ATI or nVidia?

been looking at some benchmarks for the ATI HD 4890 and some GTX 285, and GTX 295

It showed that the HD Radeon 4890 OC'd to 1GB beat the GTX 285, so now im stuck on which card i should get, the 4890 is much cheaper than a gtx 285, and with two i can crossfire em. So, now im stuck, which one should i choose? if im gonna crossfire the 4890, i might as well triple crossfire because the card is alot less than the 285, so im stuck on which card(s) i should get.

Also, if anyone does OC a HD radeon 4890, what temps do you get?

ok...persuasive, doesent help my case though, some temps comparing the two would be great...any help is appreciated

There have been some reviews out recently saying that the 275 is a pretty decent card and not to far behing what you are looking at performance wise.
cant hurt to google it and have a look

Mactronix

It's way behind a 295 lol wow your ati bias it's only not so far behind a 295 on low resolutions 1680x1050 of you shouldn't even be thinking of 3 way crossfire or sli at that resolution. What is this "high quality" you speak of? rendering method? Nvidia pictures tend to be more dynamic with a strong blacks making a high contrast while ATI cards tend to use more of a bland range which makes smoother pictures it's really just prefence.

275 vs 4890 is about the same... there are games where 275 is stronger then 4890 and vice versa only 1 2 instances where the gap is large and it's usually in at a point where it doesn't matter ie above 60fps like in l4d where everyone hits above 100 fps anyways its just hat 4890 can do 140 vs just 100

yea, i just read that review, the ATI performs horribly in that game, but thats the only game, if you notice, in all the other games ATI is usually behind the nvid cards, but when you scroll down and notice the quality gets higher, ATI out performs practically everything, when i mean that, the HD 4870X2.

Also, i thought theres no differrene in ATI and nVidia cards graphics, is it like when you compare the xbox 360 to a PS3? i heard theres absolutely no difference.

10 dollar price difference unless you must absolutely get the 40 dollar more super ultra over clocked edition that you'll sli find out you need to buy new fans for your case because of the heat causing mass artifact costing you an extra 30 I don't believe in performance past 75fps in games except 24fps in rts games

Usually 275 cost 10 dollar more at least in the us if you are going with the cheapest but if you are going by brand it's varies a bit more.

Also with nvidia they usually will give you a free game Usually cod world at war a nice perk if you don't have it

Only reason i would go ATI over nvidia blindly is because it's easy to do hdmi with audio with ati making just a standard plug into hdtv's but if you're like me with a separate system for my audio i just use my sound card to connect the audio and hdmi to connect the video.

couple of benchmarks

http://www.techspot.com/review/164 [...] page7.html

On this one, one of my fav games, supreme commander, a radeon 4870X2 out performs a gtx 295 at 1920x1200 res, with highest quality, although the rad 4890 does falter behind gtx 275

Also found this

http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid [...] 5/Reviews/

The 4890 does out perform the gtx 275 in crysis, but not so much in other games, which is a surprisement to me, as crysis prefers nvidia o.o
God i hate looking at benchmarks...they're always different, because something, always, is different, may it be temperature, better manufactured, it really is IMPOSSIBLE to tell which GPU is better...

The 275 overclocks really well from what i have read, its pretty much a case of weighing up the pro's and con's that matter to you personally. Myself i would usually get the best single card. However if i was looking at maybe a dual card set up from th ecards we have talked about then i would SLI the 275's purly from the price vs performance side of things and the fact that its meant to OC well.
End of the day its up to you im afraid, as i said decide what works best for you and your PC at the resolution/settings you will be using most.

Mactronix

^ depends what you mean by OC, the 900mhz version which are actually the standard bin 4890's or 950mhz+.

also I think you can use an ATi card for graphics and an nvidia card for physX so ATi cards can perform better in physX enabled games, but it would use a lot of energy for a card that would support PhysX well and cost a lot since it would probably be a 4870 X2 for graphics and a GTX 260 for PhysX so you don't get a bottleneck on the PhysX end.

right, so i am literally stuck between going with CF 4890 and an SLI 275, instead of performance, which of the two are easier to use? Such as one may have more updates, utilitys and such, because these two cards are so closely configured its really hard to tell the difference, except at resolutions higher than 1920x1200, where ATI is a bit better than nvid, but im not going to that high resolutions...

i went from a 4870 to a gtx260-216 yesterday (just for sheer fun). and yeah it all depends on the games you want to play. the differences are subtle like if you dont have a clue on how the other card performs you'll actually have no idea what the difference is all about.

here are a few notes:

1. crysis dx10 :

on my 4870, the textures wont load instantly, you need to get close or something like that and its ugly and annoying.

the gtx260 on the other hand has this silly mouselag that feels like vsync is on (even if its off), no texture delay though.

2. last remnant : already been said

3. far cry2:

4870: well with dx10.1 2x AA will give you a scenery thats nearly "aliasing" free. the textures though behave the same way with crysis, needs to get close to it to make its full shape appear. which is bad for multiplayer.

gtx260: needs 4xaa-8xaa to make it look the same. the dx10 mouselag exists.

4. hawx:

same scenario as farcry2 but no mouselag (im using a joypad anyway). the gtx260 feels faster though as the 4870 stutters in some way.

5. nba 2k9:

4870: superb Anisotropic Filtering, the reflections on the floor are more crisp compared to the 260, and somewhat faster. driver forced 16xAF, btw

gtx260: needs to crank all the driver level enhancements all the way up to match the 4870. putting 16xAF alone on the NVcontrolpanel looked fugly compared to what my old 4870 was putting out.

6. prince of persia:

the gtx260 is silky smooth compared to my 4870. hands down.

7. racedriver grid:

i dunno, putting my new 260-216 in there messed my driving up. the car felt different, or maybe im just used to the 4870 (the animation of the steering wheel shocked me).

im pretty sure the scenario of the 4890 vs gtx275 is comparable. so bottom line is there are strengths and weaknesses for both cards. both cards can do gtx285 speeds by OC'ing, too.

^
So I'll just make it harder
Image quality is, to me, more importaint than absoloute speed but then at 49 I'm no longer a 'twitch kill' player
Unless you are playing Last Remnant I would go for the slightly better image quality of the current HD4890.
If you are playing Last Remnant then get the GTX275, it is not as if the card will fall over and die if it is asked to play anything else!

funny you say that because each time the cards are repeated, there fps is diff.