evga 9800gtx vs 9800gtx+

GTS 250.

On a serious note since for some reason Evga or BFG 9800GTX+ are still selling for around $170 on newegg and op is going for the bang/buck the following gpu should be the best choice.

Sapphire HD 4870 512 - $179.99 F/S

A lot faster then 9800gtx+ for $10 more and comes with a non reference cooling design/heatsink.
 
courtney01 said:
Just wondering, what's your reason?
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Combination of personal preference and the fact that I prefer ATI's drivers. When it comes down to it, performance is pretty much equivalent between the two cards anyway, so it doesn't really matter all that much which one you go with.

Also, the cooler used by that specific 4850 is the kind that exhausts the hot air out the back of the case.
 
You haven't bought a card yet? j/k. I have tested both the 9800GTX+ and 4850. Only noticeable difference was in Crysis Warhead, 4850 was less lag @1600x1200 4x AA, gamer settings. As long as you hit ur price and get a card that vents heat out the back it's all good. The EVGA card only requires one power connection vs the XFX 9800GTX+. The 4850 is a viable option too...looks nice. The EVGA and XFX 4850 are both shorter cards too, so I'd say it's up to between those two.
 
If you want quiet, get an Accelero S1. Even without a fan (just my side case fan near it), it dropped my 9800GT's temps a huge amount, and was 100% silent on top of that. I got a quiet fan to put on it to cool it even more and keep the other components on the card cool (http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1387702).

It does have a few downsides. It's big. The Accelero is a couple inches taller than the card, so it won't fit at all in narrow cases. It will take up the whole slot next to your card. If you put a fan on, that'll take up a third slot. It also dumps the heat back into your case, rather than exhausting it out the back (though it does come with a vented slot cover to use). If you have poor airflow, the Accelero won't work as well.

It doesn't void the EVGA and XFX warranties to swap a new cooler on either. I'm not sure how much more heat the GTX(+) puts out over the GT, but it is listed as a supported card, and it kept my GT much cooler than stock. The 4850 is also a supported card, if you decide to go that way.
 
Zero82z said:
Combination of personal preference and the fact that I prefer ATI's drivers. When it comes down to it, performance is pretty much equivalent between the two cards anyway, so it doesn't really matter all that much which one you go with.

Also, the cooler used by that specific 4850 is the kind that exhausts the hot air out the back of the case.
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I'll tell you what. I went the other way from a 4850 to a 9800GTX+ because I dislike ATI's drivers.
 
courtney01 said:
My friend has http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4405996&CatId=3669. I want to ask him if I can borrow it to test it out. Is it possible to get an idea of what http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4387011&CatId=3670 is from that test? Or is it going to be not comparable? I want to get an idea of how loud and hot it gets.
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Not comparable. The 4870 is a much faster card, and the cooler is completely different.
kirbyrj said:
I'll tell you what. I went the other way from a 4850 to a 9800GTX+ because I dislike ATI's drivers.
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I've had many more issues with nVidia's drivers than I have with ATI drivers. And I've owned about the same number of cards from each company.
 
Zero82z said:
Combination of personal preference and the fact that I prefer ATI's drivers. When it comes down to it, performance is pretty much equivalent between the two cards anyway, so it doesn't really matter all that much which one you go with.

Also, the cooler used by that specific 4850 is the kind that exhausts the hot air out the back of the case.
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When you say equivalent, do you mean between the 4850 and normal gtx+? Or is the 4850 also equivalent to the gtx+ superclocked edition?

Is the 4850 more futureproof than the gtx+?
 
courtney01 said:
When you say equivalent, do you mean between the 4850 and normal gtx+? Or is the 4850 also equivalent to the gtx+ superclocked edition?

Is the 4850 more futureproof than the gtx+?
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Equivalent meaning you'll get about the same gameplay performance (image quality and FPS) between the two cards. Some games play better on ATI cards, and some Nvidia, but they are about the same.

I don't think either one is more or less futureproof than the other. In 2-3 years they will both be pretty obsolete (much like this "high end" 7950GT I'm using now).
 
Sorry but I found 2 more options. How do these 2 compare to the EVGA 9800 GTX+ superclocked and the XFX HD 4850?

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4327043&CatId=3670
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4302063&CatId=1826

The reason I'm considering BFG is because it's the cheapest of these 4 possibilities, and apparently according to this review, it beats out the 4850 http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews/index.cfm?reviewid=109581&ua.

