GX280 overkill??

if you can afford it then it would give you some room with future games' higher requirements and/or if you get a bigger display. the 4870 is also a great choice and a little cheaper. but you're not getting any of these cards on the system in your sig

I know i'm buying a whole new setup.

Which model of 4870 is a comparable choice?

Thanks.

I think I might get the 280. Does anyone know if the 9800GX2 is any close to the performance of the 280 as it's about £50.00 cheaper?

The 1gb 4870 single card is not comparable to the 280.

I wouldn't overlook the 260 core 216 model. It is probably most comparable at the moment and on a price / performance level, it gives you more. A single 260 core 216 card is right on the 280's heals.

It has a good potential upgrade path too. A 260 core 216 SLI setup blows a single 280 out of the water but you would be at a loss with games that don't support SLI that well....the bane of having a dual GPU setup. It is looking pretty good though, Crysis pulls amazing FPS with the 260 core 216 SLI at the moment.
http://www.anandtech.com/video/sho [...] i=3408&p=4

*edit: ^ oops, that is a 260 SLI setup, not the core 216 version. Still...the 216 version will do even better.

Here is a non SLI review
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/for [...] ew-15.html


I would consider a 260 core 216 and then perhaps SLI it with another when prices drop or if you can find a really good deal on them right now. If you are budgeting then one of them will be perfectly fine. Not sure of the prices over there but weigh out the price difference between the 280 and 260 core 216. Here it is about $100 difference. I would rather save that $100 (put it towards something like a larger monitor or a second GPU or a better CPU) and forget about the 3-5 FPS difference.

But then it is up and down between the 4870 and 260 and might as well go with the cheaper 4870.

I guess perhaps for the best Crysis performance for a decent price, SLI two original 260s...that brings you in just above what a 280 would be.

Your friend must have got a bad card. Tradeup? why didnt he simply rma it after a week? Why would he waste 2 months trying to get it to run? He needs to find a new line of work. I Spent 220 on a recertified card and it runs anything. These cards have to have good airflow like most hi end cards. I have a side fan and i spent 1.99 on a slot cooler and placed it beside the 9800, runs cool as a cucumber overclocked to 802 mhz.

ur all wrong,
should ebay that 20" and take the difference in money you would have spent on a 280 vs a 1g4870 and add that up - should be roughly $320
Go get yourself a nice 24" monitor plus a hundred or so
Now work your ass off for a week and put the $300 down for a 1g4870 and there you have it
You've diverted money away from a fan boy recommendation purchasing the 280 or 2X260 SLI and put it towards a better monitor and much better graphics card.

Add up what you would have spent
Sell what you already have
upgrade

Actually, forget the video card and get a new CPU (asuming your sig is true).

He said he's buying a whole new setup.... it's like the 4th post (sorry for bluntness)

I just read the 4th post or w.e ignore my previous comment

Fourth post clearly states
"I know i'm buying a whole new setup."

Maybe that post is invisible
I guess we need Gandalf to fix our invisibility problem

First thing, I did say the card gets hot, sometimes too hot for it to work well. Secondly, why keep it for 2 months ?..... like me, I think he likes to give things the benefit of the doubt. He also likes to try and get things working or try and figure out why it won't work before assuming the card is JUNK.......... and guess what, the card is JUNK ! You may have a hard time agreeing but you did say yourself the card need extra cooling. And if you look around the web you yourself can find how it fails to keep up with demanding software because there isn't enough video memory on that card. 256+256 does not equal 512 here. Screw all those benchies where the card gets more frame rates than any other card. If it fails, it fails, and it fails where it counts.

Working on computers isn't the only thing he does. His other business keeps him busy 16 hours a day 7 days a week usually so the computer end ( play time ) gets done as it gets done. As people contact him he builds when time permits.

