which to buy 260 or 4870

I would tend to agree though its not an across the board victory. A GTX 280 at below 1920x1200 is a waste IMHO. That's not what its for.

I plan to pick up a 4870X2 when it comes out for 1680x1050... Just think of the AA, also the future proofing.
 
I plan to pick up a 4870X2 when it comes out for 1680x1050... Just think of the AA, also the future proofing.

Future proofing for a larger monitor makes sense. But really, multi-GPU solutions have a difficult time flexing their muscle at this resolution typically. There are exceptions with games like Crysis, AoC, and maybe some of the new titles this fall like Far Cry 2 my see benefit.

The sweet spot for that card is at least 1920x1200 overall though.
 
I plan to pick up a 4870X2 when it comes out for 1680x1050... Just think of the AA, also the future proofing.

future proofing with multi-gpu based boards has been proven a bad choice in the past, still a kick ass card!

I'll say again that if both teams released their cards at the current prices I would of most likely sought the GTX280 for single card solution to max out my possibilities with a single card (and still keep an intel chipset). But since they did not, I purchased the ATI card to support their plan for lower priced parts that still kick major ass (9600pro anyone?).
 
I would tend to agree though its not an across the board victory. A GTX 280 at below 1920x1200 is a waste IMHO. That's not what its for.



Exactly, at that resolution both cards are probably CPU bound if AA and AF are not maxed.

The 260 and 4870 are close enough inperformance, that unless you care about benchmaks and your e-penis, then the other issues should be the most influential in your descision.


Pro 260:

Warranty, Support, and Customer Service are top notch with XFX, BFG, and EVGA, those guys don't make 4870s.

nVidia'a driver support is much better right now.

Con260:

Not quite as quick as the 4870 in certain situations.

SLI and Intel.


Pro 4870:

Price is on average cheaper.

Aftermarket cooling is readily available.

Crossfire and Intel.

Con 4870:

Drivers are not really very good right now.

Card runs very very hot with out modifications to drivers or cooling.
 
I bought the MSI 260GTX from the egg. I got mine for 299 free ship.

It is the best card I have run on to date. It is also the coolest card to date!!

I see people calling others liars and yet no-one has posted a temp on either side

I seen some say how torturous furmark is so I loaded it up and gave it a go on both the bench and stability. On the bench I hit 48C and after 5 minutes of stabilty testing I hit 64C.

That's on a system that is running 4500mhz and a card that is OC'd to where I game with it daily. I bench higher!! So come on show me what you got.

I guess I'll show you my score and temps first then why don't you not post unless you have a score and a temp over time monitor to back you up.

here is the benchmark first, I hit 48C as a high on this one.
furmark.jpg


Now the 5 minute staility test, I hit 64 C on this one
furmarkheater.jpg


On COD4 I have never hit higher than 42C On futuremark tests I have never hit higher than 44C. On AQMK3 I never hit more than 41C and that is with my GPU/MEM set much higher than this...

So show me how hot yours is or how cool


WZ
 
I'll probably get the 4870. Sure the 260 GTX has more VRAM and a higher memory bus, but most benchmarks I've seen a 4870 beats a 260 GTX. Thats where the beauty of GDDR5 and higher memory clocks come in.
 
I'll probably get the 4870. Sure the 260 GTX has more VRAM and a higher memory bus, but most benchmarks I've seen a 4870 beats a 260 GTX. Thats where the beauty of GDDR5 and higher memory clocks come in.

The memory has nothng to do with it. In the cases where the 4870 is faster, it's the 800 SPs and higher Gflops that are the difference.
 
The memory has nothng to do with it. In the cases where the 4870 is faster, it's the 800 SPs and higher Gflops that are the difference.

The gtx 260 has more SP's than the 4870. The 260 has 192 SP's while the 4870 only has "800 SP's". You have to realize that with ATI SP's that you divide 800 by 5 (5 ATI SP'are the the equivalent of 1 Nvidia SP), therefore the 4870 really only has 160 SP's.

If you look at games that don't take a lot of gpu muscle to run them, such as UT3 and CoD4, the 4870 can perform better than the gtx 280 simply because you only need a fast video card in these games. However, if you look at games like WiC and Crysis that require SP a more VRAM to run well, that is why the 4870 struggles in those games. I also think that is why the 4870 won't last gamers as long as the GT200 cards: the 4870 lacks the SP and VRAM.

