Graphic Cards Fastest Gaming Solutions Compared

i_max2k2 said:
As the title says- 2x 4870x2 Vs 3x GTX 280

I hope there shouldn't be any debates about comparison, this looks pretty fair to me, since 2x 4870x2 = $1100, 3x280 ~$1300, simply coz people do compare 4870x2 to 280 with a $100 difference.

Also 55nm 200 parts should be clocked similar to or higher than the overclocked 280's in this review, and they would be cheaper too!

Skulltrail - XFX GTX 280 XXX 3-Way SLi /4870X2 CFx - Introduction - DriverHeaven.net
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see this comparision
 
It would have been intresting if DH had compared 4870 + 4870X2 (3 way CrossfireX) instead of 2 x 4870X2..
Skulltrail do have some issue with 48XX series as they mentioned it.. HD48XX series waiting for Nehalem & X58 to pant off GTX..lol
 
The problem is that the only place you can do this comparison is on a Skulltrail platform. If you don't have one, then you have to choose between the two, and unfortunately SLI is only available on nVidia chipsets. That is really the end of the discussion for me, as my 680i is hot, buggy and overclocks like a dog. nV is not getting any SLI love on nehalems either, so the discussion is purely academic - as is the comparison between 110 frames versus 160. Both work equally well, and the difference will buy some nice DDR3, not to mention the cost of a 790i board will be significantly more than a good X38 board - which will be quicker and less buggy.

So yeah, it's a good article, as is your prediction of the 55nm results, however I'll believe it when I see it.

The amount of carbon they generated in those tests must be 8 times the annual emmission of a poor Ethiopian family. What a waste.

Edit: I forgot - for a single card, the 280 may make more sense, if you're running 1920 - cooler, quieter, and cheaper. For 2560, 4870X2 is the better bet. It wins all tests but one against 280, is down only 3:4 against the 280 SLI in this review: AnandTech: AMD's Radeon HD 4870 X2 - Testing the Multi-GPU Waters To put it into perspective, the 280SLI is ~$900 and the X2 is ~570 (retail, not MSRP). Why would you need any more power? In any case, nVidia was pretty clear that the competition for 4870X2 is technically the 260SLI setup. Whereas that may be true, you do have to buy an nVidia platform for that to happen.
 
sangram said:
The problem is that the only place you can do this comparison is on a Skulltrail platform. If you don't have one, then you have to choose between the two, and unfortunately SLI is only available on nVidia chipsets. That is really the end of the discussion for me, as my 680i is hot, buggy and overclocks like a dog. nV is not getting any SLI love on nehalems either, so the discussion is purely academic - as is the comparison between 110 frames versus 160. Both work equally well, and the difference will buy some nice DDR3, not to mention the cost of a 790i board will be significantly more than a good X38 board - which will be quicker and less buggy.

So yeah, it's a good article, as is your prediction of the 55nm results, however I'll believe it when I see it.

The amount of carbon they generated in those tests must be 8 times the annual emmission of a poor Ethiopian family. What a waste.

Edit: I forgot - for a single card, the 280 may make more sense, if you're running 1920 - cooler, quieter, and cheaper. For 2560, 4870X2 is the better bet. It wins all tests but one against 280, is down only 3:4 against the 280 SLI in this review: AnandTech: AMD's Radeon HD 4870 X2 - Testing the Multi-GPU Waters To put it into perspective, the 280SLI is ~$900 and the X2 is ~570 (retail, not MSRP). Why would you need any more power? In any case, nVidia was pretty clear that the competition for 4870X2 is technically the 260SLI setup. Whereas that may be true, you do have to buy an nVidia platform for that to happen.
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I do agree with most of what you have said, and yes for SLI we do need nvidia chipset which isn't really comparable with any intel chipset, but that said, my point was 3 280 gpu's are faster than 4 r770's.

Just like skulltrail we will have nforce 200 chip on the x58 which will enable SLI, availability of which however would depend a lot on the 55nm launch. And I do think we will see some fast 200b chips pretty soon!
 
If you've been keeping up with news, a lot of mobo makers aren't going to be putting the 200 chip on their boards. The amount of real estate on an ATX board is very limited, and there's room only on E-ATX boards for the chip. X58 is still a dual-chip solution, so it's not going to be very easy to add the 200 unless you go to a 12-layer board, and that'll push the boards into the $400 territory.

And what makes matters worse, a single nF200 chip has only X16, so for full x16/x16 SLI you need two chips. And to make it even worse, nV is pricing the chips to force manufacturers to add their chips to all their lineup. So if you want to have a line of X58 boards with SLI as an option, you pay 30 dollars per chip. If you agree to not have any boards without the chip, you pay only 20. And if you want two, well, you're looking at a board of over 450 dollars. Sorry, I'll just look for something without it, I can live with a few less FPS.

As for the number of GPU arguments, you're right about 3 vs 4, but the 3 also cost more than the 4. One has to look at all the parameters: the fastest FPS is just bragging rights. From a personal perspective, one has to look at frames vs price vs power consumption if you're looking for the sensible solution.

I'll take a random benchmark on that review you linked to: WIC (2560 resolution, it's what I use). The SLI setup beats the 4870X2 by 9fps, or 8%. It costs 18% more. 10% win to the X2. Only in a few games (Crysis and Oblivion) does the margin of victory exceed the margin of cost, and in all cases, the X2 provides a playable frame rate.

I see your enthusiasm and excitement for the nV cards, and also that the point of the review was valour and not discretion. While that is fine, I don't know that either solution is appropriate from my point of view, less so the 280 setup because of the slaving to nV chipsets.
 
