New 4830

TerrorFirmer

Another one slipped out. Looks set to attack the 9800GT/8800GT in Nvidias lineup, is there any reason left to purchase any Nvidia card?

GTX280 - Beaten soundly by 4870X2; almost matched by half price 4870
GTX260 - Beaten by the 4870
9800GTX+ - Beaten/matched by cheaper HD4850
9800GT/8800GT - now rivalled by the 4830
9600GT - Beaten by 4850; matched by far cheaper 4670
9500GT - beaten by 4670
9400GT - beaten by 4550

AlmightyCushion

Fanboys or mis-informed idiots (e.g. the old "ati have rubbish drivers" type response). It's a pity amd aren't doing the same in the cpu side of things, that would be pretty sweet.

PogMoThoin

And Ati support DirectX10.1 which gives antialiasing without the performance hit, Win Win Win

great

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

Another one slipped out. Looks set to attack the 9800GT/8800GT in Nvidias lineup, is there any reason left to purchase any Nvidia card?

GTX280 - Beaten soundly by 4870X2; almost matched by half price 4870
GTX260 - Beaten by the 4870
9800GTX+ - Beaten/matched by cheaper HD4850
9800GT/8800GT - now rivalled by the 4830
9600GT - Beaten by 4850; matched by far cheaper 4670
9500GT - beaten by 4670
9400GT - beaten by 4550

well nvidia wont be happy with this one the

Ati Radeon 4850 X2

:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D

Matt Simis

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

Another one slipped out. Looks set to attack the 9800GT/8800GT in Nvidias lineup, is there any reason left to purchase any Nvidia card?

Drivers and support (on Windows). We have had to ditch our 4870s as ATI dont support Stereo3D or Surround Gaming. nVidia have always been ahead in regards software engineering, but its actually getting stupid now, ATI just look the other way. Sure, right now they have good HW, but the last 18months was pretty dire there too. Peats were selling GTX 280s for EUR380 btw, which was pretty reasonable IMO, however Ill probably get another 8800GTX and play with TRI SLI. If the 260/280 came down in price (to match ATI) then I might be tempted. I was rather gutted my 4870x2 plan is in tatters.

I dont care who makes my cards, they just have to work with what Im doing and ATI currently (and have never) do not.

On Linux I only use ATI cards as they have open source drivers, but this is not ATIs doing, its a community project!

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

Fanboys or mis-informed idiots (e.g. the old "ati have rubbish drivers" type response). It's a pity amd aren't doing the same in the cpu side of things, that would be pretty sweet.

EDIT, lol just saw the above. I can assure you that ATIs reputation is well earned, ATI do not have as good a driver set or software support, which could be taken as an example of their opponents prowess and not a criticism against ATI. The ropely CCC crashing I can get overlook, but the above lack of software support I cannot.

Overheal

Give it 2 years. If nvidia fails to make a big innovation in either its performance, price or quality, they'll lose the majority share of the market. Right now ATI is beating them on all 3 of those fronts.

projectmayhem

Overheal wrote: »

Give it 2 years. If nvidia fails to make a big innovation in either its performance, price or quality, they'll lose the majority share of the market. Right now ATI is beating them on all 3 of those fronts.

I think part of nVidia's issue right now is that they're not gunning for ATi in the way they used to battle it out. Their engineering focus is cheaper performance chips to take on intel integrated solutions, as in the long-run there's more money there compared to the "enthusiast" market

Overheal

projectmayhem wrote: »

I think part of nVidia's issue right now is that they're not gunning for ATi in the way they used to battle it out. Their engineering focus is cheaper performance chips to take on intel integrated solutions, as in the long-run there's more money there compared to the "enthusiast" market

well theyre integrated chips have a terrible tendancy to break down from heat cycling, so they arent doing that very well either.

christophicus

Ehh, the 9800GTX+ is slightly better then the 4850 and supports CUDA and PhysX. Granted it does not have DX10.1 but I doubt too many people worried about that.

I am wrong ? Is the 4850 really better ?

astrofool

The 4850, to memory, has outpaced the 9800GTX+ in most benchmarks. Have a quick look through here: http://www.elara.ie/members/vieworder.asp?orderid=160796#

Also, touting physx and cuda (two proprietory little used technologies) as big features, while belittling DX10.1 (industry wide, backwards/forwards compatible) support, is just ridiculous.

PogMoThoin

Gimme DirectX10.1 and free antialiasing anyday, thats what dx10.1 is, it moves antialiasing algorithm calculations on2 the card, Nvidia need to emulate this thru software in their driver (the way its always been done) by calculating antialiasing in 2 or 3 passes which uses alot of memory.

Matt Simis

Christ, really think you lot are expecting a bit much from the HD4000 range!



Fallout 3 uses the GameBryo engine, so used in The Elder Scrolls IV, The Guild 2, Empire Earth 3, and Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning too.




