http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/ How-To Geek Forums Topic: Video cards en Thu, 08 Jan 2009 23:15:14 +0000 http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/topic/video-cards/page/2#post-43339 Mon, 18 Aug 2008 07:57:54 +0000 drifta 43339@http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/ <p>ive never ever used nvidia graphics card and have always preferred to go with ati. i dont know why though.<br /> Perhaps because ati has a good graphics card for a reasonable price </p> http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/topic/video-cards/page/2#post-42930 Sat, 16 Aug 2008 03:57:42 +0000 JKay 42930@http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/ <p>well so far I've seen a picture of one of the waterblocks for the 4870 X2 made by CoolIT, all I can say is yeah... it's a waterblock, but it might work good. It's got right angles all over it, even though by the picture it looks like they yet again made a 2 slot card into 1, it doesnt look like it'd cool it very well, and they claim a 13.5% OC on the core and 11% OC on the memory to be safe with this waterblock. Now I dont OC very much, but that doesn't seem like much if we're talking a waterblock... but then again I have almost no experience in OCing, or water cooling for that matter. Closest I've ever been was helping a buddy of mine rig a celeron 300 with a Liquid N20 cooling system and OCing it to 1.2GHz... it worked for about a week, then the mobo cracked. I think it got too cold, or it might have been the mobo heating up around the chip under load and the N2O cooling it too fast causing the crack, who knows. </p> http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/topic/video-cards/page/2#post-42626 Fri, 15 Aug 2008 02:23:29 +0000 JKay 42626@http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/ <p>I am keeping a close eye on this, with the quick release of this new ATi card, they might come ahead in the race, and when I get to a computer where everything isnt blocked I'll have to check out that waterblock, hopfully it turns the card into a single slot like the waterblock does for the GTX 280, one of the advantages to water cooling, and I'm hoping AMD/ATi releases an up to date motherboard with the integrated graphics and DDR3 RAM support, so I can take full advantage of Crossfire and the Hybrid Crossfire. ScottW really has a point where you could have a potential 5 processing units on graphics, a total of 3200 stream processors, 4gig of GDDR5 OC'd to about 2200MHz and a core clock OC'd to about 800MHz. I just need to mobo's to catch up with the video cards!! </p> http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/topic/video-cards/page/2#post-42623 Fri, 15 Aug 2008 02:05:42 +0000 ScottW 42623@http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/ <p>JKay, if you're not planning to do this build for 2-3 months from now, you should probably just keep an eye on the space race between ATI and Nvidia. By the time you're ready to buy, Nvidia may have leapfrogged ATI and maybe ATI will have leapfrogged them and so on!</p> <p>It looks to me as if all of the GTX 280 cards are double-wides, as well, at least those that are air-cooled. Amazingly enough, though the 4870 X2 was only announced a few days ago, I found this announcement of a company planning to release a water cooler for it:<br /> <a href='http://www.asetek.com/content/view/460/132/'>http://www.asetek.com/content/view/460/132/</a></p> <p>As usual, one of the benefits of all of this competition is driving prices down and features up. Since the 4870 X2 was announced by ATI, Nvidia has dropped the price of the GTX 280. Older cards from both manufacturers are coming down in price. This is probably a good time to pick up a Radeon 3870 or GeForce 9800 series card. </p> http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/topic/video-cards/page/2#post-42612 Fri, 15 Aug 2008 01:33:25 +0000 JKay 42612@http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/ <p>Okay now I've searched and researched everything about these 2 cards, I found the 4870s on newegg for about 550, and it takes 2 slots so I'll be blocking a PCIe 1x slot or a regular PCI slot with it. I dont know if they have a waterblock for the ATi 4870 x2 yet, but I cant find one, if someone else can... please post a link, beacause that would take the cake right there, no more searching, I can finally go back to ATi with confidence </p> http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/topic/video-cards/page/2#post-42602 Thu, 14 Aug 2008 23:32:23 +0000 ScottW 42602@http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/ <p>This game of one-upmanship has been going on for many years and is likely to continue into the future.