The black edition seems to have the best specs, but I don't know how that translates to real world performance. With EVGA precision, can I get the superclocked one up to the black edition's specs?
 
courtney01 said:
When you say equivalent, do you mean between the 4850 and normal gtx+? Or is the 4850 also equivalent to the gtx+ superclocked edition?

Is the 4850 more futureproof than the gtx+?
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I meant between both cards at stock speeds. Both can be overclocked to gain more performance. They are both about equally future-proof, although the 4850 might be a bit better because it supports DirectX 10.1 (although that really doesn't mean much in practice since IIRC there's only one game that actually supports it).
courtney01 said:
Sorry but I found 2 more options. How do these 2 compare to the EVGA 9800 GTX+ superclocked and the XFX HD 4850?

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4327043&CatId=3670
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4302063&CatId=1826

The reason I'm considering BFG is because it's the cheapest of these 4 possibilities, and apparently according to this review, it beats out the 4850 http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews/index.cfm?reviewid=109581&ua.

The black edition seems to have the best specs, but I don't know how that translates to real world performance. With EVGA precision, can I get the superclocked one up to the black edition's specs?
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The BFG card is probably about equivalent in performance to the other options (considering the fact that the 4850 can also be overclocked - it just doesn't come that way). The XFX Black Edition card will probably be faster though, since that series of cards is heavily overclocked. I don't know if you'd be able to achieve those kinds of speeds on a normal card since the BE cards are specially picked.

If you want to look into higher-performance cards, I would ignore the Black Edition and start considering a 4870 or GTX260. For that kind of price, it becomes worth it to just look at a better card altogether rather than springing for a heavily-overclocked lesser model.
 
courtney01 said:
Sorry but I found 2 more options. How do these 2 compare to the EVGA 9800 GTX+ superclocked and the XFX HD 4850?

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4327043&CatId=3670
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4302063&CatId=1826

The reason I'm considering BFG is because it's the cheapest of these 4 possibilities, and apparently according to this review, it beats out the 4850 http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews/index.cfm?reviewid=109581&ua.

The black edition seems to have the best specs, but I don't know how that translates to real world performance. With EVGA precision, can I get the superclocked one up to the black edition's specs?
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Seriosly if you are willing to drop that much money (I'm not factoring in the MIR) just get the HD 4870 512mb. Vanilla HD 4870 is around 70-80% faster then a 9800GTX+ so unless your a member of the Nvidia strong crew you are better off getting an hd 4870 like this one.
 
That BFG looks to be a new GTX+ board just like the EVGA, short with only one 6 pin power.
 
Zero82z said:
I like the $35 better :D.
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QFT. I just picked up that same Asus TOP 4870. Not ideal, with only 512mb, but for the price, you can't beat it. I was looking at getting another 4850, but for essentially $20 more, a 4870 isn't a bad deal, especially when they threw in Stalker Clear Sky the other day.
 
Honestly, a 3 year warranty is plenty. By the time the warranty runs out, 1). the card isn't going to be worth much, and 2). it probably won't have any issues needing warranty work because it's already lasted for 3 years.
 
kirbyrj said:
Honestly, a 3 year warranty is plenty. By the time the warranty runs out, 1). the card isn't going to be worth much, and 2). it probably won't have any issues needing warranty work because it's already lasted for 3 years.
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I can see what you're saying. I guess when I first came to Hard Forum and didn't know anything, several people told me having a lifetime warranty is important. I still do prefer having a lifetime warranty rather than 2 or 3 years because even though it will get out dated, I would like to have a useful secondary computer that I know should work for a really long time because of the lifetime warranty.

I know those 4 cards are very similar, but if you had to rank them on a general performance level, would it go something like evga gtx+ superclocked<bfg gtx+ oc<xfx 4850<xfx gtx+ black edition?

How are bfg's and xfx's support?
 
EVGA, BFG, and XFX are the big three for Nvidia. All of them have lifetime warranties upon registration and good customer support and now XFX offers that same support for ATI cards.

