8800GT 256mb vs HD3870 512mb vs HD 3850 512mb

[thedonutman]

My budget is around £150 max (the price of the 3870)

I can get the 8800GT for around £120-30, and the 3850 for the same price.

I've got a 6600GT right now

Looking at the benchmarks, the 3870 and the 8800GT are pretty similar, I just want to know how much difference the extra RAM makes.

(I'll be running at a max of 1280x1024 probably)

[MSIC]

For your resolution monitor, a 256MB card is absolutely fine.
You would only get a benefit from a 512MB card if either
a) you changed your monitor and had to made the card fill a bigger resolution or
b) games got significantly more complex, eg Crysis 2. But in my opinion, by then you might want a new graphics card anyway.
Go with the 8800GT 256MB!
PS That's if you can find one - i also havent seen any good reviews commenting about the 8800GT 256MB power consumption or noise or heat, all of which seem to be very good with the 3850.

[aidanjt]

There are other factors involved, for e.g. AMD cards are way way better at dealing with media, in fact, the 8800 series didn't even have a video unit until the GT, and it still can't do video input.

The HD3870 might not win any benchmark awards, but it still does playable framerates, it's cheap, deals with media, and Catalyst drivers tend not to suck.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

With my HD3870 I can play Crysis at 1440X900 with everything on high(apart from sound which is on low) with 4x antialiasing. Ocassionally there is a slowdown but it is quite playable. When I mean slowdown anything below 20fps.

1280X800 with no aa everything runs very smoothly.

I paid around 147 quid for the HD3870 but Ebuyer had some for around 140 quid and it is possible to get them for under this price if you look around.

Ebuyer also had some 512mb HD3850 cards for around 115 quid.

[thedonutman]

I am aware that the 3800 series are cooler and quieter. But after seeing the 8800GT, I can't justify spending more money on the 3870 and getting less performance.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I was thinking of getting the 8800GT 256mb too but the problem is that whether games next year may actually benefit more with 512mb. I would definitely get the 512mb 8800GT if you intend to get the 256mb version.

They will drop down to around 150 quid in the next week IMHO and the new revisions have a larger cooling fan too!!

[sawyen]

There are other factors involved, for e.g. AMD cards are way way better at dealing with media, in fact, the 8800 series didn't even have a video unit until the GT, and it still can't do video input.

The HD3870 might not win any benchmark awards, but it still does playable framerates, it's cheap, deals with media, and Catalyst drivers tend not to suck.

Amen on the drivers bit... I so totally agree on that..

8800 drivers on Vista is not the most reliable ones around.. regardless of versions..

Radeon drivers on the reliability front is by far better.. I won't say performance wise, but I have yet found a game that won't run on Catalyst..

[Blitzen]

I dont like ATi since the X850XT days but by all accounts the new cards are very good, especially for the price.

When there is no AA/AF around they hold there own with the GT's

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I dont like ATi since the X850XT days but by all accounts the new cards are very good, especially for the price.

When there is no AA/AF around they hold there own with the GT's

With some games though it is the other way round. One example is Bioshock.

The 8800GT 256MB is very similiar in performance to the 8800GT 512MB at lower resolutions with an overclocked card. Performance takes a massive hit though when AA is enabled in newer titles.

Check this review out:

XFX GeForce 8800 GT 256MB XXX Review

[blinky]

Also see AnandTech: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 512 & GeForce 8800 GT 256MB: Playing with Memory and G92

[McPhee]

I'd get the 3870 at the moment, it's cooler, quieter, has better drivers, better media support and is probably a better medium term solution than a 256MB card.

Actually, i can't think of anything in favour of the 8800GT 256MB. Hmm, Linux support?

[benwoodcock]

How do you mean better drivers? Aren't they only on their second revision, whereas the GT is on it's third or forth?

I thought the 3870 had the possibility of a decent performance increase due to drivers. That and crossfire are the only reasons I'm not trying to find an 8800GT.

[Rollo]

Amen on the drivers bit... I so totally agree on that..

8800 drivers on Vista is not the most reliable ones around.. regardless of versions..

Radeon drivers on the reliability front is by far better.. I won't say performance wise, but I have yet found a game that won't run on Catalyst..

This isn't true.

Windows Vista vs Windows XP Performance: 7 Months Later

NVIDIA in particular has made tremendous strides with their latest Vista driver, SLI support is fully functional for all GeForce card owners and it scales well in most cases. Unfortunately, CrossFire compatibility is still an issue for AMD. New games like BioShock and World in Conflict don't support CrossFire at this time, and Lost Planet and Quake Wars have graphical glitches.

[Rollo]

How do you mean better drivers? Aren't they only on their second revision, whereas the GT is on it's third or forth?

I thought the 3870 had the possibility of a decent performance increase due to drivers. That and crossfire are the only reasons I'm not trying to find an 8800GT.

Actually the R6XX series drivers have not improved performance for ATi over MANY revisions:

ATI Catalyst 7.11 Analysis - XP & Vista :: TweakTown

Well, that was eventful wasn’t it? Not!

Maybe AMD hoped that we wouldn’t worry about the drivers this month, but we can’t do that. If you haven’t downloaded them yet you should be happy about saving 40MB of hard drive space.

That's their latest driver.

PC Perspective - Update: DX10 Gaming Performance Review - Catalyst 7.10

Updated (10/10/07): The move from the 7.9 driver to the 7.10 "Shoot-em-up" Catalyst update didn't have much of an effect on our single graphics card performance at all.

No improvement for the last version either.

ComputerBase - Bericht: ATi Catalyst 7.10

Hmmm. No improvement over the first SIX R6xx driver revisions.

I guess the press doesn't share the "ATi doing a great job on drivers sentiment".

[TooNice]

Well, going by what I am reading here and elsewhere, ATi has the edge in Vista, nVidia in Linux, so what about XP?

Frankly speaking, I am in general more impressed by the 256MB GT than the 3870 at the resolution the OP is looking.

[blinky]

I seem to remember that when Vista came out the 8xxx drivers were poor (no DirectX 10 support?) and a class action suit was served on Nvidia by disgruntled owners.

Therefore Nvidia had to do something to improve the drivers.

Generally for most drivers, updates are bug fixes, rather than performance gains.

With ATI/AMD cutting back R&D to cut costs they may also cut back on driver R&D and limit themselves to bug fixes.
Currently Nvidia don't really need to get more performance from their drivers other than improving SLI scaling as their cards are already ahead of AMD....