nvidia 280 or hd 4870

[rob4001]

Ok I have a budget of £320 so i can afford some of the 280's around now after price drops they have had.

But wondering whether to wait for some over clocked HD 4870 to come out such as Diamond Radeon HD 4870 XOC Black Edition clocked at 800MHz and 512MB of GDDR5 memory operating at 4400MHz firmware has been unlocked to push cards to GPU settings of up to 950MHz and Memory of up 1200MHz which I'm sure will be priced higher than average 4870.

Do you think the performance of these cards will out perform or match the 280. Do bare in mind I have a 24" monitor. Xfire is not an option for me with out getting a new board which will cost extra anyway. I prefer 1 gpu solution besides.

Thanks

[The Asgard]

I'm running my 4870 at 880 / 1200.

Performance will be very similiar but the 280 will always have the edge with its additional memory with future games.

I went for the 4870 because of the price vs performace and I was sick of Nvidia milking its customers.

The 4870 is a cracking price for a cracking card. You can't go wrong.

[AdamAnubis]

If your're willing to pay for the best of the best, at the moment the GTX280 is the winner. But, if you're willing to pay £200 for a less powerful card, go for the HD4870 and OC it, or wait for teh HD4870x2 comes out.

The GTX280 is a excellent card, it's just the price!

[2Cold Scorpio]

The GTX 280 is getting a big price cut, according to ZDNet. It should now be about $499 (I'm not sure what that would be in your currency; I don't have my conversion site loaded. lol).

So you might give the 280 some serious thought; with its higher amount of on-board VRAM, it'll definitely have a longer lifespan. ^_^

[AdamAnubis]

Generally with dollars just halving it gives it about the right price, so thats £250, however, the UK will probs slap an extra £50 on that what with import costs and all that jazz.

[2Cold Scorpio]

Generally with dollars just halving it gives it about the right price, so thats £250, however, the UK will probs slap an extra £50 on that what with import costs and all that jazz.

Thats actually generally what I do when figuring out prices listed here, but I didn't want to give a way-off estimate this time. lol Heh, VAC is one thing I'm glad I don't have to worry about!

[shadowcreaper]

the 280 in uk will be no less than 300 quid from the looks and some insider info
id get 4870 best card on market atm

[shaithis]

4870 is not the best card at the moment, not by quite a margin actually. It is the best "bang-for-buck high-end card" though.

[staffsMike]

4870 is not the best card at the moment, not by quite a margin actually. It is the best "bang-for-buck high-end card" though.

Well technically the HD4850 would be the best bang for buck, The 9800GTX is probably not far off. But in this instance the HD4870 would be better bangs for bucks than the 280.

[2Cold Scorpio]

Well technically the HD4850 would be the best bang for buck, The 9800GTX is probably not far off. But in this instance the HD4870 would be better bangs for bucks than the 280.

Maybe...but I don't figure it would have quite the long life of the 280, either; the 280s 1GB on-board VRAM and its sheer power will help it have a long life, the way I see it. As good of a card as the HD4870 is, you'd be replacing an HD4870 quite a bit sooner than you would a 280, I think.

[AdamAnubis]

The GTX280 is quite a bit of engineering IMO, fitting that many transistors for just a graphics card is quite a feat in itself. Not even intel had done that with their Wolfdales.

[staffsMike]

Maybe...but I don't figure it would have quite the long life of the 280, either; the 280s 1GB on-board VRAM and its sheer power will help it have a long life, the way I see it. As good of a card as the HD4870 is, you'd be replacing an HD4870 quite a bit sooner than you would a 280, I think.

Would you be replacing it with a card that cost the difference between the two though?

[2Cold Scorpio]

The way the market is these days, who knows?

My thinking is that I would rather spend more now and get the best I can possibly get (within reason) and not have to mess with it again for a while. While I did cut some costs on my last rig (getting a dual core Intel C2D rather than a quad, and getting an 800GT rather than an 8800 Ultra or some such), it was because some of those components weren't meant to be particularly long-term: the CPU is really just to hold me over until Nahalem comes out and is affordable, and the 8800GT was really meant to just be there for a year or two until the next 8800 Ultra came out (which is what I think the GTX 280 is...and more).

Its not a waste of money either, though, because I plan on reusing these parts in a future build for my girlfriend (even if both components are overkill for what she needs).

But thats just how I do things, I s'pose. This year will be new vid card year (and *maybe* bigger hard drives), and next year will be Nahalem/new mobo/Windows 7. After that, I have no real intention on doing any major hard ware changes for a few years.

[rufeo]

I would get a gtx 280 right now if i were buying even though the 4870x2 is just around the corner, i'm no longer that interested in sli/cf. I don't think many of us will argue that for sheer grunt the gtx 280 wins hands down. sure a overclocked gtx260 or a 4870 will be close, but thats compared to a non OCed gtx280. ocuk have a gtx 280 on pre-order for just over 300 quid..... for about 120 quid more than a 4870, you'll get lower temps, less power usage when idle and of course better performance.

if you don't upgrade that often maybe once every 1.5 yrs or so i reckon the the gtx 280 would be a better buy (if you have a 24"+ monitor) if you want all the details turned up don't get me wrong though, i was going to buy a 4870 and it is a great card. but like 2cold scorpio i have a similar train of though, i'd rather upgrade and forget about it so i can just game with everything on max.

if only those price cuts had come sooner! now i'm stuck with a gtx 260 and i'm overclocking the hell out of it

[Zhaoman]

I completely agree with your train of thought too, but I feel that HD4870 will in fact be a better buy for the long term

It's got DDR5 memory which is highly overclockable, it's performance is just 15% less than a GTX280 and it costs half the money... Since an HD4870 can play all of today's games on highest settings ( except Crysis, Arma...) it's more than built for the future.

Since the HD4870 is so overclockable and fast as it is, not to mention cheap, I just can't justify myself recommending a GTX280 to somebody. Anyone?

[rufeo]

hmm... depends on the resolution of the monitor, anything 24" and above and the 4870 will start to run out of steam compared to a gtx280. the 1gb of ram makes the difference there.... so i wouldn't say the 4870 is a no brainer, certainly for anything under 24" then yeah without a doubt you shouldn't be looking at another card. but above that? i think its a bit more unclear

performance wise, yes a 4870 isn't far behind and although they are good overclockers my gtx260 is also a very good overclocker. already posted about this in another thread and when i benchmarked my OCed card it beat all the 4870s even the highest OCed one. i haven't even found my card's limit yet, although i'm not overly keen on trying to stress it out since it'll handle anything right now.

now think about overclocking a gtx280, that'll be even faster! another reason or reasons to recommend a gtx260, lower temps and idling power usage. if cost isn't an issue i know what i'd go for.....