Nvidia, anyone?

[Skoshi Tiger]

I doubt I'll be buying a new graphics card until SOW gets released. So until then the market will have a chance to settle down a bit.

We'll need a few driver revisions before we can see whats the Nvidia cards can actually do performance wise. As I see it if you want the extra speed your not really worried about power usage, in realistic terms we're only talking about a few cents an hour in extra power.

As allways, if you need the fastest card NOW, you going to have to pay a premium. (I haven't seen any 480/470 for sale in Australia yet, so really it's a moot point at the moment over here!)

Just have to find a way of squirreling away a few dollars now and again to upgrade for SOW without the trouble and strife knowing!

[flyingbullseye]

Considering the problems some have had with the new ATI cards on 1946 I wonder if people will have same problem with fermi and or drivers. Guess it won't be long to find out.

Flyingbullseye

[Flanker35M]

S!

I run DirectX 11 games on my ATI 5870HD without a glitch. SoW will be DX11 so...Go figure

[Codex]

Originally Posted by AKA_Tenn

ok one thing to keep in mind is that when u use SLI or crossfire, you don't get to use the memory from both cards, just the GPU's.. even if u had 3 512MB videocards in your computer crossfired, u'd still only have 512mb allocatable texture memory...

and weather u choose ATI or nvidia it makes no difference, but look at more than a few reviews and benchmarks for all cards within your price range...

unlike a bad movie, that a review said was good... videocard reviews with solid benchmarking in multiple games/appz (because its not just showing you factory specs for the card, its showing you real world performance) will give you a good idea as to how fast the videocard you want to buy is compared to others in the same price range, so long as you remember, a Pentium 4 with 256MB system ram is not fast enough for a modern videocard... if your going to buy a high end videocard, the rest of your system has to be faster than it to make full use of it. i'd say no less than a core2@3GHz with 4GB system memory (i don't know what the AMD equivalent is) for a HD5850/280GTX (just an example)

Depends on what operating system your using, Vista and Win7 will allocate all memory both System RAM and Graphics card Ram as one pool of memory.

Also to date all games used for benchmarking have found that its the graphics cards that are the limiting factor, from a Phenom II to a Intel extream processor have little or no impact on frame rates in modern games when it comes to playing games at full resolutions of 24" to 30" monitors.

[PA_Willy]

ok one thing to keep in mind is that when u use SLI or crossfire, you don't get to use the memory from both cards, just the GPU's.. even if u had 3 512MB videocards in your computer crossfired, u'd still only have 512mb allocatable texture memory...

Exactly. With WHICHEVER OS you use. In CF and SLI, VRAM doesn't increase respect one only of these cards.

For example, two 5870 (1Gb per each one) cards in CF will result in 1Gb of VRAM available for the system (not 2Gb). Each GPU works with its own VRAM associated.

You cannot add them.

[Flyby]

Originally Posted by PA_Willy

Exactly. With WHICHEVER OS you use. In CF and SLI, VRAM doesn't increase respect one only of these cards.

For example, two 5870 (1Gb per each one) cards in CF will result in 1Gb of VRAM available for the system (not 2Gb). Each GPU works with its own VRAM associated.

You cannot add them.

seems inefficient. I wonder if SoW will benefit from a single card with 2mb of ram versus two separate cards with 1mb each? I'd better read up on how SLi and Crossfire work. maybe the ram is shared as in a series circuit?
FLyby out

[PA_Willy]

Originally Posted by Flyby

seems inefficient. I wonder if SoW will benefit from a single card with 2mb of ram versus two separate cards with 1mb each? I'd better read up on how SLi and Crossfire work. maybe the ram is shared as in a series circuit?
FLyby out

VRAM is not shared. Each GPU needs its own VRAM to load information. In SLI and CF, you get two GPU (doubled computing power). That's the advantage.

There are two ways to work:

- SFR (split frame rendering): Each GPU renders half frame (frame generated in half time than with one only GPU).

- AFR (alternate frame rendering): Each GPU renders a frame, and the next is being rendering by the other GPU (you get 2 frames in same time you got one only frame with one GPU).

In both ways, each GPU needs its VRAM to read/write and generate the new frame.

Of course, all is in theory. You don't get double of frames with SLI/CF. But in some games with decent drivers you can get upto 80% more (usually, the figure is near to 40-50% more).

I have got two dual GPU systems (SLI, Nvidia).

[Flanker35M]

S!

Waiting for the updated 2Gb 5870HD, later CrossFire when SoW is released Was interesting to read that the 5850HD in CrossFire beat the crap out of both 480GTX and ATI 5970HD! And the XFire setup costs about the same as one 5970/480GTX, uses less power than either of them and runs cooler too..huh! Interesting times!

[JG27CaptStubing]

Yeah cearly Nvidia missed the boat on this one... Their DX 11 part comes out six months after ATI launched their card. To boot it requires a ton of voltage it runs very hot and it's marginally faster than the 5870.

The only thing that has me interested at this point is the fact Nvidia supports 3d gaming much better. I tested in it out on a buddies rig and it has a lot of potential for games especially if SOW supports it. I had a chance to use it with FSX and wow it really adds to a game.

Meanwhile it looks like I will have to wait for a refresh from Nvidia. This round is a loss.

[Flyby]

thanks for the tech info, PA_Willy. I must admit I haven't really been a fan of either Crossfire or SLi because of the low return on the investment for the sims I like (having read the reports of others who have tried two video cards and not been satisfied with the scaling in sims like IL2 and LockOn).

Still, 40% improvement might be acceptable if one were to see that in SoW using two 5850s in Crossfire as Flanker35M suggested. The cost of that setup might be worthwhile!

Captn_Stubbing, I agree with you about Nvidia. The what-ifs are something to dream for: a 512bit bus, lower power consumption, and lower heat signatures. That would have made it a killer single-GPU card, far and away better than the 5870. But it just wasn't so. Maybe next time. Meanwhile I'm reading that ATI/AMD is in no hurry to lower the prices of their top 5xxxx series. They are just waiting to see how the demand for Nvidia's new cards come to pass. I imagine if that demand is underwhelming then people won't get much of a price break from ATI. I was looking forward to some friendly competition making the 5870 more affordable for me.
Flyby out