</p> <p>As for a comparison of memory, the key measurement is bandwidth no matter what the technology. These GPUs are all using GDDR memory these days which is optimized for graphics processing. The older ATI Radeon 3870 can use GDDR3 or GDDR4 memory and the new 4870 uses GDDR5 memory. The Nvidia GTX 280 uses GDDR3 memory but, as I said, it's the bandwidth that counts not the technology. Currently, the GTX 280 has a memory bandwidth of 141 GB/s to the Radeon 4870's 115 GB/s. However, the 4870 X2 effectively doubles the memory bandwidth to a theoretical 230 GB/s.</p> <p>As a sign of just how fast these things change, when I just went to ATI's website, they claim to have the fastest graphics card available today. Then in the fine print it says "today" means August 12, 2008! </p> http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/topic/video-cards/page/2#post-42595 Thu, 14 Aug 2008 22:09:14 +0000 JKay 42595@http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/ <p>Another thing that pulls me towards NVIDIA chipsets (although if it wasnt for this ATi would win hands down) is the fact that they support DDR3 RAM, which can double the speed of DDR2 RAM... but then again ATi/ AMD might have something getting ready to come out that supports it. </p> http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/topic/video-cards/page/2#post-42591 Thu, 14 Aug 2008 21:51:36 +0000 JKay 42591@http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/ <p>Well I get back home in about 2 maybe 3 months, and I dont plan on building anything until then, maybe by then NVIDIA will have their GTX 290 out and ATi will have their HD 4870 x2, and I'll have to compare the 2. Although I have a feeling the 290 will be the better of the 2, just like the comparision between the 9800 GX2 and the GTX 280 that starting this topic, but we'll have to wait and see </p> http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/topic/video-cards/page/2#post-42477 Thu, 14 Aug 2008 13:25:14 +0000 ScottW 42477@http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/ <p>In a perfect example of apropos, I recently saw an article about ATI releasing the 4870 X2. Just like the 3870 X2, which it replaces, the 4870 X2 puts 2 GPUs on one board. So, it only takes up one slot for plugging in. I have no idea how many slots it may take up due to overhang, but I seem to recall that the 3870 X2 was relatively narrow. Here's the article:<br /> <a href='http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10013992-64.html'>http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10013992-64.html</a></p> <p>Unfortunately, the first cards with this dual-GPU configuration are very expensive, but it creates some interesting possibilities. For example, you could start with 2 GPUs in one PCI-E slot and at some later date add 2 more in a second PCI-E slot. Or, just add 1 for a total of 3 GPUs, if that's all you need. Would Hybrid Crossfire be available with these cards? I don't see why not. That means a 4870 X2 on one of the new AMD/ATI chipsets would give you 3 GPUs to start with and as many as 5(!) if that's even supported. Well, it's fun to speculate. :-) </p> http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/topic/video-cards/page/2#post-42461 Thu, 14 Aug 2008 11:12:53 +0000 drifta 42461@http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/ <p>it seems that recently ati have got some new cards out the 4800HD or something like that and another one..i cnat remebr which ones but they seem to be getting better reviews that the nvidia cards here in australia </p> http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/topic/video-cards#post-42270 Wed, 13 Aug 2008 06:54:54 +0000 ScottW 42270@http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/ <p>Doh! I have seen a review that touches on Hybrid CrossFire -- it's the one I just posted! See page 13 of the 780G chipset review at Tom's for benchmark results with Hybrid CrossFire. </p> http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/topic/video-cards#post-42269 Wed, 13 Aug 2008 06:51:45 +0000 ScottW 42269@http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/ <p>@Jack, God is in the details.