GTX 260 SLI vs 4870 x2

[matt9669]

With the craziness that is Live cashback, these two options are coming in very close pricewise now. The only major difference is that I could go Q9550 + Gigabyte UD3R/P with the 4870 x2 instead of i7 920 + x58 (prefer to avoid i750 & i780 if possible) with the x2 GTX 260 (192 core). Then again, cashback is reducing the Core i7 premium to about $200 or less, so it's not a huge deal.

Since the Radeon 9700 era passed I've been an nVidia user. I still get the sense nV's drivers are superior, though without direct experience with the current crop of cards I can't say for sure. It also seems like SLI game support is still better than Crossfire, but again ...

Any thoughts? Debating this endlessly and instead of going crazy, thought I'd throw it to the peanut gallery.

NOTE: This thread is NOT intended to start an nV vs. ATI/AMD flamewar, just wanted to see what people think.

 

[fe_918]

whats this live cashback thing everyones talking about???

 

[Valset]

if not for having to use a nvidia chipset I would go with the GTX260. but unless your going i7 I would stay with ATI and intel for the high end.

 

[matt9669]

Yeah, I'd really rather stick with Intel. I figure I'll be spending $1500 - $2000 overall, so an i7 platform isn't a huge additional expense, but I'd still rather avoid it given the rather meager performance increase.

I guess the question is, what's the general opinion on driver issues & Crossfire performance with the 4870 x2?

 

[burningrave101]

If building a new system I would go with an i7 system because of the big discount you can get through Live right now and I'd suggest going with the 260 SLI over the 4870x2. That's what I'm putting in my new build. 2 GTX 260's can be had for less than $350 on eBay and will outperform a 4870x2.

 

[999]

I'm also facing this dillemma (GTX 260 SLI VS 4870 X2). SLI opens up a whole can of worms though. With the GTX260 SLI I'd have increased power consumption and it would cost more to water cool compared to having one card.

If the above two issues don't bother you, go with the GTX 260 SLI. It scales better with the i7.

 

[Valset]

Yeah, I'd really rather stick with Intel. I figure I'll be spending $1500 - $2000 overall, so an i7 platform isn't a huge additional expense, but I'd still rather avoid it given the rather meager performance increase.

I guess the question is, what's the general opinion on driver issues & Crossfire performance with the 4870 x2?

if your looking for performance beyond the 4870X2 then your back to SLI because quad fire scales for shit. I would look at GTX280 instead of the 260 (they have a hell of a deal in the hot deals forum) and go with an i7 if your willing. but really I don't see a need to go past a 4870X2 unless your on a 4mp screen and then the added dollars don't bring you that much.

 

[Valset]

I'm also facing this dillemma (GTX 260 SLI VS 4870 X2). SLI opens up a whole can of worms though. With the GTX260 SLI I'd have increased power consumption and it would cost more to water cool compared to having one card.

If the above two issues don't bother you, go with the GTX 260 SLI. It scales better with the i7.

plan sli doesn't do any better. tri sli did though.

 

[alg7_munif]

Yeah, I'd really rather stick with Intel. I figure I'll be spending $1500 - $2000 overall, so an i7 platform isn't a huge additional expense, but I'd still rather avoid it given the rather meager performance increase.

I guess the question is, what's the general opinion on driver issues & Crossfire performance with the 4870 x2?

Regarding the driver issues, nVidia is much better with the driver, I mean much much better, especially with dual cards. No issues at all.

Like I said before in other threads, I can spend all day to find people having problems with their nVidia driver but what do all these show? Well both companies have their own driver problems, most of the problems are actually caused by the user. There is no such thing as poor driver support from ATI or from nVidia.

 

[burningrave101]

Regarding the driver issues, nVidia is much better with the driver, I mean much much better, especially with dual cards. No issues at all.

Like I said before in other threads, I can spend all day to find people having problems with their nVidia driver but what do all these show? Well both companies have their own driver problems, most of the problems are actually caused by the user. There is no such thing as poor driver support from ATI or from nVidia.

Well I can spend all day and probably even less time finding people having problems with ATI drivers as well. ATI has their fair share of issues and so does nVidia. Something I will say though is that the trend I've seen from a lot of users shows them going from a 4850/4870 to a GTX 260/280 more often than the other way around. And that could be for any number of reasons.

I was just looking at this GTX 260 216 which is on sale at Newegg for $239.99 after rebate and was reading the user reviews for it.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...chReport&cm_mmc=OTC-TechReport-_-NA-_-NA-_-NA

Other Thoughts: I originally purchased a Radeon 4870 from Newegg, and while I liked the color vibrancy of the card, the high temps, high power usage, loud fan and complete lack of driver support prompted me to go back to nvidia. (Radeon 4800 series cards will not run Battlestations Midway and AMD will not fix their drivers to run it). This card performs on par with the 4870, AMD's flagship, while this card is nvidia's mid range entry. This card has far better power consumption, runs cooler and is much quieter, while pumping out near identical performance with better driver support. You can't go wrong with this card.

