2x 4850 1GBs or a GTX260?

[shaithis]

Or get a P45 board and put the difference between the X48 and the P45 to that £300 budget you had for gfx and get the 4870x2

[matty-hodgson]

right.. i've got £450 in the bank to blow on some stuff..
£149 for an iPod Nano for the GF.
which leaves me with £301 for a graphics update.
with the rest going towards the motherboard in a month when i get paid again.

is the 4870X2 any good?
you people keep adding more suggestions.. argghhhh

[staffsMike]

No it's pointless at anything below 2560 x 1600 and runs hotter than Brazil.

[SiM]

Just get a 4850 and spend the rest on a lap dance

[matty-hodgson]

No it's pointless at anything below 2560 x 1600 and runs hotter than Brazil.

so the 4870 1GB?

Just get a 4850 and spend the rest on a lap dance

i'm only 16!!
stop polluting my mind with such filth

[shaithis]

No it's pointless at anything below 2560 x 1600 and runs hotter than Brazil.

It makes a very noticeable difference at 1920x1200 and mine runs at 45 deg under load

[matty-hodgson]

It makes a very noticeable difference at 1920x1200 and mine runs at 45 deg under load

that's cooler than my 8800GT is at idle!

[shaithis]

Its water cooled though

The thing is, there are so many choices, your best bet is probably to look at each solution and then look at the games/engines you are likely to use most and see which gives you the best return on your money.

[staffsMike]

Noticable compared to what?

That surely isn't with the stock cooler unless it's making an awful racket. EDIT: I see..

[shaithis]

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=118035

Shows a fairly good cross-section of benchmarks between 4870 and 4870x2 at 1920x1200.

You can see that quite a few games show a huge improvement on the x2. To say there is not point below 2560x1600 is far from the mark.

1920x1200 is a VERY demanding resolution, especially for todays demanding games.

[matty-hodgson]

1920x1200 is a VERY demanding resolution, especially for todays demanding games.

precisely why i need a much better GFX card..
my 8800GT runs CoD4 at like 40FPS..
FC2 has to be run at a much lower resolution to even be playable.

[staffsMike]

Is that a 1GB 4870 I couldn't see?

And, none of those benchmarks show an improvment which would be perceived by the user (except perhaps cysris) imo.

So I don't think burning the extra money is worth it at all especially as they seem to be £350.

[Webby]

This is where most bench marking fails as they are comparing apples to apples what you need to know is what image quality settings can I increase with my additional graphics grunt.

So if a 4870 gives 60fps at 1920*1200 0xAA 16xAF
and a a 4870X2 gives 100fps at 1920*1200 0xAA 16xAF
then the player will not notice the difference

If however you could change the settings for the 4870x2 to
1920*1200 4xAA 16xAF and still achieve 60fps

then you would notice a huge difference in image quality at no reduction to game play.

With this in mind you either need to run each benchmark at the highest possible settings for everything and then potentially have meaningless results as it has no relevance to actual playable settings or you need to test to determine what the highest possible playable settings are for each card this is obviously far more time consuming but does highlight the differences between cards a lot more clearly.

Hard OCP are the only site that I know of that make use of this testing methodology (in combination with apples to apples testing) and it makes quite interesting reading.

[format]

well.. i've recently bought another 24" monitor to go with my first one.. and now i'm wanting to upgrade from my 8800GT (it's awful at 1920 x 1200 resolution )

so basically.. which would you pick?
i've just ordered a x48 motherboard so it's got 2 x16 PCI-E ports on it..

4850s?

or

[url=http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=883418&Product=896MB+BFG+GTX260+OC2+MAXCORE%2c+PCI-E+2.0(x16)%2c+Mem+2126MHz%2c+GPU+630MHz%2c+216+Cores%2c+2xDLDVI-I%2f+HDTV]GTX260?[/ur

What games are you playing cause I've not actually had that many problems with the 8800GT at that res.
I'm waiting til after christmas at least before I buy my new card I think.

[matty-hodgson]

What games are you playing cause I've not actually had that many problems with the 8800GT at that res.
I'm waiting til after christmas at least before I buy my new card I think.

FarCry 2 atm.
almost completed that..
will be moving onto Call of Duty once that's released.
the Beta runs pretty well, like around 40-60fps.
but i want a bit more grunt so i can turn all the features up on FarCry 2 and Fallout 3 (once that's delivered)