HD5870 not much faster than HD4870 at 1280x960->1600x1200?

[rcgldr]

I'm one of those rare people still using a CRT monitor, Viewsonic G225FB (20" viewable). Although it supports up to 2048x1536 resolution, I'm running most of my games at 1280x960 or 1600x1200.

I tried an ATI HD5870 video card and didn't see much improvment in fps with the games I play (mostly racing games), perhaps 10% or so. In addition all HD5xxxx video cards have a bug that forces refresh rate to 60hz when using a 16:9 resolution, an annoyance on a CRT monitor where 75hz and 85hz (or faster) are the preferred rates. In case you're wondering, I use 16:9 resolutions when capturing "widescreen" videos from games, mostly for youtube uploads, mostly 1280x720 (it looks vertically streched when recording, but the captured videos will have the proper aspect ratio).

I considered a nVIdia card, but there's less speed gain with these, and apparently more variation in the quality of these cards depending on who make these.

CPU's are a similar issue. I currently have a X6800 Core 2, 2.93ghz, and for most games, more cores isn't going to help much, just the cpu clock speed.

Looks, like I'll be waiting for the next genreation of cpu's and video cards before I buy a new system.

 

[welshmousepk]

sounds like a bottleneck.

at that low a resolution, your GPU doesn't have room to flex it muscles, and the CPU is holding back the framerate.

playing at a higher resolution would likely show no performance hit. if so, that means a GPU bottleneck.

a 5870 is certainly overkill for that resolution though. a CPU upgrade would help increase your framerates, but a monitor upgrade would be the best choice.

 

[rcgldr]

A monitor upgrade would be the best choice.

The picture quality on my CRT monitor is still better than any of the LCD monitors I've seen, so I don't plan on replacing it anytime soon. The only current game I have with a frame rate issue with is Need For Speed Shift, when at the back of a pack of 11 AI cars, but setting car detail to low solved that problem. Frame rate only increased from 54 to 59 frames per second with the HD5870, not enough to run with car detail set to high, and with the 60hz at 16:9 resolution bug in all HD5xxxx video cards, I returned that card back to the store.

 

[welshmousepk]

The picture quality on my CRT monitor is still better than any of the LCD monitors I've seen, so I don't plan on replacing it anytime soon. The only current game I have with a frame rate issue with is Need For Speed Shift, when at the back of a pack of 11 AI cars, but setting car detail to low solved that problem. Frame rate only increased from 54 to 59 frames per second with the HD5870, not enough to run with car detail set to high, and with the 60hz at 16:9 resolution bug in all HD5xxxx video cards, I returned that card back to the store.

thats most certainly a CPU bottleneck.

if you keep that monitor, then there is no real reason to upgrade GPU. but while LCDs are not as true as CRTs, you can get plasmas, LEDs, OLEDS, and a few other monitor types that offer much better quality than a CRT or LCD and support much higher resolutions. they are expensive though.

 

[rcgldr]

If you keep that monitor, then there is no real reason to upgrade GPU. While LCDs are not as true as CRTs, you can get plasmas, LEDs, OLEDS, and a few other monitor types that offer much better quality than a CRT or LCD and support much higher resolutions. they are expensive though.

One issue with any digital monitor is a fixed pixel size. A CRT monitor, being analog, can handle multiple-resolutions without issue, good for those of us with a library of older games. Although CRT monitors have a shadow mask, the tiny grains of phosphors respond independently to the electron beam, so mask boundaries are ignored without requiring any up or down conversion. It's not just video and images, text on shadow mask (non-triniton) monitors have smooth edges versus the jagged edges seen on digital (or other rectangular pixel) monitors. Eventually I'll get a digital monitor, but there will be some loss of quality compared to the CRT monitors I have now.

When 2560x1600 resolution reaches smaller monitor sizes and a lower price, I'll probably buy one, and then I will need a much faster video card to deal with that. Seems like a year or so away though.

 

[welshmousepk]

most likely.

good post btw, i learned something

certainly sounds like you don't need to upgrade right now though. certainly not to a 5870,

 

[megamanx00]

Why would you use a 16:9 ratio on a CRT? Why not just capture at normal 4:3 ratio and just scale it to 480p? I imagine that it would be freaking annoying to try and play a game at an aspect ratio different than your monitor.

