Help choose my video card plz :/

[Ryoku]

Originally Posted by Calindor

The reason you are dropping to 12-15 in a city has nothing to do with your video card. 50-70fps on a secluded area in a 5 year old game is nothing special.

that's not the point.
the point is that although Aion will have superior graphics vs L2, it's not superior by all that much.
If you are able to run an MMO with highly dense areas while maintaining decent playable framerates, you should be ok - from a theoretical point of view.
If you are able to run Crysis (original), let's say, with ultra high mod and watever (highest settings for the game), and maintain at least 25-30 or even 20-27 FPS, you'll do ok - as in your video card is set to go. All that is left is your RAM and CPU which hopefully and most likely, are better than average.

[Dreams]

If you can't build a PC this site is great to buy one....for about 1420 bucks you can get a:

800 watt power supply
Intel quad core 2.66 1333 FSB
EVGA nforce 780i SLI motherboard
3 Gig RAM
Dual 8800GT w/ 1 gig ram cards
320 gig hard drive
Vista Home 64 bit

Barely 1 year ago I paid 1,300 for my desktop. I got:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4400 +
2.31 GHz
2 GB of RAM
256 MB NVidia GeForce 8600 GT
250 GB of HD.
19 inch LCD monitor.

Barely a year ago. I can get a PC with the same specs now for about 500-600 dollars. Sadness.

[Diablo]

Right now.

GTX 280 is the best single card.

4780 1 GB is the best bang for buck card, the current sweet spot.

Here would go any GTX 260 with the 216core being slightly better.

the 4750 and 9800GT+ are toss ups.

9800GT+ in SLI beats at times the 4780X2 and the GTX 280.

I am ignoring multi GPU cards on purpose as I detest them.

[Akaris]

4870X2 > GTX280. More bang for less buck.

4870 < GTX260c216. Slightly more buck for comparably more bang.

4850 > Previous generation cards [3870, 8800, 9800...]. Best bang for buck.

[Shmak]

[Calindor]

Originally Posted by Ryoku

that's not the point.
the point is that although Aion will have superior graphics vs L2, it's not superior by all that much.
If you are able to run an MMO with highly dense areas while maintaining decent playable framerates, you should be ok - from a theoretical point of view.
If you are able to run Crysis (original), let's say, with ultra high mod and watever (highest settings for the game), and maintain at least 25-30 or even 20-27 FPS, you'll do ok - as in your video card is set to go. All that is left is your RAM and CPU which hopefully and most likely, are better than average.

if you can get anywhere over 30 fps in Aion during things like skill animations, your video card will be fine, if you slow doen because more people are on your screen, that is unrelated to your video card.

Originally Posted by Vakoh

While I agree with you mostly, the only better single card I would go with is the nVid GTX 280, and it costs about 200 dollars more than both of the 8800 GT's.

So for those who want very good graphics, and want to save some money now, the 8800's are still the best way to go.

But if you got the cash a single GTX 280 beats almost all or is pretty equal to all SLI set-up's, and then you can spend another chunk of cash for a second one later down the road.

Now if your a ATI fan then yes, the 4870 is your best bet of single card usage, and it will come close to the SLI set of the 8800's, however it is still about the same price as 2 8800's. So yes down the road you can get to be better with the crossfire set-ups....but looking at most of the crossfire set-up's it seems that the single card is better sometimes and the crossfire set is still behind when performing on games like Crysis against the 8800 GT set-up.

So I'm not saying the 8800 GT's / 1gig are the best....but they perform high enough in SLI mode to save that extra cash and probly not notice a great deal of difference in most(if not all) games you play them on.

Again feel free to look at any benchmarks on videocards this year, like the one I posted above so you don't have to buy something highpriced and still be happy with the performance of your computer.

a 4850 is much better bang for your buck than an 8800gt. And 4850CF is probably the best mid range build you can do. 4850 in CF will be getting 40-70% more frames than a single 4850, 4870, gtx260 or gtx280, and in many cases will beat GTX280 SLI and be only 5-10% behind in frames to a 4870CF or GTX280SLI.

[jg1981]

Nvidia still has something up its sleeve. The successor to the GTX 280 (GT212) is coming up soon.

Next year is going to be very exciting. ^_^

[Calindor]

I'm sure AMD will have something planned aswell, and I wouldnt count intel completely out just because theres an article of Nvidia laughing at them.

[jg1981]

Originally Posted by Calindor

I'm sure AMD will have something planned aswell, and I wouldnt count intel completely out just because theres an article of Nvidia laughing at them.

Yea Intel's Larrabee is coming out in the future too. At first I was very skeptical, but as I read more and more about it I don't even know what to think anymore. Supposedly, it's going to be a video card that will be a hybrid between a GPU and a multi-core CPU. If it's everything Intel claims it to be... then wow, I'll be speechless. I can't wait to see the benchmarks. :]

Larrabee (GPU) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Intel unveils Larrabee details | News | Custom PC

[Diablo]

There has been some rather impressive demos with PCs, yes entire computers, acting as Larrabee cores but nothing with an actual larrabee unit. But we'll see.

Out of curiosity, how many people singing the 4870X2's glory actually has one?

[Calindor]

I wouldnt want a 4870X2, If I could afford that much on a card, I'd rather do 3 way SLI/CF.

And almost everyone who buys a new PC right now gets an Intel, the only way they are going to get hurt on their GPU's is if AMD makes a comeback, which is likely, and it will hurt them in 2 ways rather than just 1.

[Akaris]

Originally Posted by Calindor

I wouldnt want a 4870X2, If I could afford that much on a card, I'd rather do 3 way SLI/CF.

And almost everyone who buys a new PC right now gets an Intel, the only way they are going to get hurt on their GPU's is if AMD makes a comeback, which is likely, and it will hurt them in 2 ways rather than just 1.

So...

$559.99 - 4870X2

$479.97 - 3x4850

The choice is clear. Atleast, I think so... I'm still super n00b at this. 3x4850 > 4870X2?

[Calindor]

Yes, 3 way CF/SLI has other benefits even if the frames don't go higher, such as 0 microstuttering. Each card does 1 frame, and repeats like that.

[Howling]

I'd much rather a single 4870 1gb than 3 4850's... cheaper and less power draw, and quite probably not all that much performance drop, though I've not seen any 3 way xfire benchies for them...

[Akaris]

So, I'm making a mistake getting a X2? Should I drop it and get a 4850 or a 4870 for my rig? If I drop the X2, and grab a 4870, I'll cut about 200$ off of my rig...