Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: Karnak on May 01, 2010, 01:46:23 PM
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On the afternoon of Thursday, April 29th my eVGA 8800GT suffered a "stroke" and afterward would only produce low resolution, 2D images with a lot of corruption. After trying without success to improve the situation I pulled the plug Friday evening. It was three years old. I am now running on its 7800GT predecessor which I still had in my filing cabinet. Needless to say, there has been a performance hit.
I am not terribly keen on buying a video card that will have to be replaced in short order. Due to that I am looking at either an eVGA GeForce GTX 470 for about $360 or a BFG GeForce GTX 275 for about $250. Money is not a non-issue, but can be dealt with, probably by giving up some days off to work overtime. The 470 is a Direct X 11 part whereas the 275 is a Direct X 10 part, so the 470 is a bit faster and potentially more useful down the road. I was planning on starting an upgrade project soon, but it seems I am being forced into it a bit earlier than I had planned on. I was going to start with my video card to see if that would allow me to push the motherboard/CPU/memory upgrades off for awhile.
I am, however, open to other people's opinions as to which way to look and what their experiences might have been with these cards. I do recognize that the 470 and 480 were only released in April.
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Don't get the fermi's unless you need a backup space heater.
Look at the 5770 and 5870.
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Why ATI? After my experiences with them I have avoided them like the plague.
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Because the HD5770 is the best bang for the buck card on the market currently. A single one runs AH great (I ran a single for ~4 months before buying my second).
What experiences have you had?
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Karnak, just in case you haven't already, I'd advise you to read through this thread (http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,284112.0.html) for info on the 470/480.
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Karnak, ATI is leading the pack these days. They've had major hits on their hands with 4800 and 5800 series compared to nVidia's latest flops. At least for another year until nVidia overcomes the mistakes it made recently, ATI will be the way to go.
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Spikes,
Horrible incompatibility, no driver support and poor performance are the things I associate with the ATI label.
Did they do better on Crossfire than nVidia did on SLI? Every SLI setup I have seen running has had rendering issues where it seemed the cards weren't 100% in sync.
As to the HD5770, is that a budget part? I see it is only $150, but generally when you do that you are basically throwing away the $150 as you shortly need to replace it with their actual "real" card, in my experience.
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Spikes,
Horrible incompatibility, no driver support and poor performance are the things I associate with the ATI label.
Did they do better on Crossfire than nVidia did on SLI? Every SLI setup I have seen running has had rendering issues where it seemed the cards weren't 100% in sync.
As to the HD5770, is that a budget part? I see it is only $150, but generally when you do that you are basically throwing away the $150 as you shortly need to replace it with their actual "real" card, in my experience.
The problems with ATI drivers is largely a thing in the past and are far more stable than the recent Nvidia drivers. With the 5xxx series, ATI is ahead of Nvidia in both quality of the card and software.
ack-ack
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Looking at the 5770 benchmarks on Firing Squad it seems like a pretty poor performer by current standards. What about the 5850? Spikes didn't mention that one, is there a problem with it?
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As to the HD5770, is that a budget part? I see it is only $150, but generally when you do that you are basically throwing away the $150 as you shortly need to replace it with their actual "real" card, in my experience.
IIRC currently Crossfire is a step up frmo SLI.
I can't tell you from experience that the HD5770s are long lasting...but I've had mine since October with zero issues...bought my second one a month or two ago.
I mentioned not the 5850 but the 5870...
Anything up from the 4870s, 4890s (two 4890s actually outperform two 5770s). Two 5770s outperform a 5870. The 5850 is just like the 5750...they are both great cards, but each has a slightly different clock and stream processor count, etc than it's newer brother.
If you want later tonight I can disable my second card and try a single in Crysis Warhead.
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Word is that the opinions about heat and power consumption are inflated opinions. I have been looking for the new cards and cant find one so that might curb your appetite. If you look hard you will see that the GTX 480s in SLI are a 100% performance gain over a single card (crossfire is not) which is probably why they are getting bought up as quickly as they are made available. These cards are overkill for AH. The reviewers I trust have said that the card runs a little hotter than the 8800 you had and they will consume more power under a load. Somehow I dont think AH is going to be much of a load compared to the DX11 over-tesellation tests these guys ran to pump the load up but you want to make sure your PSU is up to it.
