2560x1600 - where's the sweet spot?

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veras

Weaksauce
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Last year I picked up a Dell 30" monitor, it's beautiful and great and all but in many ways I regret it because it's really a pain in the ass to drive this thing. At the time I dropped my 8800GTS 320mb in it with the intent to upgrade, but I've spent all that time sitting on the fence waiting for the "next" thing to come out.

I think I've finally resolved to upgrade because the market seems fairly competitive right now and I'm sure I can get significantly more performance than I've got right now, but I'm wondering where the sweet spot is for gaming at this resolution right now.

Is it best to pick up a single 280? Single 4870 X2? Crossfire 4870 X2s? SLI 260s? SLI 280s? I understand that the more expensive/multicard options will perform better, but I'm wondering just how scalable the performance is - ie. if you're paying double for 20% more performance, or if you're paying double for 50-60% more performance.

So basically, as the thread title states, I'm wondering if there's some sweet spot of price to performance for gaming at this resolution, or if it's kinda 'jam all the hardware into your box you can you're gonna need it' - and if that is the case, which multicard solution is the best bang for the buck.

Thanks in advance for any advice
 
I think your best option is always a single card solution. I have dual 30" HP's- and I have an HD4850. I had dual HD4850s, but I don't think it made that big of a performance increase in the games I played. Crysis, Lost Planet, Assasins Creed. I'd go for the HD4870x2-

I know that the SLI helps more with higher resolutions such as 2560x1600, but is it worth the price of another video card to you?
 
Well for a single card solution no doubt the 4870 X2 is where its' at. However CrossfireX scaling has been fairly crappy right now but dual 4870 X2's is probably almost if not always going to beat dual Geforce GTX 280's. However the Geforce GTX 280 route gets you a bit better scaling and probably most of the same performance for less money. 3-Way SLI is probably the fastest thing out there right now. Though the scaling largely depends on the game (this is true of Crossfire and CrossfireX as well.) Call of Duty 4 scales really well up to four GPUs and with 2 GPUs 100% scaling is possible. With three you probably get about 90% from the third card but frankly its' overkill. Two Geforce GTX 280's will never drop below 66FPS (assuming 3.0GHz+ Core 2 Duo/Quad) anywhere in the game at maximum settings.

If it were me and I wasn't going to use the Intel D5400XS motherboard (which does SLI, 3-Way SLI and Crossfire/CrossfireX) I'd probably go with dual 4870 X2's in CrossfireX for the simple fact that I won't use NVIDIA chipset based boards in my main machine. If I were you I'd make my choice based on the motherboard you are currently using. If you already have an SLI capable board then dual Geforce GTX 280's would serve you well. Crysis and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky are more than playable on that setup at 1920x1200 and 2560x1600 respectively. While that doesn't sound good for Crysis it should be better for Crysis Warhead and there isn't much else you can do. Right now 3 Geforce GTX 280's in 3-Way SLI are as good as it can get for Crysis. If you are running an Intel chipset based board go with a single 4870 X2. Then pick up a second card if you feel like you need more performance than what the single card can offer.

In my personal experience a single Geforce GTX 280 is the minimum I'd want to use for gaming at 2560x1600. It will be just fine for most games but some titles such as Crysis, Crysis Warhead, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky and anything else coming down the line won't run sufficently well in my opinion to stick with a single card. Dual Geforce GTX 280's in SLI are a great option for the price now and they offer enough punch to run anything out there with the exception of Crysis and possibly Crysis Warhead (I haven't tried it yet) at maximum settings. The only thing you MIGHT have to give up is some AA in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky but really the game doesn't seem like it needs a ton of AA at 2560x1600.

What else do you want to know? I've got two 4870 X2's here and three Geforce GTX 280's. I've used Geforce GTX 280 SLI, Geforce GTX 280 3-Way SLI and 4870 X2, and 4870 X2 CrossfireX.
 
I 2nd Dan's response haha...

I personally sold my 2nd X2, since I saw absolutely no differences in the games that I played.
 
Well, I'm likely upgrading my motherboard/cpu too and offloading my current mb and cpu into an auxiliary box - so I'm not really tied up in that sense and can't easily make a choice based on that. Why do you avoid Nvidia boards in your main machine, stability/compatibility issues?

I get the impression I should be leaning towards grabbing a single 4870 X2, and then getting a second one if I'm unhappy with the performance in the games I'm playing. Id love for Crysis to run great, but I also don't really want to spend a large sum of money for just one game.

The only other question I had was about image quality differences between Nvidia and ATI, about to dig through the video card reviews database here because I haven't looked into that too much yet - I get the feeling neither has a distinct advantage right now though.

Thanks very much for the in depth reply.
 
yang88she said:
I 2nd Dan's response haha...

I personally sold my 2nd X2, since I saw absolutely no differences in the games that I played.
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I've seen performance improvements in CrossfireX but only in a handful of games. I saw an improvement in Age of Conan and Call of Duty 4. I saw some in Crysis but all that second card did was double the already shitty performance I was getting with one card.
 
veras said:
Well, I'm likely upgrading my motherboard/cpu too and offloading my current mb and cpu into an auxiliary box - so I'm not really tied up in that sense and can't easily make a choice based on that. Why do you avoid Nvidia boards in your main machine, stability/compatibility issues?

