Nvidia GT280

[Thunderbolt56]

I've used sli twice. Once with dual 6800GT's and again using a 7950GX2. Performance with both systems was great...for their time. The reality, though, is that there are single slot solutions that are truly badass cards that are already putting the bottleneck back onto the current crop of CPU's.

I'm using an 8800GTS 512 right now and I love it. If I were building new, I'd get a GTX280 period, but wouldn't be at all unhappy with a 4870 or maybe even a 9800GX2.

[Feuerfalke]

I use a 8800GTS 640MB ATM, but I am switching in the next weeks.

Performance is not an issue, but various hardware- and driver-problems are and after years of that with nVidia, I'll give ATI another chance.

I'm not a fanboy of any hardware or anything at all. I chose my options from what suits me most. Right now, I have massive problems with BF2 (88xx's hexagonal black-holes), LockOn (shining beaches, no active shadows) and World in Conflict (Texture flickering and massive drawing errors after the first map). This is basically 75% of the games I play.

This is my 2nd 8800GTS, before I had 3 different 7800GT until I finally got one that worked.

Not representative for sure, not typical for nVidia or something else, but annoying nevertheless and considering the bang for the money, my conclusion for the moment is pretty clear.

Before jump forward with advices: I got 2 120mm fans cooling my 8800GTS, so it never comes close to 70°C and I got a very good 750W PSU.

On the funny side, I also got an nVidia-mainboard. Top of the notch, when it was new, especially for overclocking and it works great - until people found out, that any PS/2-keyboard will constantly crash when overclocking with this chipset....

[Novotny]

With respect to OP: fine response sir! I had you down for a braggart, but I agree with your points. Pleasse forgive my admittedly aggressive response - I was in bad form. Good to see good debate.

[JG27CaptStubing]

Looks like I will be getting rid of my 8800GTs as well. The SLI Stutter is a problem and though the new DLLs make it slightly nicer it's not worth running.

I will be looking at the new ATIs once they hit the streets. I don't think I want to pay 400Plus for a card right now when my 2 cards for half the cost perform faster.

IL2 is the only game I have problems with SLI. Such a shame because its the game I play most.

[Flyby]

It's been very hard for me to get a handle on this issue of one gpu or dual cards. On the one hand, a single powerful gpu seems to be the most elegant solution (for gaming), but the "latest and greatest" gpus cost a million dollars. To offset this one can buy two lesser gpus and run them together either in SLI or Crossfire mode. Of the latter option it appears to be frought with scaling issues. I've read here and at other sim forums that getting dual cards to operate properly in our favorite genre is often a chore. My understanding is it's a matter of proper drivers from the card manufacturer. Based on that, one might very well opt for a single card.
Hopefully when SoW_Bob comes out there will be an adequate driver suite to run dual cards in that sim. Two 4870 in Crossfire would be very nice, and less expensive than the 4870X2 (but is that X2 at 2ghz of ramped gddr5 memory worth the cost, and willit show up as one card?). Does that, and the huge price drops put the GTX 280 in play? What to do?

[Zoom2136]

Like some of you I will be shortly changing my aging 2x 7900GTX OC for a new ATI 4870. I don't plan waiting for the 4870X2 as this is as you know a 2gpu card and could have the same prob that SLI have with iL2.

I think that $299 is a good price for a high end card. NVIDIA are just screwing their custumers... And it shows... as soon as the 48xx series from ATI hit the street the prices of the 2xx series from NVIDIA came down. Hell analyst predict that NVIDIA was not selling more then 3000 cards per month (280s) in the entire US. LOL Talk about a good business move... NVIDIA is now banking on the 8800GT to get them true this slump... its their only card that shows any kind of sale volume since the 48xx series from ATI became available...

As for reliability all my previous ATI card perform flawlessly till I got tired of them and just trew them away due to old age. Hell my X850XT ran highly overclocked (with catalyst) for over to years without a problem. Ran hotter then hell but still add no problem. Both my BFG 7900GTX OC had to be RMA within the first six months because the cards just died on me. Also setting up is a pain... having to install new drivers... test... rollback drivers... test... rollback somemore... test... udgrade drivers... etc.. its a pain...

With ATI... install the latest Catalyst..... and follow Coesties setup guide ;o)

Well just my 2c

[Flyby]

Hey Zoomie,
I think a lot of people share your view on the 4870. It's a highly competent card at a good value/price position; better in that sense than Nvidia's latest offerings. Super-powerful cards like the GTX280 and the 4870X2 seem like overkill in some ways. Their true benefit seems to come in running max settings at very high resolutions, as on 30-inch monitors. I'm not sure many simmers here run on 30-inch monitors. Like those super gpus, 30-inch monitors are very expensive. It's hard to see spending so much money for the most powerful graphics cards only to run them on the (average) 22 monitor.

I guess that's where I'm at. I want to build a new system one day, and I want a video card that will perform very well in new combat flight sims, on the monitor I select (22-24 inch). Oddly it seems that newer cards like the 4870 have shifted the "bottleneck" back to the cpu. In that sense too the ultra powerful, very expensive GPUs seem like overkill. You can't get max performance out of them unless you spend the $$ to run them at their most taxing settings, again on huge monitors. at very high resolutions. I think if I match a video card's best performance to the average monitor resolution (on an lcd its 16x or 19x, generally speaking) I'll be fine. I doubt that SoW_BoB will tax a modern gpu like the 4870 as much as it will a modern cpu like the e8500 or a quad 9300.
Buy hey, that's just my opinion. I'm sure I've overlooked a lot of considerations.
Flyby out.

[MaD88]

Originally Posted by Zoom2136

(...)
With ATI... install the latest Catalyst..... and follow Coesties setup guide ;o)

Well just my 2c

Where can I find this guide? While waiting for BOB (I wanna upgrade my PC when BOB or BlackShark is finished), I switched to an ATI 3850 AGP so it would be nice to find some more hints for Grafix...