Does that make the 4870 a bad card? Absolutely not, great performance in today's games for a great price but expect the 4870 to not last very long. As games require more VRAM and SP's (which they will) the 4870 will struggle too much and need to be replaced a lot sooner than a GT200 will. If you upgrade your card every 9-12 months I think the 4870 is the better card, but if you want your card to last 24 months then the GT200 cards are clearly the better choice.
 
The gtx 260 has more SP's than the 4870. The 260 has 192 SP's while the 4870 only has "800 SP's". You have to realize that with ATI SP's that you divide 800 by 5 (5 ATI SP'are the the equivalent of 1 Nvidia SP), therefore the 4870 really only has 160 SP's.

No, you do not divide the SPs in ATI's R600, RV670 and RV770 by 5...

ATI built SIMD arrays, with 16 five-ALU superscalar execution blocks. Each SIMD has a total 80 ALUs and with 4 SIMD arrays in R600 and Rv670 that makes a total of 320 ALUs, which AMD called "Stream Processors".
RV770 is no different in structure, since it retains the SIMD arrays, but ATI increased their number by 2.5 times, which means that instead of 4 (in R600 and RV670), RV770 has 10 SIMDs, totaling 800 ALUs or "Stream Processors" as AMD calls them.

So, you do not divide the 800 number. The HD 4800s have 800 ALUs arranged in 10 SIMD arrays. AMD decided to call them "Stream Processors", because they are their architecture's processing units, but they cannot be compared to NVIDIA's Stream Processors, as you did.
 
I have read about the 5:1 on so many sites and reviews I really doubt that everybody is wrong. Plus, look at the benchmarks. Games that are shader intensive the 4870 starts to show it's weakness which is also why the GT200's perform better in these games.

Think about it logically. ATI's 800 SP's can't really be 800. If that was the case shouldn't it perform a lot better than the GT200 cards? When in fact in shader intensive games the GT200 cards perform better.
 
I have read about the 5:1 on so many sites and reviews I really doubt that everybody is wrong. Plus, look at the benchmarks. Games that are shader intensive the 4870 starts to show it's weakness which is also why the GT200's perform better in these games.

Think about it logically. ATI's 800 SP's can't really be 800. If that was the case shouldn't it perform a lot better than the GT200 cards? When in fact in shader intensive games the GT200 cards perform better.

First of all, the people that do (or did) those comparisons need to take into consideration much more than just the number throw by each company's PR. They should look at it from an architectural standpoint and as far as processing units go, the RV770 does have 800 of them, but they can't be compared directly to what NVIDIA has, again because of architecture differences in how these processing units work.

Second, it's all about efficiency and keeping the thread scheduler throwing work load to each and every processing unit available, which is the point of a unified architecture anyway. Worth to note that the ALUs in R600 (same in RV570 and RV770) are super scalar i.e. each of them can execute a different instruction, but all of these instructions must be issued at the same time. If this doesn't work efficiently, you'll end up having processing units doing nothing and thus wasting processing power.
 
Those of you discussing Furmark should read this, from the Furmark site:

Xtreme Burning is a mode where the workload of GPU is maximal. In this mode, the donut is fixed and is displayed in front side which offers the largest surface. In this mode, the GPU core quickly becomes very hot
The Xtreme Burning mode can be started in command line or directly by launching the file start-Xtreme-Burning.bat. This mode is perfect for testing your new overclocking parameters.
 
I am thinking that what they mean (the websites that did the reviews and said this) is that the 5:1 comparison isn't literally meant, it's more of a guide line of how much performance you can expect when comparing both brands. If for example you say the 800SP's on the 4870 perform like a Nvidia card with 160SP's, then that is correct. Benchmarks don't lie. In shader intensive games the 4870 performs pretty much how a Nvidia card would perform if it had 160 shaders.

That's why, overall in WiC and Crysis, the 4870 (with it's hypothetical 160SP's) performs better than the 9800gtx with 128SP's but not as well as the GTX 260 with 192SP's.
 
thanks for all the help guys:) thats what i like about these forums no offense to all the other sites out there but its just something about [H]forums.allways a good discussion
 
That's why, overall in WiC and Crysis, the 4870 (with it's hypothetical 160SP's) performs better than the 9800gtx with 128SP's but not as well as the GTX 260 with 192SP's.

