Nvidia, anyone?

[nearmiss]

Originally Posted by Flyby

Last night I read a slew of reviews about the new Nvidia GTX480 and GTX470. Since I plan to use a 24 inch monitor I now figure I can go with an ATi 5850, then later do it in Crossfire. I was hoping to be impressed by the 470, but it's just not fitting my price/performance comfort level. Sadly I'm reading that the prices for ATi's cards will not drop because the performance of Nvidia's new cards don't really overwhelm Ati. Plus, the heat and the power draw for the GTXs put me off (for the small performance advantage they manage).
just my thoughts.
Flyby out

You might want to carefully research that 24" monitor thing. I bought a 24" 1920x1200 and I may have missed the mark.

IT seems the standard may narrow down to 1920 x 1080 like HDTV. Also, I have two dvi ports on my video card, but you can't mix and match monitors. The monitors have to be the same resolution. So I'll have to find another 1920x1200.

Sadly, the prices on digitial monitors are dropping, except for 1920x1200. I bought mine over a year ago and the price is still the same.

Also, remember if the 3D is on your mind you need 120hz monitor.

Good luck

[tagTaken2]

I wouldn't buy another ATI card primarily because I found the Catalyst software to be pitiful- I could write a couple of pages about it's inadequacies. It even conflicted with joystick driver software (that took a while to pin down, as the first thing I loaded up), plus the psychedelic effect I got in Il-2, plus the fact that almost every game I've bought in the last couple of years has been optimised for nvidia.

[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)

[Flanker35M]

S!

This pic has been circulating various places, outbursts of laughs everywhere regardless which brand the user prefers. To lighten up the gloomy wait of TD 4.10

[Qpassa]

Originally Posted by Flanker35M

S!

This pic has been circulating various places, outbursts of laughs everywhere regardless which brand the user prefers. To lighten up the gloomy wait of TD 4.10

Yeah,thats a joke,but this is real :S

[AKA_Tenn]

Originally Posted by Qpassa

Yeah,thats a joke,but this is real :S

lol thats damn funny, question tho... can't a card be designed to run at higher temps? or is a given rule that hardware has to be below a certain "acceptable" temperature no matter what its was designed to take?

Edit: I use a HD5850, so temperature problems aren't really a problem, just curiousity is the problem

[Flanker35M]

S!

There are certain thresholds electronics and such can take. Looking at the fighterplane equipment, the cooling mechanism is VERY efficient and even more so if the equipment is sensitive to overheat, like a computer array would be for example.

[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