I wouldn't buy into the factory overclocked thing too much because there's software for Nvidia and ATI cards that allows you to overclock the card yourself, often taking a vanilla card past the factory overclocked cards.
 
courtney01 said:
I know those 4 cards are very similar, but if you had to rank them on a general performance level, would it go something like evga gtx+ superclocked<bfg gtx+ oc<xfx 4850<xfx gtx+ black edition?
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The thing is, aside from perhaps the Black Edition card, all of the other ones can be overclocked and will offer similar performance to one another when they are all at their limits. So it really doesn't matter a whole lot which one you pick.
 
courtney01 said:
I can see what you're saying. I guess when I first came to Hard Forum and didn't know anything, several people told me having a lifetime warranty is important. I still do prefer having a lifetime warranty rather than 2 or 3 years because even though it will get out dated, I would like to have a useful secondary computer that I know should work for a really long time because of the lifetime warranty.
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It is important. Maybe not so much for a $90 video card, but definitely when you're looking at the $500 and $600 flagship cards. When you have one vendor warrantying their card for lifetime, and another vendor making it difficult to find out just how long it's warrantied for and eventually you find out it's a 1 year warranty, which one are you going to choose? The length of the warranty, and how upfront the vendor is about the warranty, is indicative of how far they're going to back the product.

For example, I would be more interested in Palit cards if they had better warranty service, but they don't. If you go to Palit's main page, www.palit.biz, you'll likely end up on the worldwide version of their "RMA" page, here, which is particularly vague. Eventually, using Google (I had to google this?) I found the US version of the page, here, with a warranty service that is less than perfect.

In contrast, BFG, EVGA, XFX and Visiontek all have the word Warranty easily findable either directly on the main page or in the Support menu.
 
Zero82z said:
The thing is, aside from perhaps the Black Edition card, all of the other ones can be overclocked and will offer similar performance to one another when they are all at their limits. So it really doesn't matter a whole lot which one you pick.
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I see. So if we have

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4283354&CatId=3670 which has 756 core clock and 2246 memory clock
and
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4327043&CatId=3670 which has 785 core clock and 2300 memory clock

the evga card can be overclocked using precision to match the xfx card? How much higher do you think the xfx black edition can be pushed using precision?

Just wondering, why does evga precision only go up to 1800 for memory clock if these specs have values as high as 2300?
 
courtney01 said:
the evga card can be overclocked using precision to match the xfx card?
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Possibly. I don't like to play guessing games, because there's really no way to know. It depends on the specific card.
courtney01 said:
How much higher do you think the xfx black edition can be pushed using precision?
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See above.
courtney01 said:
Just wondering, why does evga precision only go up to 1800 for memory clock if these specs have values as high as 2300?
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I'm not familiar with Precision, but it seems unlikely to me that it is in fact limited to such a low speed as 1800MHz. I'm sure it goes higher than that.
 
courtney01 said:
Just wondering, why does evga precision only go up to 1800 for memory clock if these specs have values as high as 2300?
Click to expand...

Are you speaking from personal experience with it? On my system with an 8800GTX (900Mhz standard memory clock) and Precision 1.4.0, the normal maximum for memory clock using the slider is 1440Mhz. Presumably the minimum and maximum values are determined by the default clock speeds reported by the card to Precision, which makes sense - you would obviously expect to be working with vastly different values when overclocking an 8800GTX versus a GTX285.

If you have left the mouse-over help on in Precision 1.4.0, you'd also have noticed that you can edit the Mhz readout to the right of the slider directly. By that I mean, you can move the slider to 1800Mhz, click on the 1800, and edit it to 2300 if you like. When I changed mine from 1440 to 1500, the number started to blink. I did not test whether it actually overclocks to that, because I've never overclocked my 8800GTX and don't intend to (if you're curious, I use Precision because I love having the FPS and temperature displayed on my G15 keyboard's LCD display).

And as far as "Can this card be overclocked to run as fast as that card?" goes, that's a gamble. Overclocking is not guaranteed except when done by the manufacturer. When XFX or eVGA overclock a card to 2300Mhz memory clock, they guarantee that it will work and be stable at that clock speed, but no higher. Anything past that is not guaranteed. A 2300Mhz card could lose stability at 2500Mhz, or 2900Mhz, or 2301Mhz. You never know, and it really does vary for each and every card. When you buy two of the same exact card, you will almost always find different maximum overclock values. So when you ask if that eVGA card can be overclocked to the speed of that XFX card, the only answer anyone can give you is, "Maybe... but it's not guaranteed."
 
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