Huh, where did you get that idea from :confused: :confused:

The vast majority of reviews have shown the HD 4870 surpassing the GTX 260 in Crysis at virtually every single resolution/settings:

Crysis benchmarks/performance:

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3341&p=13
HD 4870 > GTX 260 across the board

http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/14990/12
HD 4870 > GTX 260 across the board

http://en.expreview.com/2008/06/24/first-review-hd-4870-and-hd-4850/16/
HD 4870 > GTX 260 across the board

http://hothardware.com/Articles/ATI_Radeon_HD_4850_and_4870_RV770_Has_Arrived/?page=10
HD 4870 > GTX 260 (albeit only one res/setting tested here; 1920x1200 High


Granted, there are a few reviews out there which show them performing virtually neck and neck, and even a couple Ive come across where the GTX 260 managed to pull ahead in certain situations by a couple of frames per second, but that withstanding, it's very misleading of you to claim that the GTX 260 is categorically > than the HD 4870 in Crysis as you have, when it's clearly not the case in most scenarios.
 
:rolleyes:
The only other minor factors were that I wouldn't have to go through driver hell trying to switch over and that Nvidia vendor warranty support is better than ATI vendors with the exception of Visiontek (which is the only ATI card I would even consider buying).
.

Completely non-issue, at least for me in Vista x64 edition. I'd recently uninstalled by nVIDIA Ntune and display drivers, shutdown the computer and replaced my XFX 8600GT OC edition and replaced it with a 4850.

After reboot, applied the 8.6 + hotfix drivers and have had absolutely no issues at all. Totally solid. I know that this thread is really about the 4870 versus the 260GTX, but if the "driver hell" argument comes up I've got to explain the results of switching for this long term nVIDIA fan. I'd been nVIDIA since the Riva 128 but have finally switched to the "dark side" :p

As it currently stands, the nVIDIA install/uinstall process has improved enough that "bit's n pieces" that used to f it all up when moving to a different vendor is a thing of the past. However, even if this isn't the case for some time, everyone holds onto the past and continue to talk about it as if it's the issue currently. It's just that for the first time, really, in a while that it made since to go ATI. The last time was during the FX era, but nVIDIA has managed to dominate since then. However, just as AMD's Athlon series dominated until the advent of the Core 2 from Intel, I suspect nVIDIA's domination is now also in the decline.

Give me a break about how the new $900 ultra refresh of the 280GTX will regain the crown this fall, as that's just what everyone is going to buy at that incredible price/peformance value :rolleyes:

Between the price/performance results currently and NVIDIA's UMAP policy, I've kissed nVIDIA good bye. Consider it my personal boycot, but "I ain't missing you (nVIDIA)" due to ATI's new choices in cards.
 
My card doesnt top out past 65C and i have a GTX 260. Thats not even running it at 100% fan. These cards dont necessarily run as hot as many people would like to think. Id say 260 for the price it is now...
 
I didn't add any fan fix on my 4870, and it stays at 71 C under load. It sounds like a high number to me, but I can't feel any heat at all, only cool air out of my antec 900.
 
I didn't add any fan fix on my 4870, and it stays at 71 C under load. It sounds like a high number to me, but I can't feel any heat at all, only cool air out of my antec 900.

Well I installed a 4870 in my friend's computer (antec 900 case also) and it was idling at 72 C, and thats in the middle of the night during winter here in australia, so the house is pretty cool. The air out the back was cool... because the card itself was heating up. Turned the fan to 35% and the hot air pumped out the back of the case and it dropped the card temperature to 42 (idle). Didn't get a chance to test load temps properly.
 
I know it's a little off-topic but how much better are these cards compared to the 8800GTS (G92)?
 
My card doesnt top out past 65C and i have a GTX 260. Thats not even running it at 100% fan. These cards dont necessarily run as hot as many people would like to think. Id say 260 for the price it is now...

Big surprise there, this guy is a mod on a evga forum, of course his card doesn't overheat :p. You work for evga, so you probably get the cherry picked gtx260 I'm sure :rolleyes:
 
Huh, where did you get that idea from :confused: :confused:

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2008/07/11/summer-2008-graphics-performance-roundup/1

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...eon-hd4870-512mb-graphics-card-review-14.html

For the hardwarecanucks review they tested the gtx280 and 4870, not the gtx260. However, if you have seen enough benchmarks you know that an overclocked gtx260 benches pretty much the same as a gtx280 (when the gpu core clock is above 670 on the gtx 260). If you look at these benchmarks in these two reviews, generally the higher the resolution and AA the better the GT200's outperform the 4870. Keep in mind the minimum frame rates as they are obviously the most important number when benchmarking.
 