@ imax
3 x 280 are faster coz HD48XX have issue with Skulltrail.. Right? We have seen in most cases where GTX 280 Sli got beaten by 4870X2 at 2560..If DH had tested 4870 + 4870X2, this might would have scaled better as was the case with 3870X2 + 3870..:)
 
muzux2 said:
@ imax
3 x 280 are faster coz HD48XX have issue with Skulltrail.. Right? We have seen in most cases where GTX 280 Sli got beaten by 4870X2 at 2560..If DH had tested 4870 + 4870X2, this might would have scaled better as was the case with 3870X2 + 3870..:)
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If that would have had been the case the fps would have been drastically low for all games, also the situations where 4870x2 is faster then 280 sli arnt many, and for most cases I would think there would be a cpu bottleneck!
 
There are several issues with that comparision.

1. The ideal comparison should be 2 x 4870X2 vs 2 x GTX 280 as 4870X2 is competition for GTX280.

2. They are using a factory overclocked XFX GTX280 XXX cards againist stock 4870X2 cards.

3. Even if we compare 2 x 4870X2 with 3 x GTX280, the performance difference is justified by the price difference.

4. Note that the current price of GTX280 is after a forced decrease from its inital $650 to $450. 4870X2 cards have been just been released and would probably settle for a sub $500 price soon in which case the price to performance ratio would become much better for 4870X2.

However I do agree it is still the fastest gaming solution money can buy at this point. But still getting an nVidia board is a major downer for SLI. There are far too many problems with these boards compared to X38/X48 in terms of stability.

Technically there should be no limitation for running multi GPU, but nVidia choose a risky path by allowing SLI only on their boards or on other boards through an additional chip that vendors have to buy from nVidia. Even that chip is not perfect as its mentioned by Intel that its the hottest chip on the skulltrail motherboards. Unless nVidia comes up with something to allow Multi GPU on any motherboard with out any additional chip, its future for SLI is grim and more so especially since it seems they are going out of the chipset business.
 
Whatever, bored listening ATI will fix powerplay, ATI will fix skulltrail issues, ATI will fix Crysis CF scaling, ATI will fix AVIVO, ATI will fix ATI tray tools compatibility, ATI will fix fan speed, Why it happens only with ATI, why launch such product in hurry.

Honestly answer, we always buy mobo with good BIOS na ?? No1 wants to buy mobo and wait 1yr for best BIOS version.

Dont take me as fanboy LOL, ma next GPU is ATI :rofl:
 
Lord Nemesis said:
There are several issues with that comparision.

1. The ideal comparison should be 2 x 4870X2 vs 2 x GTX 280 as 4870X2 is competition for GTX280.

2. They are using a factory overclocked XFX GTX280 XXX cards againist stock 4870X2 cards.

3. Even if we compare 2 x 4870X2 with 3 x GTX280, the performance difference is justified by the price difference.

4. Note that the current price of GTX280 is after a forced decrease from its inital $650 to $450. 4870X2 cards have been just been released and would probably settle for a sub $500 price soon in which case the price to performance ratio would become much better for 4870X2.

However I do agree it is still the fastest gaming solution money can buy at this point. But still getting an nVidia board is a major downer for SLI. There are far too many problems with these boards compared to X38/X48 in terms of stability.

Technically there should be no limitation for running multi GPU, but nVidia choose a risky path by allowing SLI only on their boards or on other boards through an additional chip that vendors have to buy from nVidia. Even that chip is not perfect as its mentioned by Intel that its the hottest chip on the skulltrail motherboards. Unless nVidia comes up with something to allow Multi GPU on any motherboard with out any additional chip, its future for SLI is grim and more so especially since it seems they are going out of the chipset business.
Click to expand...

Well I would think the ideally comparison would be 260 TRI SLI against the 2x 4870x2. I do agree 280 was launched at $650, but the price drop is not a regular one, its the MSRP that has been reduced, the 4870x2 will come down in price according to supply and demand situations not a MSRP decrease.

The performance difference is also justified comparing a single 280 with a a single 4870x2 being $100 expensive, we also get the single gpu advantages and so on.

And of course SLI chipset sucks and do agree completely with the platform limitations!
 
@muzux, that was SLI, this is tri-SLI. You can expect the third card to catch up.

And 4870+4870X2 is terrible. The 512MB framebuffer on the 4870 drags down the performance of the X2, remember that's a true 1GB card. IIRC that config gets thrashed in all benchmarks (I'm talking only about my resolution, 2560).

But you're right, the 280SLI is beaten quite a few times by the 4870X2, and the reverse is also true. And no, it's not the CPU. It's two competing setups trading blows. Except that one costs 50%/400 dollars more than the other, and requires a buggy and unstable board to run.

I saw the new posts while I was typing this. nVidia has too many things to worry about now. They're kind of outflanked. If they had not pussyfooted and just put a 512-bit GDDR5 memory controller like the speculation said they would, they would probably have not seen this day. The GT200 was a big flop for me, I had invested in an SLI board waiting for the launch, but I see I was a little stupid doing that. I honestly don't know what to do in the current situation, but it sure doesn't involve anything in green.
 
I agree that the correct competition for 4870X2CF is 260 tri-SLI, and then the nV starts looking good from price, performance(if it matches) and power consumption.
 
If i have to build monster setup i'd choose 4870X2 + 4870 1GB setup over 2 x 4870X2..I mean to say here, 4 way CFX doesn't scale too much over 3 - way CFX esp in Dx 10 titles. Had Read it somewhre in feb on AT, will dig it.

4870X2 + 4870 1GB= $850-900
:)
 
With the kind of power bills we're looking at in India, I'm still going with the single fastest card by December :eek:hyeah:

Also I feel a little guilty using 2 cards in my PC exclusively for gaming.
 
Do they measure the carbon footprints of such setup's as clearly these setups will require you to game on 30" panels, which are huge power guzzlers !!!
 
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