Getting a new computer. Need advice.

[MrGiggles]

Re: Getting a new computer. Need advice.

protip: brand loyalty is kind of stupid and fermi is awful

I mentioned this earlier, but brand superiority tends to run in a cycle, and right now a lot of people are busy laughing at NVidia cards setting houses on fire. ATI is finally getting their **** together. How long will this last? Iunno.

You're right though, fido. ATI's drivers are a total joek and cost the cards a fair amount of performance. They tend to be cheaper to compensate.

[Phynx]

Re: Getting a new computer. Need advice.

ATI has kept a steady pace, this I admit. They've had very successful cards that made me question my choices when building my new systems.

BUT as for the current, I don't want to hear anyone say "Well... Well in benchmarks the 5970 smoked the 480!"

Cause I'm sure some people don't know that the 5970 is JUST like(in build design) as the NVidia GeForce 9800 GX2 in that it has TWO GPU processors and hardware to scale. The GTX 480 is a single GPU unit.

Now knowing this, yeah the 5970 landed high benchmarks on a lot of tests but even though it is overstacked with hardware compared to the 480, it still lost on several tests to the 480. Consult tomshardware for the data on it.

In ATI's defense again though, their cards have been known(lately anyway) to be quieter, use less energy, and are cooler than NVidia's cards while still performing a solid throughput of performance. As well they are always cheaper than NVidia's cards.

So all in all, I think ATI is progressing in a lot of good areas though they seem to "out-perform" in order to "out-brag" Nvidia from time to time, while NVidia has some hardware changes they need to make to offer a more economical solution with better ratings for a cheaper price.

[MrRubix]

Re: Getting a new computer. Need advice.

a more valid comparison will be the 5970 vs the 485 (or whatever the dual gpu card is here)

[Phynx]

Re: Getting a new computer. Need advice.

a more valid comparison will be the 5970 vs the 485 (or whatever the dual gpu card is here)

The 485 or "gf100" is still a single-gpu.

As far as I've seen, the only "newest" dual-GPU, single card NVidia has released is the GTX 295.

Corrected - I guess there is speculation? about a dual-gpu GTX 495

[MrRubix]

Re: Getting a new computer. Need advice.

like i said i wasn't sure which card was dual GPU (I just assumed the 485 -- but it might be labeled a 490 or 495).

The GTX 295 is what I currently own -- it's a dual-GPU card that's about the same as having two GTX 260's in SLI.

[ninjaKIWI]

Re: Getting a new computer. Need advice.

protip: brand loyalty is kind of stupid and fermi is awful

I mentioned this earlier, but brand superiority tends to run in a cycle, and right now a lot of people are busy laughing at NVidia cards setting houses on fire. ATI is finally getting their **** together. How long will this last? Iunno.

You're right though, fido. ATI's drivers are a total joek and cost the cards a fair amount of performance. They tend to be cheaper to compensate.

Nothing wrong with Fermi so long as you stay away from the 480. My 460 is amazing, never goes above 55 degrees.

I realize that brand loyalty is pretty silly but the only worth while cards that ATI has out right now are the 5850 and the 5870, and even then they're no match in price or performance for cards like the 460.

I'm skeptical of ATI's new products, raving about 4GB memory this, huge upgrade that. Again it's just that, ATI has for the most part had higher "specs" of hardware but had lower specs in performance to NVidia's cards.

I personally think NVidia is just biding time for itself. That or the 480 Fermi cards are again, as always, better than ATI's top of the line.

ATI's cards always get bottlenecked thanks to their terrible drivers. That and dual GPU cards are stupid until PCI-e 3.0 comes out.

The 485 or "gf100" is still a single-gpu.

The GTX480 runs on the gf100 core as well. The 485 isn't synonymous with the gf100.

[MrRubix]

Re: Getting a new computer. Need advice.

Almost forgot about the driver issues -- I generally find that both ATI and NVidia suck at writing new drivers, lol.

[fido123]

Re: Getting a new computer. Need advice.

protip: brand loyalty is kind of stupid and fermi is awful

I mentioned this earlier, but brand superiority tends to run in a cycle, and right now a lot of people are busy laughing at NVidia cards setting houses on fire. ATI is finally getting their **** together. How long will this last? Iunno.

I'm not so much loyal to a brand rather than I stick with the brand doing the best at the time. Perhaps I should look into ATI again since it's been quite a while since I've looked into them. I expect AMD to even pull ahead of Intel in the next 4 years cause they're doing work involving putting mobo components on the chip so I've heard.

Almost forgot about the driver issues -- I generally find that both ATI and NVidia suck at writing new drivers, lol.

I've honestly never had a problem with an NVidea driver, and I have a 460GTX which is a fairly new card. Also I know this doesn't matter to most people but the fact NVidea releases Linux drivers personally pushes me towards them cause I don't want to loose functionality to a whole OS.

[MrRubix]

Re: Getting a new computer. Need advice.

I'm not so much loyal to a brand rather than I stick with the brand doing the best at the time. Perhaps I should look into ATI again since it's been quite a while since I've looked into them. I expect AMD to even pull ahead of Intel in the next 4 years cause they're doing work involving putting mobo components on the chip so I've heard.




I've honestly never had a problem with an NVidea driver, and I have a 460GTX which is a fairly new card. Also I know this doesn't matter to most people but the fact NVidea releases Linux drivers personally pushes me towards them cause I don't want to loose functionality to a whole OS.

I've had a couple issues with the NVidia drivers for my 295's. There was a driver a while back (the 195's? I can't remember the name) -- a WHQL-- that caused some pretty serious damage to people's cards. Luckily I wait to see how a driver affects others before I install, but in general, NVidia's drivers are not without error, either. I find sometimes that my benchmarks start to suck or I experience other issues with graphics, etc. For the most part, though, upgrades are decent.

[ninjaKIWI]

Re: Getting a new computer. Need advice.

I'm not so much loyal to a brand rather than I stick with the brand doing the best at the time. Perhaps I should look into ATI again since it's been quite a while since I've looked into them. I expect AMD to even pull ahead of Intel in the next 4 years cause they're doing work involving putting mobo components on the chip so I've heard.

LGA 1156 processors already take the responsibilities of the northbridge chipset. To be honest I'm kind of against doing this with CPUs. Let the motherboard be the motherboard and the processor be the processor.

I've honestly never had a problem with an NVidea driver, and I have a 460GTX which is a fairly new card. Also I know this doesn't matter to most people but the fact NVidea releases Linux drivers personally pushes me towards them cause I don't want to loose functionality to a whole OS.

Download MSi Afterburner and overclock your 460 if you haven't already. You should be able to get around the performance of a 470 out of it.

I've had a couple issues with the NVidia drivers for my 295's. There was a driver a while back (the 195's? I can't remember the name) -- a WHQL-- that caused some pretty serious damage to people's cards. Luckily I wait to see how a driver affects others before I install, but in general, NVidia's drivers are not without error, either. I find sometimes that my benchmarks start to suck or I experience other issues with graphics, etc. For the most part, though, upgrades are decent.

I have a feeling that the drivers for dual GPU cards are a bit more complex (Pulling this out of my ass now). Everything's going to have some problems.