Anyway, newer games do make use of more than two cores, so yeah you would be CPU limited in newer games, especially at that resolution. If you use full AA and AF at 1600x1200 you would see more of a difference in your FPS, but without that, or at 1280x960, a 4870 should be more than enough which is why you don't see much improvement going to a 5870.

 

[jonpaul37]

I'm one of those rare people still using a CRT monitor, Viewsonic G225FB (20" viewable). Although it supports up to 2048x1536 resolution, I'm running most of my games at 1280x960 or 1600x1200.

I tried an ATI HD5870 video card and didn't see much improvment in fps with the games I play (mostly racing games), perhaps 10% or so. In addition all HD5xxxx video cards have a bug that forces refresh rate to 60hz when using a 16:9 resolution, an annoyance on a CRT monitor where 75hz and 85hz (or faster) are the preferred rates. In case you're wondering, I use 16:9 resolutions when capturing "widescreen" videos from games, mostly for youtube uploads, mostly 1280x720 (it looks vertically streched when recording, but the captured videos will have the proper aspect ratio).

I considered a nVIdia card, but there's less speed gain with these, and apparently more variation in the quality of these cards depending on who make these.

CPU's are a similar issue. I currently have a X6800 Core 2, 2.93ghz, and for most games, more cores isn't going to help much, just the cpu clock speed.

Looks, like I'll be waiting for the next genreation of cpu's and video cards before I buy a new system.

Please specify, is that a Quad Core QX6800 clocked @ 2.93 GHz?

 

[rcgldr]

Please specify, is that a Quad Core QX6800 clocked @ 2.93 GHz?

No, just a dual core X6800, not the quad core.

 

[jonpaul37]

that would explain the bottleneck then.

I thought it was a quad QX6800 that you were talking about... that CPU will not bottleneck a 5870...

 

[nforce4max]

sounds like a bottleneck.

at that low a resolution, your GPU doesn't have room to flex it muscles, and the CPU is holding back the framerate.

playing at a higher resolution would likely show no performance hit. if so, that means a GPU bottleneck.

a 5870 is certainly overkill for that resolution though. a CPU upgrade would help increase your framerates, but a monitor upgrade would be the best choice.

Good riddance you are suggesting a new monitor when all this user needs is a better cpu and you said your self a cpu bottleneck.

CRTs aren't that bad plus I am rocking a few right now which out lasted my LCD and my 42 ED plasma. Yea N64 and atari on a big screen sweet. =/

 

[nforce4max]

Why would you use a 16:9 ratio on a CRT? Why not just capture at normal 4:3 ratio and just scale it to 480p? I imagine that it would be freaking annoying to try and play a game at an aspect ratio different than your monitor.

Anyway, newer games do make use of more than two cores, so yeah you would be CPU limited in newer games, especially at that resolution. If you use full AA and AF at 1600x1200 you would see more of a difference in your FPS, but without that, or at 1280x960, a 4870 should be more than enough which is why you don't see much improvement going to a 5870.

Screen recording but it seams that I my self have gotten around the aspect ratio issue when uploading on youtube. I use windows media encoder. As for cpu usage Wow can now use more than 2 cores after a recent patch as for Second life you want to get the best thing you can find even that new 6 core cpu will find a heavy work load with that game. BUGGED

 

[notty22]

Looks, like I'll be waiting for the next genreation of cpu's and video cards before I buy a new system.

I guess its good for your bank account that you have come to the conclusions you have.
But a 150 dollar AMD cpu or Intel i5750 would allow the 5870 to give you twice+ the GPU power of a 4870. With a 2.93 Conroe, it not just lacking mhz, its mhz (which is important), its architecture, and its lacking cores(which can be argued) , but their are much better cpu's available. After all your running NFS shift on low detail ?

 

[welshmousepk]

Good riddance you are suggesting a new monitor when all this user needs is a better cpu and you said your self a cpu bottleneck.