I get the impression I should be leaning towards grabbing a single 4870 X2, and then getting a second one if I'm unhappy with the performance in the games I'm playing. Id love for Crysis to run great, but I also don't really want to spend a large sum of money for just one game.

The only other question I had was about image quality differences between Nvidia and ATI, about to dig through the video card reviews database here because I haven't looked into that too much yet - I get the feeling neither has a distinct advantage right now though.

Thanks very much for the in depth reply.
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i avoid the NVIDIA chipset based boards because I've had 12 680i SLI boards all of which were either DOA or died within 3 months of installing them. Some lasted as little as 3 weeks while one lasted 14 months. All of them were pieces of crap. They were plagued with storage controller compatibility problems, memory compatibility problems overclocking related issues and so on. The 780i SLI is the same exact pile of crap with Penryn support and an added nForce 200 MCP that provides PCI-Express 2.0 support along with additional PCI-Express lanes. The 790i Ultra SLI was better but it still suffers from sub-standard power circuitry. Word is they suffer from SATA corruption like the 680i SLI did. (Which is no surprise considering they all used the same south bridge.)

The only board I've liked at all with an NVIDIA chipset is the EVGA 750i SLI FTW. I haven't tried any of the other FTW models but I'm sure they are better than the initial reference designs. The FTW boards have improved power circuitry which was sorely needed.

As for image quality differences between ATI and NVIDIA you won't find very many if any at all. They are both roughly equal in this area. ATI has additional AA modes that NVIDIA doesn't currently match but those typically cause too much of a performance hit in most titles. There are some exceptions but I wouldn't say the added AA modes add a whole lot at 2560x1600. They certainly don't justify the $130 price difference between the Geforce GTX 280 and the ATI Radeon 4870 X2.
 
Dan, or others, what about future proofing, of course this is never 100% but lets say for 2 years or so. Would 4870x2 in CFX at 2560x1600 or 1920x1200 give one enough power to game for the next two years without worry of an upgrade (given you have a C2D/C2Q 3.0Ghz+)?
 
Tetrahedron said:
Dan, or others, what about future proofing, of course this is never 100% but lets say for 2 years or so. Would 4870x2 in CFX at 2560x1600 or 1920x1200 give one enough power to game for the next two years without worry of an upgrade (given you have a C2D/C2Q 3.0Ghz+)?
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Well I've been running the Dell 3007WFP since just before the ATI Radeon X1950XTX came out. In that time I've found that I've had to upgrade to dual cards EVERY generation in order to keep up with newer games at those resolutions with all the eye candy on which is important to me. Sometimes I've felt like the cards available at the time were never good enough for the games that were out at the time. No game has made me feel that more keenly than Crysis has but I always felt that the 7900GTX SLI setup wasn't enough. The ATI Radeon X1950XTX setup was BARELY good enough for the games of the day and the 8800GTX SLI setup was for the most part, until Crysis came out. Though I felt 3-Way SLI was necessary for a couple games. Mainly Crysis and Call of Duty 4. I then went up to 9800GX2 Quad-SLI which I felt was a step in the wrong direction in regard to AA performance. (Thanks for the castrated memory size and memory bus NVIDIA). Though frame rate wise I think that the 9800GX2's were and still are pretty good for the most part. The Geforce GTX 280 SLI setup served me well and Geforce GTX 280 3-Way SLI serves me well right now. However, Crysis and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky would certainly benefit from an upgrade even now with the video cards out there today. So essentially they aren't good enough to provide me with 2560x1600 max settings including at least 4xAA and 16xAF in all titles yet. 4870 X2 CrossfireX is nice too but again there are drawbacks there. I wasn't happy with those at all but that's another long and drawn out story.

With these massive beastly cards already feeling the strain of some of the latest games so close to the cards' initial release dates I don't think that you'll be able to get two years out of anything on the shelf today if you want to game at 2560x1600 and keep all the eye candy on. I think this generation is sub-par for the games we've been getting lately and thus I can't see these cards' holding their ground like the Geforce 8800GTX did.
 
jesus christ dan!

your the master of video cards! i have learned more from reading your posts then browsing wikiedia!
 
redbonefish said:
jesus christ dan!

your the master of video cards! i have learned more from reading your posts then browsing wikiedia!
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Brent knows more about them than I do on a technical level. I just have a lot of experience with them as I play a ton of games and as a result I buy a lot of video cards. :cool:
 
Tetrahedron said:
Dan, or others, what about future proofing, of course this is never 100% but lets say for 2 years or so. Would 4870x2 in CFX at 2560x1600 or 1920x1200 give one enough power to game for the next two years without worry of an upgrade (given you have a C2D/C2Q 3.0Ghz+)?
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Doubtful @ 2560x1600, but you can always drop the resolution as newer games bring your system to its knees. :p
 
Kowan said:
Doubtful @ 2560x1600, but you can always drop the resolution as newer games bring your system to its knees. :p
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Even 1920x1200 doesn't look good scaled to fit the screen. I keep upgrading video cards because frankly running at 2560x1600 is the only way to go on a 30" monitor. Plus I require all the eye candy to be enabled.
 
