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ATi Radeon HD 3870 VS. nVidia GeForce 8800 GT

(7 posts)
  • Started 4 years ago by vigliottec
  • Latest reply from vigliottec
  • Topic Viewed 3902 times

vigliottec
Posts: 25

from http://www.gpureview.com/show_.....card2=544# it seems the ati is better... assuming i can get either for the same price wt card should i go with and why?

Posted 4 years ago #
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vigliottec
Posts: 25

ASUS EN8800GT TOP/G/HTDP/512M
VS
MSI RX3870-T2D512E-OC (V803)

to be more particular

Posted 4 years ago #
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ScottW
ScottW
Posts: 6609

As I recall from the GPU benchmarks, these two chips are pretty close in performance. That allows you to look at other criteria. Is this for gaming? I notice at gpureview that the Radeon is DirectX 10.1 compliant and GeForce is 10.0. Will you be gaming in Vista? If so, you might want the 10.1.

From looking at the other thread, I'm not sure exactly which motherboard you are considering, but most of the Gigabyte ones are CrossFireX compliant and fewer support SLI. Do you think you might ever get a second board for more gaming power? Then you should have a CrossFireX board for dual ATI cards and an SLI board for dual Geforce cards.

As for the power supply, you should probably pick one that is approved by the graphics card maker. These cards will be the most power hungry devices in your system, so they should have plenty of clean power. Also, if you are considering a dual config at some point, ATI and NVidia both have a list of power supplies that are approved for use in that case.

Posted 4 years ago #
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vigliottec
Posts: 25

i tend to play games like need for speed, world of warcraft, and any rts games. but i also use my computer for photoshop, auto cad, and solid works(3d rendering)

the motherboard im looking at is GIGABYTE GA-EP35C-DS3R

Posted 4 years ago #
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vigliottec
Posts: 25

are there pros and cons between ati and nvida as far as drivers?

i read on cnet(they have really gone down hill in quality) that ATi Radeon HD 3870 had driver issues

Posted 4 years ago #
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ScottW
ScottW
Posts: 6609

Well, for games like that either one of these cards will do the trick. Also, you won't need 2 of them which is good because that motherboard only has one PCI-E x16 slot. I don't remember if you said -- will you be running Vista or XP? 32-bit or 64-bit OS?

I don't know about the driver issues. I thought both ATI and NVidia were good about driver updates. You might want to investigate that more.

Posted 4 years ago #
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vigliottec
Posts: 25

im accualy not sure wt os im going to run ... im leaning towards vista 64 bit... i can get a free version of xp so if vista dont work out i can just go xp

as far as the motherboard goes i can get to pci-e slots for 11$ more but i figured i didnt need it

Posted 4 years ago #
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