Swifty , the card does get hot. like most hi end cards. Lets see, you and your friend like to keep defective merchandise hoping you can fix it and letting the return time run out and getting stuck with it?
I hope he doesnt do that in his other business. working 112 hrs a week no wonder it took 2 months to figure out it was a bad card. (30 seconds a day?) I dont have a hard time agreeing it runs hot, but the only reason i added cooling was because it is overclocked to 802mhz and i got the slot cooler for 1.99. Real expensive solution Actually not even needed because i have a 14" side intake.

Im beginning to to suspect you have even less knowledge about the card than i thought, seeing how you actually have never had one (at least not a working model!) All 9800gx2's have 2x512mb memory. not 256.yes screw the benchies, it runs all the games i play great. I would order a comp from your buddy but by the time he had it ready (2011?) it would be obsolete! Please get a working card, then report your experiences. Dont rely on the stuff you read on the net. Jeez you sound like one of the Newegg reviewers with high technical ability.LOL

yeah 4870 is nice. I'm on 22" monitor and with the natural patch I got up to 50 fps using very high settings with 2x AA on 1680 x1050 resolution. The average was about 36ish and the min was 30 fps. At no point did I feel lag during the game even under heavy battle scenes. Even when the frames were low the gameplay was kept smooth.

GTX280 is really an overkill for money. If you want to show off to your friends that you're rich then yeah... GTX280 does the job. For performance, it's really not worth it. You're paying around 100 more dollars or so but only getting about 10-20% boost from the 4870.

GTX260 core 216 is also nice but it's longer than 4870 and at stock it is beaten by 4870. That's why the manufactures are only selling GTX 260 Core 216 OCed to make it match GTX 280's performance. However looking at benchmarks they trade blows with the 4870 1GB edition so it's really depended on what games you play. Also ATI is releasing newer drivers to help improve the performance of the 4870 so performance gains are still rolling in.

Looking at the future, if you're going to be a real eye candy enthusiast, you want ATI 4870 because for one games like FarCry 2 are already using DX10.1. So you're expecting better performance and better eye candy.

Look at the benchmarks on Vista vs XP for 4870 and GTX 260. The GTX 260 excels in XP but dies in Vista.

Yes, a 4850 or a 4870 will do fine at that resolution. I recommend getting ATI because the DX 10.1 is nice in Far Cry 2. 20" is plenty, I have gamed on both and own both, either way you will be happy.

Also, don't get a dual card motherboard unless your 100% sure you will double up the cards. I recommend a nice P45 for great overclocking, stability, and value. STAY AWAY from Nforce boards... they suck...

Homeboy, you're not very smart !

I'll give you a quick list why:

-Terrible memory controller
-Terrible overclocking
-Produces large amounts of heat which is not contained well
-Terrible RAID performance
-Mediocre data transfer performance
-Bad BIOS layout
-And, finally, they tend to have very low longevity.

Unless you need SLI stay away from nVidia motherboards, period.

Edit: The P45 is a the "value" version of Intel's highend motherboards, it also has the absolute best overclocking ability.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813130179 My favorite P45.

Tbh P45 an old Q6600 and a 4850 will do you great. Mabye a 1gb model if you want.


You really wont need anymore tho and if/when you do you can just buy another 4850 thats the onli reason ud need 1gb coz obvi with them in xfire ud wanna use higher settings and more aa which means more memory usage etcetc.....


Spend the saved money getting a higher quality PSU because when you wanna upgrade you really dont wanna have to worry about PSU.

These threads always turn in to a flame war. OP do some research on the system you are interested in. Choose a good MB, choose a good CPU, get good mem and a lot of it. Get a good HD. Crysis seems not to like sli or cf very much. Look at this chart from THG the diff is not even 2 fps between the 4870 512 and the gtx 280 1024 at 16x10 rez.

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts [...] 1,751.html

Ask Raven about the system he has something simular should do quite nicely for a high end system.

Guys just a remider I AM BUYING A NEW SETUP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(I must admit I have jumped in before without reading every post only to find what I was arguing about had already been discussed) it happens.

Thanks so much for your replies.