Hardware Nightmare - WHICH!

[Eternal_Oz]

Hi you people,

ive been reading benchmarks and info about CS:S on Xbitlabs and it looks as if Nv have an upper hand over ATi and theres been so many benchmarks ive been looking at that have 2 different results,

some have NV on top, Some ATI

ok here my varied selection of games

HL2/CS:S - quite heavy player
Sims 2 - Casual not hardcore!
Doom 3
Thief 3
Splinter Cell 1/2
Far Cry
GTA games
Mafia
UT2003/4
Call OF Duty
MOH PA - when it comes out


all of you hardcore junkies must be able to recommend me a GFX card which will give me give me the best gameplay! i dont care about bundles, space inside the case or noise i just want a card that i can run those games on with AA/AF at a smooth rate with no slowdown


Help!

 

[jonnyapps]

fella this is gonna get moved to the hardware forum quicker than i can post this reply

 

[DjBourgeoisie]

Right now nvidia has the fastest card, then next month when ati releases their latest and greatest ati will be the leader, repeat over and over. Either an x800 or nvidias latest, it really doesnt matter they are both outstanding cards.

 

[Eternal_Oz]

sorry about posting in the wrong area :dozey:

still stuck, though

 

[Demonmerc]

When it comes to gfx cards, the longer you wait the better deal you will get.

 

[Asus]

The review is not a very good considering they used ATI drivers with the memory issue, the original 4.9 drivers. They have beta drivers that fix that issue and offer some new features but they didn't use them. Really should have waited until ATI's 4.10's.

It is not an accurate representation of performance.

My take.
HL2/CS:S - ATI has a lead
Sims 2 - either
Doom 3 - Nvidia has a lead (60 FPS capped)
Thief 3 - ATI has a lead
Splinter Cell 1/2 - either
Far Cry - either
GTA games - either
Mafia - not sure
UT2003/4 - either
Call OF Duty - Nvidia has a lead (100+ FPS)
MOH PA - not sure

 

[Eternal_Oz]

ok cheers for that,

so your saying bias on thier part and ATi might be the one?

 

[Asus]

In 4.8 and their originally released 4.9 drivers ATI had a few issues, one of them being a memory efficency with cards that have 256MB memory. They perform lower than they should because of that memory issue.

The newest 4.9 beta's fix those issues along with introducing ATi's new control panel and A.I. features.
These improvements will be in ATI's offical soon-to-be-released 4.10 drivers.

 

[Eternal_Oz]

alternativly il can wait till next january and get one of the new ones?

that may be a better idea!

 

[blackeye]

If you havent looked at the new benches are firing squad I suggest you look at them. It appears the ATI is no longer the king. Atleast Untill the 4.10 are released Nvidia really pulled away with AA/AF on surpassing the x800 xt.

Another interesting observation that can be gathered from the performance results is NVIDIA’s performance under max video settings: you’ll note that the GeForce 6800 cards no longer take the larger performance hits we’ve grown accustomed to seeing in the past when anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering are both cranked up. In fact, their cards broke away from ATI under 4xAA/16xAF settings. Traditionally, this has been an area where ATI cards have held an advantage.

 

[Eternal_Oz]

due to the memory issues you have described ive decided to wait it out until i see some benchmarks with the new Cat's

 

[Bastion]

doom111 is not caped at 60 I run about 102 to 55 FPS, unless your Vsync is on and your refresh is 60.
For a 400.00 price range get the 6800GT
For a 500.00 price range get the X800XT

bottom line both cards are good, there both so close that ppl like picking the fly shit out the pepper.

 

[blackeye]

I still dont understand why you would pick the x800 xt over the 6800 ultra.

The ultra slams the xt in opengl and performs nearly identical (and in some cases faster) then the xt.

The xt has a fairly solid driver going with huge amounts of optimizations.

The 6800 ultra has a decent driver that still has a lot of imporving to do and doesnt have nearly the amount of optimizations the xt does.

 

[Asus]

You don't know how much room there is in driver improvements with either card.
Although ATI does appear to be more actively improving their drivers with features and performance.

The X800XT PE beats the 6800U in D3D games and can handle good frame rate in OpenGL games. Most games are D3D now and the average framerate is much higher with OpenGL cards in general. You want the card that does better at low-framerate games because both cards will give you good gameplay in high-framerate games. That means D3D games matter more to most of the people looking between these cards.

Most don't look for percentages of win over the other card but rather the actual framerate and if that game is high on their list. You can easily use AA/AF in OpenGL games, even in D3, and get great performance with ATI cards. But if you use AA/AF on a D3D game with an Nvidia card it might drop just enough to make Vsync unusable or unplayable which gives the edge to ATI here.

Plus if you spend that kind of money and have that kind of performance, you would want to also be able to use AA and AF very well. Both do it well but the X800XT does it better and has the most features regarding image quality/performance control. A.I., 3Dc, Temporal AA, 6xAA (actually usable), and Adaptive AF.

Not to mention monthly driver updates with these kinds of new improvements coming out every so often. I've been struggling to find good Nvidia drivers right now. Either I get their newest beta drivers which give me some issues with one of my games or I go back to the old offical drivers.

Edit:fixed a sentence.

 

[Bastion]

Asus hit it on the nail. Most game dev's are going for D3D, I like D3D ok but I love OpenGL it has always been greasy smooth, as far as the Nvidia drivers I feel the same way I must have installed 5 diff versions of the Nvidia forceware drivers and one game runs smooth then gives me problems in another game. Nvidia needs to get off there ass and make a new driver.

I think if anyone spends time reading they will find the X800XT is better then the 6800U in D3D games BUT not by a landslide. If im going to spend over 500.00 bucks on a card if it does 15 to 10 FPS faster ill buy it. The 6800GT is the best bang for the buck IMO, not to mention how sweet that card overclocks.

 

[Mitch2891]

Yeah the 6800GT is definately the best value for money (yes I have one yes I am biased.) and overclocks like a dream 420/1.1 stable on mine which is faster than ultra but if you are up for the small risk a X800VIVO might be a good choice then flash it to an XT.

if it does 15 to 10 FPS faster ill buy it.

Between the Ultra and XT there is not that big a difference. I would bet most could not tell the difference in a blind test so if you are going top end then it just don't matter which you get.

 

[Eternal_Oz]

ok cheers guys,

i like ATi cards due to the fact of the active driver improvement program they use. although on my Friends ASUS 9800XT, i cant activate AA without getting artifacts.

i understand what vsync does but no idea how it affects performance what refresh you can use it on or anything.

ive seen however that the Geforce 6 series is a good one, i mean it keeps up and excels in some games, especially openGL but nvidia has always owned OpenGL!!

ill wait for a while until bench's come out with the 4.10 cat driver and see what the deal is!

i might go for an ATi card if it blows away GeForce 6 in HL2/ Source engine!

or if GeForce still wins ill buy that one because at the moment the GeForce looks better! but thats flawed cus of ATi driver problems

anyway a quick question

i know ATi card manufacurer of choice is HIS/Hightech
but nVidia - what manufacturer is the best for GeForce cards?

ive read somewhewre that ATi cards could do better in OpenGL if they just made tweaks in theoir driver!

 

[Bastion]

I really like my Leadtek 6800GT is has a sweat heatsink and runs cool 42c at idle and 498c in doom111 after 2 hours.