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"which is probably why they are getting bought up as quickly as they are made available." LOL been reading up on fanboy sites eh?
Nivida stock is plummeting down with 20% yield rates on fermi wafers. This means Nvidia can not supply more than a fraction of the cards because most of them come straight out of the product line faulty! They would want to pump out multiple times more cards and even then they end up costing high figures. I wouldn't be surprised if a large number of the 20% would also fail prematurely.
Nvidia has always been over hyped and over priced IMO.
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3 years ago (heck even 12 months ago) I would have not have even CONSIDERED an ATI card, due to bad experiences with ATI in the past (over 10 years ago but still). Since then I have been using Nvidia with no problems... BUT the more I hear about ATI's newest generation of cards (57XX/58XX) the more I'm considering going that route when I DO upgrade. Apparently they are very good performers, use less power than you'd expect, and compatibility issues are as much of a non-issue now as the Nvidia cards.
For the record I currently run a Nvidia 9800GTX2+.
I've heard of too many issues with the newest generation of Nvidia (Fermi) cards for me to even justify even close to that kind of money for one (although the performance tests seem much better than expected), but then again I'm not the type of person who would spend that kind of money on a video card period.. regardless of how well it were to perform...
I would crossfire two $150 cards LONG BEFORE I spent $450-500+ one a single one...
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I'm not a big fan of buying two cards and running crossfire or SLI... what you save in money to get the performance of a higher end card you give back in the cost of electricity, for both the video cards and for air conditioning for the computer room.
I am however a fan of going with whichever card best meets the price/performance that I'm looking for, regardless of the brand of GPU. Nvidia and ATI have swapped places as the "leader" and "best value" many times since I bought my first 3d graphics card, and I'm sure they'll do it again many times in the future. Its not a good idea to be overly brand-loyal when it comes to video cards.
So all that said, if I were you, I'd figure out what the best single video card is for the performance you want, and buy that. It is going to be an ATI GPU, because they are the leader at the moment in both performance and value at pretty much every pricepoint.
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...Nvidia has always been over hyped and over priced IMO.
Yes and I noticed the price of Ati cards on Amazon are going through the roof.
http://www.amazon.com/PowerColor-Radeon-HD5970-GDDDR5-Displayport/dp/B002XT7LR6/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1272750169&sr=8-2
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my 2 picks would be either ATI 5770 or NV 285 gtx
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Thanks for the reminder guys I have three evga cards on the way now. :D
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It isn't just AH that I play though. World of Warcraft was taking my 8800 to low single digits in some cases at high detail settings. In a place where the 8800 did 10-15 frames per second, the 7800 was doing 1 frame every 5 to 10 seconds.
Basically, I want to get a card that will last a good while, at least as long as the 8800GT did. Because of that it should be a DX11 part, so really I think I am looking at the ATI 5850 or nVidia GTX 470.
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I think PC Games did a benchmark of WoW back in March...
yes here you go (German I think):
(http://i447.photobucket.com/albums/qq197/Chalenge08/GF100-WoW-1680.jpg)
Of course they got better results than you on the 8800 so you may have other things you could update too.
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My CPU, motherboard, memory and OS are all due for replacement too.
My framerates in WoW were usually in the 30s, but in high stress situations they tanked if all detail was maxed. I run all games at my native 1920x1200 resolution.
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I have to suggest you upgrade everything now (if you can) because it sounds like you have a bottleneck that is not the GPUs fault. It does look like a 270 would be plenty of card as would a 4890 or 5850 or whichever direction you intend to go.
Im buying the 480s to (hopefully) peg the fps on FSX. I havent had a problem with 8800s or 9800s or 295s either one and the guys that I have talked to that actually use the 480s for FSX are all happy (and no one reported a DOA card).
If you do go with Geforce I would get an evga just because of the lifetime warranty.