Value for money is awesome, but they are not the fastest in every situation.


The GTX260 is trumping the HD4870 512MB by some margin and still ahead of the 1GB version. The GTX280 is obviously the fastest single GPU card yet still manages to pull ahead of the 4870x2 in the above scenarios.

TerrorFirmer

No-one said that Ati are outright faster in every situation, but value for money, when it's this good in every area, is what counts for most. When I say that the 4870 beats the GTX 260, when you consider both cards trade places, and roughly work out the same, with the 4870 costing less - I call the 4870 a winner. Apply that to the massive difference in price and generally slight performance loss with the 4870 versus the GTX280....I mean, for every person that is willing to shell out big time for a few extra frames, there are tenfold more willing to take a hit of a frame or two but save a great deal... if someone offered you an average of 100FPS for 500 euro or 85FPS for 250 euro, which would you choose? Just an example.

It's also easy to say the GTX260 and GTX280 are faster in this and that - and they are, in certain games - but reviews and value for money viability focus on a wide range of games, not just one or two. There are certain games known for notably lacklustre Ati performance, just as there is vice versa.

I'm a gamer and I know I wouldn't touch either GTX card when there are other cards that cost significantly less - it could mean an extra few gig's of ram, or a sound card, or so on to go with it- giving the same performance when you take in a range of games, not just one or two specifically.

If you went exclusively by that Fallout 3 and Far Cry graphs - the 4670 and 9500GT are competitors based directly on RRP (Nvidia tried to pathetically claim the 9600GSO rivals the 4670 despite the huge difference in RRP) then the 4670 is, on average, 572% faster then it's Nvidia counter-part!....a reason why reviews don't just incorporate 1 or 2 games alone to assess a card.

EDIT: Though GTX prices are actually dropping quite well lately, which totally changes the outlook on the cards - not so bad now as it was at initial launch of the HD4x line. The cheapest GTX260's actually rival the cheapest 1GB 4870 more or less, so I suppose if you were very specific with your titles....! But this has to hurting Nvidia badly to be continuously dropping prices when the manufacture process is so costly compared to Ati...and just to note I said the 4850 beats/matches 9800GTX+, not beats - both cards are still great in terms of price: performance. But under Vista I'd really rather the 4850.

Those graphs really sum up the incredible value in the lower end market.....79 euro gets you 25fps in two of the latest games at 1920x1200, max settings, AA and AF - switch off the AA in Fallout 3 and that'd jump to a playable level (30-35fps) at 1920x1200 max settings. Nvidia have nothing really in that bracket, the 9500Gt is a load of crap, the 9600GSO is way more expensive.

PogMoThoin

How many games are Nvidia holding from patching to DX10.1 where thay loose their slight advantage? There was a patch released for Assasins Creed that was prooven to benefit Ati, but it was removed quickly without proper explanation. If a game is advertised as being a Nvidia game tho, it seems Nvidia call the shots. Now we have a DX10.1 patch for Clear Sky hopefully we'll see more games updating.

Matt Simis

@TerrorFirmer
I wasnt specifically addressing anyone in my last reply! I see your edit and I agree, nVidia were just not a value proposition. They were nearly always faster in many games, noticeably faster in SLI/TRI SLI and have better software features (gimmicks if you please), but the pricing was waay out there.

With great thanks to ATI that nVidia not only dropped in price, but also released the pimped up Core 216 range. Its always been just a little disconcerting to me to see either side be so heavily pushed on forums, when today's pricing and performance are so close that's its back to plain preference or specific titles needs.

On launch of the HD4800 of course there was no comparison, but if you read your first thread and your last, I think you will see the subtle shift in mindset once you dig into todays pricing and performance.

ATIs range are excellent for the PC Gaming Industry as a whole, no longer is beating a consoles power a EUR600 investment, thanks to the 4850.

PogMoThoin wrote: »

How many games are Nvidia holding from patching to DX10.1 where thay loose their slight advantage? There was a patch released for Assasins Creed that was prooven to benefit Ati, but it was removed quickly without proper explanation. If a game is advertised as being a Nvidia game tho, it seems Nvidia call the shots. Now we have a DX10.1 patch for Clear Sky hopefully we'll see more games updating.

Come on now, thats just mud flinging and tin foil hats. Stick to the hard data. Stalker Clear Sky and Farcry 2 are nVidia partner games and both had DX10.1 patches, so let it go.

PogMoThoin

Matt Simis wrote: »

Come on now, thats just mud flinging and tin foil hats. Stick to the hard data. Stalker Clear Sky and Farcry 2 are nVidia partner games and both had DX10.1 patches, so let it go.

FarCry2 isn't DX10.1, even after the 1st patch, it was rumoured to be before release

Thread here about the removal of directX10.1 patch for Assasins creed