Chose all of my parts for a build, but I'm not sure what GPU to select

[Guest]

I'm stuck! I'm trying to choose between 2 choices for my build of GPU's. Either a single GTX 280 or GTX 260 in SLi. Both are tempting offers, but I'm stuck on which to choose. My other choice was 3 9800 GTX in SLi. I'm sort of new to this computer building thing and I just want to be sure that I am getting a good system.

Note: these are some of the requirements i'm expecting, Crysis on Maxed settings (for the most part), and to be able to play most of the future games that are being released.

Thank you Kindly,
Yellowsnow6013

 

[4745454b]

Neither. If you have this kind of money, get the 4870 and crossfire it. This will even allow you to get the x38/48 chipset, much better then the 780/790i.

 

[Guest]

How much exactly would that cost? I'm sorry for sounding so ignorant, but what is "crossfire"? Extremely sorry for my inferior knowledge with this stuff, I'm just unsatisfied with my current performance.

 

[4745454b]

Crossfire (CF) is AMDs way of doing SLI. For the end user, its the method of using two video cards to act together as one. The 4870 should be around $300, two of them will run ~$600. Its been awhile since I've looked, the last time I did the GTX260 was around $330. Unless things have changed, you should be able to get better performance while spending less money.

 

[1haplo]

Cost depends on what is your buget. A cheap Crossfire setup just Video cards and MB will be around $500 For a P45 (8X/8X) Chipset and 2 HD4850 GPUs.

Or around 700-775 for a X48 (16X/16X) Chipset and 2 HD4970 GPUs.

If you give us the amount you to spend, and you location (ie: US, Canada) Then people will list parts.

List your current setup also.

1Haplo

 

[aevm]

I'd get a P5E Deluxe X48, two HD 4870 cards, a Corsair 750TX PSU, and a RC-690 or Antec 900 case.

 

[Physicz]

^ +1

or a gigabyte ex d48

keep in mind if your gonna play crysis maxed out veer towards NV because crysis was built with nvidia to be optimized for their cards.

 

[acoz]

+1 for gigabyte x48

 

[aevm]

Hey physicz, you just agreed with me on the ATI cards and then told him to buy nVidia, you're confusing the guy

@yellowsnow:
Here are some benchmarks: a single HD 4870 beats a single GTX 260 in Crysis, by a negligible margin. Apparently AMD has learned its lesson and crysis is now optimized for AMD too.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-4870,1964-9.html

Too bad they don't have Crossfire/SLI benchmarks there too. With two HD 4870 cards you should get around 27 fps at 1920x1200 on "very high", IIRC.

Yeah, GA-X48-DS4 is also a great MB for Crossfire.

Anyway, if you look at Crysis benchmarks and try to build your PC for that you'll be disappointed. That game is very badly programmed and doesn't really work well on any current hardware, whether made by AMD, nVidia or Intel. Do some research and look at as many games as you can.

 

[eklipz330]

lol he was bred in an nvidia fanboi camp obviously, how would some1 know about a gtx280 and sli and not even know crossfire?

 

[eklipz330]

and for the original choise, gtx260 sli hands down, tri sli doesn't scale well with any cards, and gtx280 is still overpriced

 

[aevm]

OK, I did more research on this. Read this:

http://techreport.com/articles.x/15105/5

At 1920x1200, with all settings on very high, GTX 280 SLI gets 27.9 fps, while HD 4870 Crossfire gets 23.7 fps. They don't say what GTX 260 SLI does, but I'm guessing 80% of what GTX 280 SLI does (192 stream processors in the GTX 260 as opposed to 240 in the GTX 280, and less RAM). That would be about 22.3 fps, less than HD 4870 CF. It's pretty close, you can't distinguish 22.3 fps and 23.7 fps in real life. Besides, that 22.3 is estimated, it may be 25 or 20 in reality for all I know.

Let's look at another game now: Quake Wars: http://techreport.com/articles.x/15105/4 The HD 4870 Crossfire beats even the GTX 280 SLI.

Based on this, I'd prefer x48+HD 4870 CF to 780i+GTX 260 SLI. Also, keep in mind that x48 is a better chipset than 780i.

 

[Guest]

Well Eklipz, I have heard the term "crossfire" before but I have always been told Intel over AMD and NVIDIA over ATI. My friend who recently upgraded on a $1200 budget, ended up with EVGA 9800 GTX in SLi for his GPU. I'm leaning more towards the GTX 260 in SLi. I have just seen systems with SLi and not crossfire. SLi seems very reliable even though i have to pay a little extra money (my budget is about $1500 BTW).

 

[Guest]

I think i'm going to go with the x48+HD 4870 CF over the 780i+GTX 260 SLi. Seems pretty good and you guys have convinced me. Thank you very much.