Best Card for 2560x1600?

[bznotins]

I love HardOCP's reviews but the one place they fall short for me is that they often use resolution as a variable in their "playable settings". To me, resolution is NOT a variable. I have a 30" Dell LCD and I simply won't play at a resolution any less than 2560x1600. Lowering to a non-native resolution and making the game look like absolute crap isn't worth any improvement in frame rate.

So with that in mind, what is the best vidcard value out there right now? I'm intruiged by the potential of CF 4850 or 4870 but from what I understand a CF setup only yields 512MB of video memory and not the sum of the two. And I think 1GB is pretty necessary for any level of AA at 2560x1600.

So is a single GTX 260 the answer? I could probably afford the GTX 280 but it just feels like a waste of money.

Asus announced a 1GB 4870 which would be neat but I can't find it for sale anywhere. Anybody seen it in the wild?

Crysis has been sitting on my shelf waiting for a vidcard value that would let me play it at a reasonable frame rate. It was simply unplayable at 2560x1600 with my 8800GTS 640MB so I made the decision that I would wait to play it until video card technology caught up. Maybe it's this generation, maybe it's the next. I don't need to max out all the settings or anything, just get more than 1-2 FPS.

The final thing is that I can't help but feel that GT 260 prices have to drop in the next week or two to compete with the 4870. But that's a crapshoot in any case.

 

[gs29]

ASUS announced a 1GB 4850. Their 4870 is only 512MB. I recommend waiting for a GTX 280 price drop or for a 1GB 4870 (that's gonna take a while, probably at least a month). At 2560x1600, it's a bad idea to compromise on graphics.

 

[jacuzz1]

I can tell you this, the 280 rocks at 2560x1600. I still need to do some tweaking as i just go the card but COD4 16x af 4x AA TRSA looks amazing, i got an unexplained slow down when creek first loaded but then things were very smooth. I hope that helps

 

[PWMK2]

I've read on quite a few reviews that you can play Crysis on medium settings at your resolution with a GTX 280. Since it's currently the card with the most memory available, it's what I'd go for in your case.

 

[bznotins]

I've read on quite a few reviews that you can play Crysis on medium settings at your resolution with a GTX 280. Since it's currently the card with the most memory available, it's what I'd go for in your case.

Yeah that kind of where I'm headed I think. But I'd hate to buy a GTX 280 for $600 today and then next week a 1GB 4870 hit the shelves for $400. I realize the 4870 isn't quite the GTX 280, but $200 in my wallet would certainly make me feel better about the small performance drop...

 

[RB30]

I've read on quite a few reviews that you can play Crysis on medium settings at your resolution with a GTX 280. Since it's currently the card with the most memory available, it's what I'd go for in your case.

Crysis on medium settings looks like FarCry. Very bad.

 

[caw2007]

I'd wait for a while longer to see how things pan out. Course I just got a 4870 for my day-to-day machine which is hooked up to a 1080p display, so I guess my perspective is a little skewed.

 

[matrix563]

probably a 4870x2 with 2gb of ram . haha i doubt we will see such a card

 

[PWMK2]

Crysis on medium settings looks like FarCry. Very bad.

LOL no. I played and beat Crysis on Low with some Medium settings on my X850XT and it certainly looked better than Farcry. Unfortunately, I get 25 FPS in Crysis and like 60 in FarCry...

http://www.se51.net/devnull/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/crysis-medium.jpg <-- looks better than FarCry

 

[rincewind]

LOL no. I played and beat Crysis on Low with some Medium settings on my X850XT and it certainly looked better than Farcry. Unfortunately, I get 25 FPS in Crysis and like 60 in FarCry...

http://www.se51.net/devnull/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/crysis-medium.jpg <-- looks better than FarCry

All too true. Really there are too many people out there trashing Crysis because they can't play it on Very High with 4xAA, despite the fact that there is no other game that even approaches that level of visual complexity. Bash it 'cos you don't like it, not because you are unable to put the settings into perspective. Crytek offered a glimpse into the future of PC graphics with the higher options (at slideshow speed, of course) and all most people can do is moan about it and ridicule their 'shit code'. The enemies might be a bit stupid, but as FarCry had exactly the same problem I'd guess that AI isn't their forte. CG clearly is though, and they do it on a far grander scale than John Carmack ever has.

 

[Nuker]

Yeah, I would agree that crytek was always a step ahead of carmack. Far Cry came out half a year earlier than doom 3 but its visuals still trashed d3. This most certainly holds true for crysis compared to carmack's upcoming game called rage, which inspite of its texturing abilities still looks worse than crysis.

 

[RB30]

LOL no. I played and beat Crysis on Low with some Medium settings on my X850XT and it certainly looked better than Farcry. Unfortunately, I get 25 FPS in Crysis and like 60 in FarCry...

http://www.se51.net/devnull/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/crysis-medium.jpg <-- looks better than FarCry

LOL, yeah, medium setting looks than FarCry. Just I saw the visual differences between Medium and High (not Very High) settings are too great.

Currently, with my sig system, I can play Crysis on High settings at 1920x1200 no AA => 25fps on XP. I tried Medium settings to increase a few framerates, but it really killed the visuals.

 

[damonposey]

error. "2560x1600" invalid gaming resolution..

 

[jacuzz1]

error. "2560x1600" invalid gaming resolution..

not with a 280

 

[Zorachus]

Look at my system in sig, I play all games on my Apple 30" Display smooth butter = AoC, COD4, Team Fortress 2, Vanguard, QuakeWars, WoW.

Actually WoW is harder to run than you would think for a 4 year old game engine, set WoW to 2560x1600 all options highest maxed quality, and 8xMultisample and it still only gets like 30-50fps in the game, but it looks razor sharp, crystal clear like playing in an animated movie.

 

[PWMK2]

Look at my system in sig, I play all games on my Apple 30" Display smooth butter = AoC, COD4, Team Fortress 2, Vanguard, QuakeWars, WoW.

Actually WoW is harder to run than you would think for a 4 year old game engine, set WoW to 2560x1600 all options highest maxed quality, and 8xMultisample and it still only gets like 30-50fps in the game, but it looks razor sharp, crystal clear like playing in an animated movie.

Well, the deal with WoW is that it really depends on which areas of the game you are in. If you are in the middle of a 25-man trying to take down Illidan, then yeah. Your framerate will probably be in the 20s no matter what system you're running because your poor CPU is getting force-fed a bajillion instructions from the network controller and this brings down performance a lot. This is why games like WoW have been the only games to see an increase of performance with a killer nic installed. The patch a while back that introduced dual-core compatability really helped, but they need to introduce quad-core compatability now. On my old P4 + X850XT setup, I would routinely get 50-70FPS out in the boonies, but as soon as I would start running around popualted areas, my FPS would drop into the high 20s.

Other games shouldn't be a problem... other than other MMOs, of course.

 

[mlaine]

2560x1600 performance is truly excellent with GTX 280, especially when compared to my older 9800GX2. Excluding Crysis, everything runs fine at 2560x1600 without stuttering and low fps spikes. Mass Effect, Assassin's Creed, Hellgate London, The Witcher, Neverwinter Nights 2 - no problems with maximum details at 2560x1600.

I upgraded to GTX 280 just the day before 4870 reviews came out, and damn those new ATI cards have some seriously nice price-performance ratio - makes GTX 280 look terribly overpriced. It's really interesting to see how well the 1 GB version of 4870 will do against GTX 280.

If I would be upgrading at this point, I'd definitely wait for the 1 GB 4870, or at least GTX 280 price cuts. For 2560x1600, I wouldn't pick a 512 MB card.