</p> <p>@JKay, you picked your GPU first, which tells me that you are building a gaming rig. You might ask yourself if the games that you will play can benefit from a quad core CPU. Last I checked, there were few games that were multi-core aware and the conventional wisdom was that you would be better off with a dual-core CPU running at a higher clock speed. Of course, in gaming things change fast so this may no longer be true.</p> <p>I'm pasting a link to an article at Tom's Hardware where they review the latest AMD chipset with an onboard Radeon GPU. They call this the first *true* AMD/ATI chip since AMD's acquisition of ATI. One benefit that AMD claims is for Hybrid CrossFire. This allows the chipset GPU to assist the PCI-E card GPU. I have not seen any reviews of Hybrid CrossFire, but it is a neat concept on paper. Even with only one graphics adapter, you could still be running a dual GPU configuration. Here's the chipset review:<br /> <a href='http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-780g-chipset,1785.html'>http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-780g-chipset,1785.html</a> </p> http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/topic/video-cards#post-42232 Wed, 13 Aug 2008 01:52:08 +0000 JKay 42232@http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/ <p>I was afraid of that... it's a shame I really like the 790i mobo, would anyone recommend using an AMD CPU with this? I was going to use a 2.6ghz intel core 2 quad, but seems AMD makes a quad core 2.6ghz CPU. Would there be an advantage to using AMD with ATI since they are one in the same? </p> http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/topic/video-cards#post-42228 Wed, 13 Aug 2008 01:45:43 +0000 jack7h3r1pp3r 42228@http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/ <p>oh ya i missed that part of it you always seem to find the smallest things scottw </p> http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/topic/video-cards#post-42227 Wed, 13 Aug 2008 01:40:50 +0000 ScottW 42227@http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/ <p>JKay, since we are talking about leaving room for a dual card upgrade, you should NOT use an Nvidia motherboard chipset with ATI Radeon GPUs. The Nvidia motherboard chipset is SLI-ready, but not CrossFireX ready. </p> http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/topic/video-cards#post-42224 Wed, 13 Aug 2008 01:33:08 +0000 jack7h3r1pp3r 42224@http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/ <p>ya i don't know that one either </p> http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/topic/video-cards#post-42221 Wed, 13 Aug 2008 01:21:33 +0000 raphoenix 42221@http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/ <p>@ScottW,</p> <p>GOOD POST !!</p> <p>I'm still trying to figure out what the Vertex Shaders, etc., etc., nomenclature means in Gamer Video Cards.</p> <p>Regards,<br /> Rick P. </p> http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/topic/video-cards#post-42218 Wed, 13 Aug 2008 01:17:26 +0000 JKay 42218@http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/ <p>I never really thought about just getting one of the ATIs and trying it out, okay last question about the topic... is it a good idea running ATI cards on a NVIDIA chipset mobo? </p> http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/topic/video-cards#post-42212 Wed, 13 Aug 2008 01:09:04 +0000 ScottW 42212@http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/ <p>JKay, it's hard to make an apples-to-apples comparison with just the specs listed. For example, all of the clock numbers -- core clock, memory clock -- are applied to different GPUs. There is more memory on the Nvidia card, 896 MB to 512 MB, but if you get two of the ATIs that will total 1 GB. There are 800 stream processors on the ATI GPU to the Nvidia's 192. Is that for real? 800 stream processors is amazing!</p> <p>When you say you could get one factory OC'd water-cooled Nvidia, is that BFG board the one? I would find that odd since the GTX 260 is the scaled-down version of the GTX 280. If you're going to soup up a chip, why not start with the faster one? All that overclocking and special cooling will not add vertex shaders and stream processors.</p> <p>Here's a suggestion. Get one ATI 4870 board and try your games on it. If it doesn't give enough oomph, add a second one. </p> http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/topic/video-cards#post-42194 Wed, 13 Aug 2008 00:17:06 +0000 jack7h3r1pp3r 42194@http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/ <p>well the nvidia card looks like it is a bit better than the ati but if you have two then i think that would blow away the nvidia but if you had two of the nvidia's then thats a whole new story :) </p>