An important thing that I saw in the Crysis benchmark section of the bit-tech review:

"At mid range resolutions the HD 4870 continues to impress, and at 1680x1050 it performs very closely to the GTX 260. However, the minimum frame rates are always higher on the GTX cards, offering a smoother gameplay experience."

This is what I was talking about earlier. The extra VRAM and SP's on the GT200 cards no doubt are the reason for "offering a smoother gameplay experience".
 
Huh, where did you get that idea from :confused: :confused:

The vast majority of reviews have shown the HD 4870 surpassing the GTX 260 in Crysis at virtually every single resolution/settings:

Crysis benchmarks/performance:

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3341&p=13
HD 4870 > GTX 260 across the board

http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/14990/12
HD 4870 > GTX 260 across the board

http://en.expreview.com/2008/06/24/first-review-hd-4870-and-hd-4850/16/
HD 4870 > GTX 260 across the board

http://hothardware.com/Articles/ATI_Radeon_HD_4850_and_4870_RV770_Has_Arrived/?page=10
HD 4870 > GTX 260 (albeit only one res/setting tested here; 1920x1200 High


Granted, there are a few reviews out there which show them performing virtually neck and neck, and even a couple Ive come across where the GTX 260 managed to pull ahead in certain situations by a couple of frames per second, but that withstanding, it's very misleading of you to claim that the GTX 260 is categorically > than the HD 4870 in Crysis as you have, when it's clearly not the case in most scenarios.

Yup, and the 4870 basically out performs the gtx260 once you start turning the resolution up and using AA / AF.
 
since you're upgrading from a 9600gt, stick with nvidia. unified drivers make upgrading less of a hassle.
 
Yup, and the 4870 basically out performs the gtx260 once you start turning the resolution up and using AA / AF.

Actually from what I've seen in benchmarks, the higher the resolution the closer the GTX260 gets to the 4870, and high resolutions are pretty much the only time the GTX260 ever gets infront.

Can't comment on AA, haven't checked out any benchies that directly compare the GTX260 and 4870 with increasing levels of AA.
 
Big surprise there, this guy is a mod on a evga forum, of course his card doesn't overheat :p. You work for evga, so you probably get the cherry picked gtx260 I'm sure :rolleyes:

Actually, my card wasnt binned. It was pulled directly off the sealed boxes available from stepup. I dont get cherry picked products, but i have been quite lucky with my EVGA cards in general regarding overclocking, except for my 7800GT didnt OC at all.
 
The 8800GTS 512MB? The 4870 is more like 30% faster than it.

Depends on the game. Looking at the anandtech review the 4870 is anywhere from 30% (oblivion) to 100% (bioshock) faster than the 8800GT. Most games are around 50-80% faster with the 4870 though.

Comparing an 8800GTS to an 8800GT, depending on which 8800GTS you have (320, 640 or 512mb) its either slightly faster or slightly slower than the 8800GT.

That's going solely off the anandtech review, others might give different results.

I currently have the 320mb 8800GTS and am trying to decide if its worth the upgrade... sure its 50-100% faster... but its not like I'm struggling to play games. Its a toss up between get the 4870 now and not upgrade again for at least 18 months, or wait until my 8800GTS gets too slow for comfort then upgrade to whatever is available then, which will more than likely crush the 4870.
 
Actually from what I've seen in benchmarks, the higher the resolution the closer the GTX260 gets to the 4870, and high resolutions are pretty much the only time the GTX260 ever gets infront.

Can't comment on AA, haven't checked out any benchies that directly compare the GTX260 and 4870 with increasing levels of AA.

adding AA actually gives the 4870 a big advantage, in fact if your running high levels of AA you looking at comparing the 4870 to the GTX280, not the 260, this doesn't apply all games of course.
 
Big surprise there, this guy is a mod on a evga forum, of course his card doesn't overheat :p. You work for evga, so you probably get the cherry picked gtx260 I'm sure :rolleyes:

in all fairness not all the cards have that issue, Makes me wonder if they should not be looking at the last stages of the manufacturing process. I am wondering if the heat sink being seated properly. and of course you can't redo it without voiding the warranty
 
in all fairness not all the cards have that issue, Makes me wonder if they should not be looking at the last stages of the manufacturing process. I am wondering if the heat sink being seated properly. and of course you can't redo it without voiding the warranty

Actually, you can redo the heatsink and not void your warranty.
 
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