I'm sure there are plenty of the same types of user reviews on the 4870 cards but I doubt you'll find many stating they bought the 4870 for better power consumption, running cooler and quieter, and providing better driver support. That doesn't mean ATI's drivers are bad but I just usually see people bringing up the better driver argument in favor of nVidia a little more often than ATI.

 

[matt9669]

With the GTX260 SLI I'd have increased power consumption and it would cost more to water cool compared to having one card.

If the above two issues don't bother you, go with the GTX 260 SLI. It scales better with the i7.

Power consumption is not a problem, and I don't think it's a huge difference (you're feeding 2 GPUs either way). On water cooling - yes, that is a pain, as I would like to go water cooling in the near future. I personally don't need the special full-card blocks though, so as long as I can find decent chip-only blocks & heat sinks I'm golden.

if your looking for performance beyond the 4870X2 then your back to SLI because quad fire scales for shit.

Yeah, I've definitely seen that on most review sites. Quad SLI has always had shitty scaling, so no surprise to me.

I would look at GTX280 instead of the 260 (they have a hell of a deal in the hot deals forum)

Mind pointing the way? I've been resisting the 280 as it didn't seem like nearly 2x price got you anywhere near 2x performance, but if the price is right ...

 

[devil22]

With the craziness that is Live cashback, these two options are coming in very close pricewise now. The only major difference is that I could go Q9550 + Gigabyte UD3R/P with the 4870 x2 instead of i7 920 + x58 (prefer to avoid i750 & i780 if possible) with the x2 GTX 260 (192 core). Then again, cashback is reducing the Core i7 premium to about $200 or less, so it's not a huge deal.

Since the Radeon 9700 era passed I've been an nVidia user. I still get the sense nV's drivers are superior, though without direct experience with the current crop of cards I can't say for sure. It also seems like SLI game support is still better than Crossfire, but again ...

But again what? That's the whole issue, what's the point of buying something that does not work? I've read several reviews recently where crossfire does not even work (one was on guru3d.com's multi-gpu on core i7 review, still on their front page) in some games, but SLI worked in all and scaled very well. That's why I chose gtx 260 sli for my Core i7. I used to own a 9800pro back in the day, and it was much better than the nvidia 5800 I returned due to extreme loudness, but today it's different and it's ATI that's off its game, imo. My 260s perform beautifully in crysis warhead, far cry 2, and source engine games, basically everything I've tried so far and has been issue free. My 260s are also silent even through an hour of far cry 2, while I hear ATI's current cards are kinda loud. But a lot of people love ATIs stuff, so you'll probably not be very disappointed if you go that way, but I would suggest gtx 260 SLI.

 

[Valset]

Power consumption is not a problem, and I don't think it's a huge difference (you're feeding 2 GPUs either way). On water cooling - yes, that is a pain, as I would like to go water cooling in the near future. I personally don't need the special full-card blocks though, so as long as I can find decent chip-only blocks & heat sinks I'm golden.



Yeah, I've definitely seen that on most review sites. Quad SLI has always had shitty scaling, so no surprise to me.



Mind pointing the way? I've been resisting the 280 as it didn't seem like nearly 2x price got you anywhere near 2x performance, but if the price is right ...

that dead I think, TG has one for under 300. http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1369405

I only recommended the GTX280 because tri sli doesn't scale so well either, and the GTX 260 sli isn't much of an upgrade over a 4870X2 (in some cases it worse) the next up IMO is a GTX280 SLI.

 

[CaptainSoble]

Yeah, I'd really rather stick with Intel. I figure I'll be spending $1500 - $2000 overall, so an i7 platform isn't a huge additional expense, but I'd still rather avoid it given the rather meager performance increase.

I guess the question is, what's the general opinion on driver issues & Crossfire performance with the 4870 x2?

Driver issues? What are these driver issues people keep bringing up? None on my end. Performance is awesome.

 

[alg7_munif]

Well I can spend all day and probably even less time finding people having problems with ATI drivers as well. ATI has their fair share of issues and so does nVidia. Something I will say though is that the trend I've seen from a lot of users shows them going from a 4850/4870 to a GTX 260/280 more often than the other way around. And that could be for any number of reasons.

I was just looking at this GTX 260 216 which is on sale at Newegg for $239.99 after rebate and was reading the user reviews for it.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...chReport&cm_mmc=OTC-TechReport-_-NA-_-NA-_-NA



I'm sure there are plenty of the same types of user reviews on the 4870 cards but I doubt you'll find many stating they bought the 4870 for better power consumption, running cooler and quieter, and providing better driver support. That doesn't mean ATI's drivers are bad but I just usually see people bringing up the better driver argument in favor of nVidia a little more often than ATI.