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Which reminds me.. have you checked into warrantying your 8800? They'll likely send you a GTS250 as a replacement.. or perhaps a 9800.. or maybe something better?
Maybe consider going that route and upgrading the rest of your system with the money you were going to spend on a Fermi...
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Pass week , my 8800 GT also as you said had a stroke , looked around and I ordered the MSI R5770 Hawk Radeon HD 5770 1GB 128-bit , what sold me was the ability to Overclock, but not realy a must and the twin fan and heat tubes was nice and low power consumption.. I ordered it on NewEgg.ca.. for 189$ plus shipping and regular taxes...
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Which reminds me.. have you checked into warrantying your 8800? They'll likely send you a GTS250 as a replacement.. or perhaps a 9800.. or maybe something better?
Maybe consider going that route and upgrading the rest of your system with the money you were going to spend on a Fermi...
Oh! Dont know how I missed that. :D
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Thats why you don't buy from amazon?
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Dont blame Amazon for that sellers price! I have saved quite a bit of money shopping there and found not only hard to find items like video cards but excellent deals on a lot of items. When the evga mother boards I liked to use became hard to find I found them on Amazon even after newegg and tigerdirect ran out.
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If money is no object go ATI HD5970. Make sure you have 13" of lenght room in your case and a beefy PSU.
If you can't warrent spending £500 on a HD5970, go GTX480 or GTX470. The new Nvidia cards are the best price/performance right now.
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Yeah, I am leaning towards the GTX 470 right now. Money is an object. :P
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Yeah, I am leaning towards the GTX 470 right now. Money is an object. :P
I wouldn't plan on the GTX470 making that huge of a difference with that dated hardware.
BTW if you do go that route, can you send me your broken 8800 so I can get it replaced under warranty? Thanks!
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I wouldn't plan on the GTX470 making that huge of a difference with that dated hardware.
BTW if you do go that route, can you send me your broken 8800 so I can get it replaced under warranty? Thanks!
I am going to try to get it replaced under warranty before I spend any money, sorry. Only if it is out of warranty will I spend money on a new card right now.
As to not making that much of a difference, well, it would only be the first step in the upgrade path and it will make the largest initial difference.
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Yes and I noticed the price of Ati cards on Amazon are going through the roof.
http://www.amazon.com/PowerColor-Radeon-HD5970-GDDDR5-Displayport/dp/B002XT7LR6/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1272750169&sr=8-2
Luckily Amazon is by far not the only shop in the universe. Their pricing does really not concern anyone.
On a related note if you're getting a 470 or 480, you're gonna need to invest to a whole new kind of hardware that you previously didn't need: Closed cup noise isolating headphones. Those will take a good 40db edge off the vacuum cleaner-like noiselevel of fermi. :D
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My computer has four 10,000rpm drives in it right now. I doubt any video card is going to significantly increase or decrease its noise output.
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I have heard this before and I dont believe it Ripley. The temperatures that have been reported by users are not that far out of line with 8800s and are certainly below the 295s I am already using.
If you are having trouble with noise levels in your PC I know a really good solution. :D
http://www.amazon.com/Fiskars-7854-Splitting-28-Inch-Handle/dp/B00004SD7B/ref=sr_1_39?ie=UTF8&s=hi&qid=1272843458&sr=8-39
Unplug your system before using this product. :bolt:
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Managed to get all the info eVGA needed to do an RMA. It will most likely be replaced with a 9800GT as that is what is available now.
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Check out this bloke's youtube channel for some ATI5970 Vs GTX480 bench testing: http://www.youtube.com/user/maxishine#p/u/1/eras9dtIuUE
I take back what I said about the GTX4** being the best price/performance. They are dawgchit.
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GTX480 won this one though: http://www.youtube.com/user/maxishine#p/u/2/iQLRP24rKhk
Seems unclear at best.
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I don't think GTA4 scales too well with multi GPU's. the 5970 crushes the GTX 480 on everything else.
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Misread the video. Edited out. 5970 is about $150-$200 more expensive than the 480.
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There's only a $50 difference in price where this guy lives, maybe the GTX480's are limited stock in Aus.