CRTs aren't that bad plus I am rocking a few right now which out lasted my LCD and my 42 ED plasma. Yea N64 and atari on a big screen sweet. =/

you are kidding right? i pointed out the CPU bottlenceck adn RECOMENDED a new monitor. if you think a 5870 is a good idea for that resolution, then quite frankly you are an idiot.

i didn't say a CRT was bad, i just said that if he wanted to get the most out of a 5870 he would need to upgrade to a higher res monitor (this is before i realized he had already returned the 5870)

 

[rcgldr]

Why would you use a 16:9 ratio on a CRT?

To capture at 1280x720, one of the preferred formats for youtube. The other is 1920x1080, which I can also use, but there doesn't seem to be much benefit from this at youtube after a video goes through youtube's compression.

play a game at an aspect ratio different than your monitor.

As mentioned before, the image is just stretched vertically. I could reduce vertical size on the monitor with black bars to retain aspect ratio, but that could lead to burn in.

After all your running NFS shift on low detail ?

Only car detail set to low, everything else maxed out. If car detail is also maxed, the frame rates drop into the mid 40's when there are a large number of cars directly in front of yours, which occurs at the beginning of any offline race. The back marker AI cars in NFS Shift also tend to crash a lot, adding to the graphics overhead. Setting car detail to low bumps the frame rate to mid 50's, and also eliminates a stutter issue.

The main issue is a stutter problem that inteferes with gameplay. In this preview of NFS Shift's patch 1.02 with a beta Catalyst driver, at max resolution, the preview reported a stutter problem present with the HD4870X2 that was not present with the HD5870, even though frame rates were about the same:

Though the difference in framerates is small, the difference in gameplay was huge. Using the HD 4870 X2 at 2560x1600 with 24X CFAA, the game was not smooth at all. It was choppy and there was a huge amount of input latency. It took longer for the car or brake to turn after we pressed the button telling it so, and so we crashed a lot more.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2009/11/10/need_for_speed_shift_gameplay_performance_iq/7

 

[nforce4max]

you are kidding right? i pointed out the CPU bottlenceck adn RECOMENDED a new monitor. if you think a 5870 is a good idea for that resolution, then quite frankly you are an idiot.

i didn't say a CRT was bad, i just said that if he wanted to get the most out of a 5870 he would need to upgrade to a higher res monitor (this is before i realized he had already returned the 5870)

Jack ass, not all of us play for frame rate.

 

[welshmousepk]

what the hell are you talking about? that doesn't even make sense.

are you saying that people will buy a new 400 dollar card that offers no performance increase?

i don't appreciate being insulted, especially by someone who obviously has no idea what the hell is going on.
if you think buying a 5870 to play at less than HD resolution is a good idea, you have no reason to be posting.

what reason would you buy a 400 dollar card other than to improve performance?
none of the other features of a 5870 would help the OP, and he's already made it perfectly clear that performance WAS the reason he bought the card. if you can't read the thread, or offer any contructive responses, then just get out.

 

[nforce4max]

what the hell are you talking about? that doesn't even make sense.

are you saying that people will buy a new 400 dollar card that offers no performance increase?

i don't appreciate being insulted, especially by someone who obviously has no idea what the hell is going on.
if you think buying a 5870 to play at less than HD resolution is a good idea, you have no reason to be posting.

what reason would you buy a 400 dollar card other than to improve performance?
none of the other features of a 5870 would help the OP, and he's already made it perfectly clear that performance WAS the reason he bought the card. if you can't read the thread, or offer any contructive responses, then just get out.

Did I say that no can you quote ware I had said that the 5870 didn't provide a performance increase? Some of us play not for fps but eye candy. It does no good to play in high res when the game looks like craps with little or no filtering or large textures. On my main rig I play with 64XQ aa forced in most of my games.

 

[welshmousepk]

Did I say that no can you quote ware I had said that the 5870 didn't provide a performance increase? Some of us play not for fps but eye candy. It does no good to play in high res when the game looks like craps with little or no filtering or large textures. On my main rig I play with 64XQ aa forced in most of my games.

firstly, a little punctuation would stop you looking so stupid.

secondly, we already discussed that the OP is maxing out his settings (minus car detail) with his current card.

you have failed to read the post, and are making idiotic statements. the OP is not going to get the most of a 5870 at 1280x720 res. fact.

i'm done arguing now, since you obviously have no idea what you are going on about. lets not derail a thread that is by all means closed.