People bring up the better driver argument because they know that they can't bring up the better performance argument. People need to have an excuse to buy a brand that they like eventhough they know that they are buying an inferior product in term of performance.

People who buy a faster card don't need any excuses other than they want a faster card, PERIOD.

Btw there is nothing wrong with buying a brand that you like, but please be honest with yourself and say that you like the brand more than the other brand. You don't need to tell excuses to like a brand more than the other especially when the excuse you are telling is not true.

You know yourself that people are having problems with the driver from both companies. Just because you don't have any problem with the driver from a company before, it doesn't mean that the driver is trouble free. There are also people who are not having any problem with the driver from the other company as well.

 

[burningrave101]

People bring up the better driver argument because they know that they can't bring up the better performance argument. People need to have an excuse to buy a brand that they like eventhough they know that they are buying an inferior product in term of performance.

Well on most fronts the new GTX 260 216 outperforms the 4870 512MB and 1GB cards both, especially when you factor overclockability so I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that they can't bring up the better performance argument. The performance between the GTX 260 and 4870 is usually very close with a few fps edge to one or the other at times but the GTX 260 is cheaper and overclocks better so it does win the performance argument.

Btw there is nothing wrong with buying a brand that you like, but please be honest with yourself and say that you like the brand more than the other brand. You don't need to tell excuses to like a brand more than the other especially when the excuse you are telling is not true.

Well personally I tend to favor the one that offers the best performance at the best price. A few months back when the 4870's were first released and the GTX 260/280 lineup was somewhat overpriced I was considering building a new desktop then and picked up 3 4870 512MB's off eBay when the Live promotion first started with 35% cashback. I never went ahead and built that system though and sold the cards. Now I'm back to thinking about building a new setup to get away from my MacBook Pro and I'm going with the GTX 260 216's because from all the reviews I can see they offer better performance than the 4870 and two in SLI is cheaper than a single 4870x2 which also offers better performance, at least in the games I've looked at that I would be interested in playing.

You know yourself that people are having problems with the driver from both companies. Just because you don't have any problem with the driver from a company before, it doesn't mean that the driver is trouble free. There are also people who are not having any problem with the driver from the other company as well.

Yes there are people having driver issues with both companies. And there are people that have no driver issues at all with ATI or nVidia. Mostly because they aren't playing the games or trying to use the hardware that's showing the problem. You're never going to see a point where people no longer have any driver issues at all with a given graphics card manufacturer until they do away with the need for drivers altogether. All I'm saying is that even though nVidia has driver issues as well I don't IMO think they are as significant as the ones I'm seeing people posting about ATI but maybe I'm wrong.

The review of the guy I linked couldn't even play his game with the 4870. To me that's more of an issue than one card not overclocking like it should in SLI or having trouble setting up flat panel scaling on your monitor. And ATI has always had issues like that where there's some things that just simply don't work period. I remember not long ago when people would laugh if you even suggested buying an ATI based card and running Linux. And that was because it took forever before ATI finally started to even try to offer real support.

 

[burningrave101]

This new 2008 Christmas system guide over at techreport pretty much sums up my reason for planning to go with SLI'd GTX core 216's.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/15941/10

Graphics
Our GeForce GTX 260 Reloaded SLI configuration costs more and takes up more space than the Radeon HD 4870 X2 from our Crushinator alternatives. However, the Nvidia setup should generate less noise, perform a little better, and bring some of the Nvidia-only perks we've talked about—namely better support for newer games as a result of Nvidia's closer ties with game developers.

We've traditionally sided with AMD in our multi-GPU recommendations because of the company's multi-monitor support, but Nvidia's latest batch of ForceWare drivers adds support for multiple displays in SLI mode. That means you can connect two monitors to the Double-Stuff and start up games in SLI mode without any hassles—something we find vital for this class of system.

 

[matt9669]

When it comes to drivers, there are two things that I know to be a fact. One, that nV's drivers have been clearly superior in the past. Two, that the gap between nV and ATI, if there is still a gap, has narrowed considerably since the 4870's introduction.

Further, I've read a couple of sites that are tired of ATI's driver-a-month schedule, that they keep trying to play leapfrog over nV on the latest titles, and actually lose FPS on other titles. Meanwhile, nV has been progressing VERY slowly, but steadly. 180 Series drivers seem to be a clear win for the green team, and though I'd bet ATI could at least come close (if not match), I'm not willing to wait.

I absolutely have a brand preference, and that preference is nVidia. The question (to me) is whether or not the additional costs of exercising that preference are worth it. I'm getting the sense the costs here are justified (again, to me).