Indecision 2008 (SLi & Crossfire card battle) plz read

[clumsypyro]

So, I'm getting a new rig soon and I can't decide between four cards, I will be using SLi or CF depending on which card I get and I can't decide which one to get, and the one I get will determine which mobo I get b/c of the SLi/CF compatibility. So the cards are

One of these two ATi HD 4850 (1 GB)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102759)
or
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121278

Reason for indecision between these two: the ASUS doesn't have any ratings but does have a better price.

OR one of these two nVidia 260GTX w/216 cores
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130398
or
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130400

Reason for indecision between these two: one is OC'd and one is not, I can OC the one that is not to save some cash, but would the money saved be worth it? (I'm not too OC-savvy but my roommate is, so he will help me with any OC-ing that will be done.)

So which ever one I decide on will be SLI'd or CF'd within a few months of getting it, the main question is which one and why? I know the ATi's are cheaper but are they really better in the benchmarks that everyone claims or are the nVidia's dominant like how the THG charts indicate? The PSU won't be an issue, i know that for certain, it will be an 850W, and the processor for the rig will be the E8500, and I'll be using 4 GB of 1066 memory. Comments, suggestions, and just about anything is welcome and appreciated.

Thanks again ^_^

 

[dirtmountain]

To me it comes down to Intel chip or Nvidia chip in the motherboard for an Intel CPU and Intel wins hands down, easily, not even breathing hard. So crossfire would be my choice, but in a comparison between 4850s and 260GTX/216 the 260s would win, why not the 4870?

 

[The_Blood_Raven]

Umm... benchmarks do not indicate gaming performance... The 260 GTX is definitely better, as it is more expensive. However, the 4870 1GB is definitely better than the 260 GTX, not by much but by enough. Get this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131120

 

[The_Blood_Raven]

To me it comes down to Intel chip or Nvidia chip in the motherboard for an Intel CPU and Intel wins hands down, easily, not even breathing hard. So crossfire would be my choice, but in a comparison between 4850s and 260GTX/216 the 260s would win, why not the 4870?

Exactly Intel chipsets are 300% better than nVidia chipsets.

 

[invisik]

i dont like cf i guess because it didnt scale to well with my old 3xxxseries. felt like sli scales better but im sure these days there on par. i would recommend the old gtx260 since they can be found very cheap while the new gtx260 is much more expensive with min gain.

 

[The_Blood_Raven]

Umm... crossfire ALWAYS traded blows with SLI depending on games. To say that crossfire did not scale as well as SLI is just wrong, even in the 2xxx series. It always depended on the games. Now crossfire tends to have a slight edge in that it wins over SLI equally as SLI wins over crossfire, but crossfire is more consistent.

 

[clumsypyro]

Umm... benchmarks do not indicate gaming performance... The 260 GTX is definitely better, as it is more expensive. However, the 4870 1GB is definitely better than the 260 GTX, not by much but by enough. Get this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131120

Memory clock on that one is only 925 MHz?

 

[San Pedro]

^ That card has better memory than the 4850 (GDDR5 vs GDDR3) so don't worry about it. Plus you could probably push the clocks on that 4870 pretty good. I wouldn't be surprised if you could max out the clocks that are available in CCC with it.

 

[The_Blood_Raven]

Umm... yeah a 25hz overclock not much but you can do more. The reason it is better is because it is the same price as the other ones and has a custom cooler.

 

[The_Blood_Raven]

Ah I see what you meant, thanks San Pedro for picking it up. The 4870 has an effective 3.7 Ghz of RAM speed where the 4850 has an effective 1.9 Ghz of RAM speed. It is not that simple, but the 4870's memory is even faster than it sounds from that explanation.

 

[invisik]

Umm... crossfire ALWAYS traded blows with SLI depending on games. To say that crossfire did not scale as well as SLI is just wrong, even in the 2xxx series. It always depended on the games. Now crossfire tends to have a slight edge in that it wins over SLI equally as SLI wins over crossfire, but crossfire is more consistent.

im just saying out of my own test run i did with my 3850 in cf i gained maybe 2fps gain in crysis and in games like gears of war ut3 maybe 5-10fps max and some other games performed worse or the same. im not saying cf is bad im just saying the 3xxx series wasnt that great in the beginning im sure there much better now.
crossfire is more consistent over sli? have any sources?

 

[clumsypyro]

OK, fair enough, so . . . intel chipsets are better than nVidia, which means go with ATi for XFire, and the 4870 from PowerColor is the recommended card, but how is that companies rep? Newegg reviews are fine and all, but i'm guessing something like 40% don't know what they are really talking about? And what would be a good mobo to go with the 4870?

 

[The_Blood_Raven]

im just saying out of my own test run i did with my 3850 in cf i gained maybe 2fps gain in crysis and in games like gears of war ut3 maybe 5-10fps max and some other games performed worse or the same. im not saying cf is bad im just saying the 3xxx series wasnt that great in the beginning im sure there much better now.
crossfire is more consistent over sli? have any sources?

Sorry I deleted the explanation before I posted. What I meant was that crossfire tends to be more consistent between different resolutions in the 4xxx series. The 3xxx series seemed to scale pretty well, though SLI was easier to configure and crossfire was and still is a bitch sometimes.

 

[The_Blood_Raven]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128336

^ My pick for the motherboard. Get whatever you want just make sure it is a X38 or X48 board. Stick with the card I picked out.

 

[invisik]

well there both good cant go wrong either way. If you play games like crysis nvidia (sli) would be the way to go. Other games such as ut3 cod4 run well on ati (cf).
if you plan to do sli check out the gtx260 old version priced dropped to 199$ on msi model!
=]

 

[clumsypyro]

what the consensus on this mobo?

[url=http://www.newegg.com/Product...com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131299 [/url]

 

[clumsypyro]

Umm... benchmarks do not indicate gaming performance... The 260 GTX is definitely better, as it is more expensive. However, the 4870 1GB is definitely better than the 260 GTX, not by much but by enough. Get this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131120

So I read up some more on the 4870 series and is it a 925 MHz 4 core GPU so it would be about 3.7Ghz total or am I mistaken?

 

[The_Blood_Raven]

No you need an X38 or X48 board for the x16/x16 crossfire. The 4870 1GB tends to edge out the 260 GTX in just about everything except Crysis.

 

[dirtmountain]

For crossfiring 2 HD4870s you really should get a X48/38 .
Here's a couple of good links, one is about a chipset comparison with crossfiring 2 HD4850s. In my opinion the 8x/8x bandwidth of the P45 series would take an even bigger hit from the bandwidth with 2 HD4870s
http://www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=761
This other link is about CPU scaling with the HD4870x2
http://www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=770