At that resolution one thing is certain--you are always going to be looking for more power with the latest games. You really need the best there is at any given time and probably two of the best there is. You really want at least the 4870x2.

I would not get a monitor with that resolution unless I had serious cash to spend on SLI and Crossfire setups on a yearly basis. Which is not to say that you have to, but the costs of that resolution are going to be high.
 
Dan_D said:
Even 1920x1200 doesn't look good scaled to fit the screen. I keep upgrading video cards because frankly running at 2560x1600 is the only way to go on a 30" monitor. Plus I require all the eye candy to be enabled.
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well that sucks about 19x12, i wish there was some future-proofing in spending $1100 to at least get 1-1.5 years and maybe 2 before you felt that the puter was insufficient for modern games. Like my 9700 Pro lasted that long before I felt the need to upgrade to a X1900XTX, currently using a NV 9600GT @ 12x10 to hold me over before getting a 19x12 or 25x16 monitor and new graphics solution.

maybe I am different in terms of getting future-proofing for set period of time, and 4870x2 in CFX will suffice me, still doing research, 3 weeks now before I invest $3500 in a new pc.

PS - sorry if this is a hijack of thread, I just dislike creating new threads talking about the same sort of similar situtations
 
This is another plus of the hannspree, I only have to push 1920 by 1200 for 28". Of course I am still looking at upgrading...

the extra eye candy a 4870X2 would allow would be pretty nice.
 
I found that crossfire scaled very well across my 2 4870's (got these back at launch, before the X2's)

Games like CoD4 saw almost exactly double frame rates with crossfire enabled compared to disabled, some games scale extremely well, I'd suggest either 4870 xfire or the 4870x2, it will give you more power than a GTX280 but not bust the bank (too badly)
 
Frostex said:
I found that crossfire scaled very well across my 2 4870's (got these back at launch, before the X2's)

Games like CoD4 saw almost exactly double frame rates with crossfire enabled compared to disabled, some games scale extremely well, I'd suggest either 4870 xfire or the 4870x2, it will give you more power than a GTX280 but not bust the bank (too badly)
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I got a pretty good deal on mine and can't complain. I think I am going to upgrade though. Would like just a little more horsepower then what I have. looking at the 4870X2 to drop bellow 500 at least. I only paid 350 for my GTX280 AR
 
Frostex said:
I found that crossfire scaled very well across my 2 4870's (got these back at launch, before the X2's)

Games like CoD4 saw almost exactly double frame rates with crossfire enabled compared to disabled, some games scale extremely well, I'd suggest either 4870 xfire or the 4870x2, it will give you more power than a GTX280 but not bust the bank (too badly)
Click to expand...

Well NVIDIA and ATI have really stepped up their game in the last few months in regard to dual GPU configurations and SLI/Crossfire scaling. This is probably so that "GX2" and "X2" cards could be viable in the market and to avoid another disaster like NVIDIA had with the 7950GX2.
 
fyi, I have a good deal on some Visiontek 4870x2's as I will probably be selling mine and going back to my GTX280.
 
AthlonXP said:
fyi, I have a good deal on some Visiontek 4870x2's as I will probably be selling mine and going back to my GTX280.
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You are back sliding performance wise. The 4870 X2 is MUCH faster than the Geforce GTX 280 in everything but Crysis.
 
im pretty much in the same situation. Had a 8800GTS 512mb, it couldnt rly run nothing smoothly at native (2560x1600) with candy on. I'm now after a new card, sold the gts, but not keen on spending money on a SLI/crossfire/4870x2/gtx280 combo/card. Curse the high ress, eh.

So Im either going for a HD4870 or the new gtx260, I guess the latter is better suited at higher ress ?

(not my intention to hijack the tread though)
 
a1212 said:
im pretty much in the same situation. Had a 8800GTS 512mb, it couldnt rly run nothing smoothly at native (2560x1600) with candy on. I'm now after a new card, sold the gts, but not keen on spending money on a SLI/crossfire/4870x2/gtx280 combo/card. Curse the high ress, eh.

So Im either going for a HD4870 or the new gtx260, I guess the latter is better suited at higher ress ?

(not my intention to hijack the tread though)
Click to expand...

I'd check the reviews but I think that it would be. More memory and a wider memory bus often makes the difference at higher resolutions.
 
IMO 4870x2 is fine unless you like doing ridiculous things with eye candy. Don't rush into CF or sli - wait until you have a real need to upgrade if you are concerned over paying a premium. 280 only worth it if you can get a real sick deal.
 
I suggest the following for a moderately serious gamer.
2560*1600 -> 4870 X2
1920*1200 -> GTX 280
1680*1050 -> 4870/GTX 260
1280*1024 -> 4850
 
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