to dagger

Gotta love those sammiches tho, if you go 2xGTX heheh

so are you guys sayin i should go with the 9800GX2? i also like the fact that you can do physx with it, but its not really important.

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Reply to bobloadmire

bobloadmire wrote :

so are you guys sayin i should go with the 9800GX2? i also like the fact that you can do physx with it, but its not really important.

It provides the best price/performance ratio. Far outperforms 4870, while costing the same, slightly outperform gtx280, while costing much less.

That is, unless you plan to run two cards in cf/sli. Quad sli/cf scales horribly. A second 9800gx2 would only add 30% in performance, compared to 60% typically for dual gpu.

------------------------------ Q6600@3.6ghz, GA-EX38-DS4 motherboard, 8gb 800mhz ddr2 4-3-3-12, 8800GTS(g92)@780mhz, 1TB + 1.5TB hdds, 850watt psu
Reply to dagger

i don't even have an SLi board, sli is not an option, only single PCIe slot

Reply to bobloadmire

Get the 9800GX2

Reply to monsta

I was in a similar situation (though I do have an SLi Board) looking between the 9800GX2 or the 4870.

I ended up with the 4870 just because it seemed to hold much higher FPS with AA enabled at high resolutions. Where the benches of the GTX show a much bigger drop in those circumstances.

It did seem the the GX2 would put up higher raw numbers overall though

Reply to wonderingwhatis

also i saw this

http://www.vr-zone.com/articles/NV [...] 881-8.html

do you think it is worth the extra cash for the 280? about 100 bucks more. im not sure.

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Reply to bobloadmire

bobloadmire wrote :

also i saw this

http://www.vr-zone.com/articles/NV [...] 881-8.html

do you think it is worth the extra cash for the 280? about 100 bucks more. im not sure.

I'm not sure if those should be trusted. The result of gtx280 having such large lead across the board is not in line with benchmarks from more reputable reviewers. They trade blows depending on different games and resolutions. Some specific tests on "vr-zone" directly contradict results from other benchmarkers. Frankly, it seems made up. Typical benchmarks using Crysis, for example.
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/726/12/
http://www.hexus.net/content/item. [...] 36&page=12
http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/ [...] 280/8.html

Either that review is wrong or all other reviews are wrong. A quick googling produces a few reviews that include 9800gx2 for comparasions. Look through the results:
http://www.guru3d.com/article/gefo [...] ew-test/20
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardwar [...] page15.asp
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/arti [...] h1c2lhc3Q=
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/for [...] ew-21.html
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/726/20/
http://www.hexus.net/content/item. [...] 36&page=15

------------------------------ Q6600@3.6ghz, GA-EX38-DS4 motherboard, 8gb 800mhz ddr2 4-3-3-12, 8800GTS(g92)@780mhz, 1TB + 1.5TB hdds, 850watt psu
Reply to dagger

i would get the gtx260 similar performer (-15%) to the gtx280 but cost a whole lot less!

------------------------------ intel core 2 quad q6600 @3.2ghz msi p6n diamond (X-FI Extreme sound) 6gig of OCZ+CoRSAIR oc 900mhz Nvidia gtx 260 sli @ 730/1465/1250
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Reply to invisik

yeah, but the 9800 GX2 is quite a bit faster than the 260, but its a lot hotter and power hungry too. pros and cons i guess

Reply to bobloadmire

yeah but if you can't take the heat stay out of the GX2

Sacrifice heat for gaming...I chose gaming

Message edited by L1qu1d on 08-21-2008 at 03:31:48 AM

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i7 920 @ 4.02 GHZ, OCZ 6 gig DDR3, EVGA/PNY 480 GTX sli, Corsair 1000HX, Windows 7 Pro 64, 128 Gig SSD + 2 TB Seagate
Reply to L1qu1d

Alot of the high performance cards run hot, especially the latest ones, no biggie and its not anything new. I choose gaming too.

Reply to monsta

Gx2 is not that hot. It's somewhat hotter than gtx260, but a lot cooler than 4870. All those cards run fine at their respective temperatures.

------------------------------ Q6600@3.6ghz, GA-EX38-DS4 motherboard, 8gb 800mhz ddr2 4-3-3-12, 8800GTS(g92)@780mhz, 1TB + 1.5TB hdds, 850watt psu
Reply to dagger

Problem with any comments of the 4870 running hot is, all the nVidia cards dump heat into your case, where therest of your componants are not made to handle such heat, whereas the 4870 pumps its heat outside the case, elimanating that problem. The 4870 is designed to handle that heat, so once again, problem solved.

it really depends what games you want to play etc.

i have a 4850 and i play cod4 at 1440x900 4xAA 16xASF everything high and get 75+ fps. the GX2 is the best cod4 card though. but if you never drop below 75 fps it really doesn't matter. i played crysis on very high (DX9) @ 1440x900 and got 32 fps avg in my benchmarks. with 2xAA i think i got 27. it was totally playable though i was surprised. and this was on a pci-e1.0 motherboard which could bottleneck it (would my pci-e 1.0 motherboard bottleneck? i'm about to buy a new one anyway but i might not if it doesn't matter. i've had mixed answers though)

i recommend the 4850 and get another later. or get a 4870. i think the 4850 is the best price vs performance card right now though.

Reply to hhahaahyea

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