Are you running ATI 5870, 6870 or Nvidia 460?

[kimosabi]

First of all, driver issues with ATi is a long gone problem with IL-2 ever since 10.8 came out. Those who still suffer from problems with an ATi card running IL-2 has to blame something else pl0x, because it sure as hell ain't the drivers. Your supplier needs to get with the times. I play both RoF and IL-2 on 10.8 drivers, all maxed out(Perfect Landscape in IL-2) on my 5870 with no hassles what-so-ever.

The fastest card you have among those three, OP, is the 5870. The 6870 is a revised and improved 5770, and a GTX460 is similar(give or take) to a 5850 performance-wise.

What you CAN do to be on par with upcoming SoW's DX11/tesselation is to up a notch on the GTX. The GTX470 is a powerful card, and surpasses the 5870 in many areas except heat and power consumption. The 5xxx series ATi is a bit immature in DX11/tesselation and when game devs really start running DX11, I'm going to upgrade my card as well. The GTX470 also scales extremely well so that's a great upgrade possibility for you if you should decide to run two cards in the future.

My specs:

Q9550 @ 3.7gHz
8GB RAM
1GB ATi 5870
Gigabyte UD3P(P45 chipset) motherboard.

I've had no reliability issues at all with my 5870 and it runs very nice and cool on water. The stock fancoolers on them are good enough though but nowadays there are many versions of the 5870 on the market with upgraded coolers, so I'd go for one of those instead. Doesn't cost much more than a stock card.

Finally, it would help us if you posted your computer specs though. If you're going to buy a new graphics card, other components should be in the same league.

[Flanker35M]

S!

If playing other games too than IL-2 then the choice would be the new AMD card. It gives quite a good performance for the buck at the moment and is faster than the nVidia 460GTX(non-OC). I use now for a moment 5870HD, my 480GTX was bought out of my computer! Waiting now for either 580GTX or the new 6XXX series coming soon..or the Kepler from nVidia. Shall see..

It was a moment of wtf when I installed the 5870HD again It is so quiet compared to the nVidia vacuum cleaner Nevertheless nVidia will for sure improve their performance per wattage in the upcoming Kepler thus less noise and heat.

Originally Posted by kimosabi

First of all, driver issues with ATi is a long gone problem with IL-2 ever since 10.8 came out.

Yes! I don't know how that old "ATI drivers are horrible" rumour still persists!

Also if you can bear it, (depends on when SOW comes out), wait for the next flagship card to appear on the market, that's when all the current flagship cards really take a price dive.

Personally I'm going to wait 6 months if I can stand it before making my own SOW gaming rig.

[JG27CaptStubing]

Something to keep in mind as we head into Dec and early next year...

The new 580s just hit the street... I own one and upgraded from my 480 as it was still under the store return policy. There is little doubt that Nvidia will release 560s 570s to compete with ATI's lates releaes of the 6800 series...

These cards if they use the revamped GF110 with disabled features you're looking at signifigant advantages across the board. Add in the cost factor of these new chips and Nvidia is a very good position to take more from the mid market card arena. Just looking at the raw numbers a 570 would be 29 percent faster than a 470 at a much lower price point. That would be faster than a 5870.

Check out this short article.

http://www.bit-tech.net/blog/2010/11...ch.net+feed%29

[mr71mb0]

29% faster you say? LoL,

I'm 57.1334% impressed.

[kimosabi]

Hey if klem has an unlimited budget, he should just go for what's fastest at this point in time. He did mention that awful word "budget" though and if we're going to jump on the "future" card-train, we'll be in for a long haul.

[smink1701]

NV 480...and it cuts thru games like butter

[mr71mb0]

Originally Posted by smink1701

NV 480...and it cuts thru games like butter

but now the 580 is out and it's cheaper than the 480 and faster to boot.

sorry, I didn't mean that to put urs down, just that obviously the 580 is now the one to get if you are going NV.

[smink1701]

In a few months it will be 600. And so it goes. I've always been happy with NV.

[maclean525]

I have a 5850 in my racing/sim rig and a 5870 in my work PC. The ATI card is the way to go in the $300 price range. The new NVidia 580 is looking like an awesome card but it should be at the price point it's coming in at over $500. Plus with NVidia you cannot do multi-screen gaming without SLI so basically $1000 in cards to do 20% more than what one ATI card can do for $300.

For reference I run an E7400 CPU at 3.8GHz with the 5850 and run IL2 at 5760x1080 on the highest detail level across three screens and average around 60fps. Can go higher if I overclock the 5850 but there's no need. The 5870 is even better.