460 gtx 1gb or 6870 for AH.

[HAMMERR]

The performance between both of these in benchmarks is really close for other games.  Is there any difference now days  between how Aces High treats nvidia vs AMD?  I know in the past AH shadows on AMD/ati cards took a big performance hit..  Is this still true?

[Chalenge]

You must mean the GTX 470 and 5870? because the 460 and 5870 are NOT close in performance except at lower resolutions like 1680x1050.

[columbus]

[715]

Note the new 68 series is not the next gen 58 series.  They made an unfortunate naming change.  The new 6870 is more a next gen 5770, and is slower than a 5870.  The next gen 5870 will be the 6970.  This benchmark shows the GTX460 to be almost as fast as the 6870:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3987/amds-radeon-6870-6850-renewing-competition-in-the-midrange-market/12

I'd be interested in the answer to the OPs question as well.  I have an ATI 4850 and while the performance in AH is fine (including with shadows) I get a lot of z-fighting artifacts (like seeing the inside textures of distant barns instead of the outside texture).  Do Nvidia boards handle this better in AH (say by having high resolution z-buffers)?

[columbus]

Note the new 68 series is not the next gen 58 series.  They made an unfortunate naming change.  The new 6870 is more a next gen 5770, and is slower than a 5870.  The next gen 5870 will be the 6970.  This benchmark shows the GTX460 to be almost as fast as the 6870:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3987/amds-radeon-6870-6850-renewing-competition-in-the-midrange-market/12

I'd be interested in the answer to the OPs question as well.  I have an ATI 4850 and while the performance in AH is fine (including with shadows) I get a lot of z-fighting artifacts (like seeing the inside textures of distant barns instead of the outside texture).  Do Nvidia boards handle this better in AH (say by having high resolution z-buffers)?

[HAMMERR]

To clear things up. I did mean the sixty eight seventy.

What does aces High run? Dx10? Dx9?

That would play a great factor.

 

[HAMMERR]

Note the new 68 series is not the next gen 58 series.  They made an unfortunate naming change.  The new 6870 is more a next gen 5770, and is slower than a 5870.  The next gen 5870 will be the 6970.  This benchmark shows the GTX460 to be almost as fast as the 6870:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3987/amds-radeon-6870-6850-renewing-competition-in-the-midrange-market/12

I'd be interested in the answer to the OPs question as well.  I have an ATI 4850 and while the performance in AH is fine (including with shadows) I get a lot of z-fighting artifacts (like seeing the inside textures of distant barns instead of the outside texture).  Do Nvidia boards handle this better in AH (say by having high resolution z-buffers)?

Let's just say that when I went from nvidia 7600gts to the 4850 years ago I had the same problems. In general the 4850 was a lot faster in other games but not AH. I'm trying to figure out if the AH bias is still towards nvidia because then a 5-10% deficit in most games by the 460gtx is ok with a gain in AH

[Chalenge]

Its not an AH bias. The older Ati cards sucked at flight sims and especially sims with things like clouds and weather which was very noticeable in FSX for instance. My squad has a guy running 58 series in Crossfire and I havent heard him complain of anything obvious yet except that GVs have changed in the last ten months (nothing related to the video cards).

This is the first I have heard of the new series but I will tell you that across the board you can improve your game play with a faster CPU more reliably than with a video card. If you look at the bechmark graphics columbus posted you can see that the 4870 posts very nice frame rates but I know first hand it sucks at flight sims with weather. Right above it is the GTS 450 which appears to do better but I would suggest the 260 over both of them in flight simming. Neither one of them is ideal for me though because I like the higher resolutions.  As far as I know AH is DX9.

@715: I think thats an issue to be addressed in future updates. Right now we can see field details from GVs through the hills and the field gun mounds are transparent from ground view also. Im sure it will get fixed. Unless one or the other decides to drop some DirectX feature Im pretty sure there will not be a bias in AH toward one over the other.

[BoilerDown]

Both ATI (AMD) and Nvidia are releasing new products and/or lowering prices in the next few weeks.  Now is an astonishingly bad time (price-wise) to buy a video card compared to a month from now.  Let the price breaks roll in, then buy.

As for which is better for AH, I don't have any experience with that, so I'll leave it to everyone else.

[715]

@715: I think thats an issue to be addressed in future updates. Right now we can see field details from GVs through the hills and the field gun mounds are transparent from ground view also. Im sure it will get fixed. Unless one or the other decides to drop some DirectX feature Im pretty sure there will not be a bias in AH toward one over the other.

Yeah, I get that as well, but it isn't the same glitch.  What I'm talking about is more subtle (I'm unrealistically picky when it comes to image quality).  If, say, you are driving along in a tank with a zoomed in view, distant barns (the long ones) will flash alternately showing parts of their insides then parts of their outsides.  Even distant views of tanks sometimes do the same thing as do some other objects.  It has to do with the z-buffer showing textures, that should be hidden, through the surfaces that should be hiding them.  (The con mothership had terrible z-fighting on my ATI 4850 for example.)

[Chalenge]

Im not sure how the z-buffer thing works but I have noticed problems with what I would call "stacked transparencies" all along. I would guess its a tradeoff in getting AH to play more speedily.

[Chalenge]

I was just looking at the Anandtech bench on the 5970 and 480 when I noticed the 5870 seems to have a driver issue with large textures and high resolutions. Check out the Crysis Warhead bench at 2560x1600 resolution with Enthusiast shaders (1.8 vs 22?):

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/165?vs=158

[Chalenge]

I was just looking at the Anandtech bench on the 5970 and 480 when I noticed the 5870 seems to have a driver issue with large textures and high resolutions. Check out the Crysis Warhead bench at 2560x1600 resolution with Enthusiast shaders (1.8 vs 22?):

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/165?vs=158

I was just looking at the Anandtech bench on the 5970 and 480 when I noticed the 5970 seems to have a driver issue with large textures and high resolutions. Check out the Crysis Warhead bench at 2560x1600 resolution with Enthusiast shaders (1.8 vs 22?):

Fixed.

[HAMMERR]

Well I just wanted to let everyone know that I finally made a decision regarding the card.

I had the chance to do some Overclocking and benchmarking work on a 6850 and a 460GTX over the past week.  While I could OC the 6850 to perform with parody in most games with the 460GTX, the fact I had to use the ATI Tray Tools to get things to work well in AH set me off.  I'd rather stick with the Nvidia driver toolset.  its even better than the stock AMD/ATI CCC tools and far better than ATI Tray Tools.  So a lil performance traded for a little usability.

I'll have some more detailed FPS notes after I record a couple of videos to benchmark with.