One thing that makes GTX 260 better deal than 4870

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Pretty awesome that an ATI card was able to make nVidia resort to decent prices on their sub par release.
 
Overall the 4870 is probably about 10% faster at standard speeds but that doesn't usually translate into any real world performance difference. These guys are very close to each other. I'd go with the 4870 if I had a CF motherboard and the 260 if I had an SLI motherboard.
 
Saying it's better because it has more ram is pretty silly IMO. It's like saying the 2900XT is than the 8800GTX because it has a wider bus. It's been proven that the 512mb really isn't a limiting factor on the 4870.
 
snowysnowcones said:
Saying it's better because it has more ram is pretty silly IMO. It's like saying the 2900XT is than the 8800GTX because it has a wider bus. It's been proven that the 512mb really isn't a limiting factor on the 4870.
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qft, the 4870 has better min frames and better avg frames than gtx 260, many times beating the 280. No competition. In some cases at 2560 the RAM may be a bottleneck as some benches have shown.
 
Did I say it is better? I said it is a better deal because it has more ram. But just to humour you anyway. Start playing games with huge textures and of course it will be better. More ram means less swapping of textures I/O which can cause stuttering. It's not all about FPS. Which would you rather have, a Vista PC with 2GB or ram or 4GB of ram? That's a rhetorical question because the answer is obvious.

You guys claiming min fps is better is not proven by these benchmarks either so I have to call FUD on you.

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/1481/6/sapphire_radeon_hd_4870_in_crossfire/index.html

min fps @1920x1200

PT Boats

4870 = 22.9

260 = 26.6

WIC

4870 = 24

260 = 30
 
sideout said:
Pretty awesome that an ATI card was able to make nVidia resort to decent prices on their sub par release.
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Yeah, it just goes to show that competition is needed in these markets. With only 1 company prices will skyrocket and innovation will slow to a crawl. I just hope AMD can somehow survive as a company, otherwise we'll be left with ridiculously priced CPUs from Intel and ridiculously priced GPUs from Nvidia (not that AMD wouldn't do the same if they were in that position ;))

snowysnowcones said:
Saying it's better because it has more ram is pretty silly IMO. It's like saying the 2900XT is than the 8800GTX because it has a wider bus. It's been proven that the 512mb really isn't a limiting factor on the 4870.
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Yep, I can't tell you how many times I've heard people say "but it's a good card it has x amount of memory". Take for example the 512MB 7300GT and compare it to a 256MB 8800GT, and it's clear that the amount of memory isn't the only thing that matters. Of course more memory is better with everything else being equal though (ie 8800GT 256MB vs 8800GT 512MB)

milkweg said:
Which would you rather have, a Vista PC with 2GB or ram or 4GB of ram? That's a rhetorical question because the answer is obvious.
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I'd rather have XP with 2GB RAM, and save myself hundreds of dollars by not buying Vista and extra RAM ;)
 
Which would you rather have, a Vista PC with 2GB or ram or 4GB of ram?
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That's an incredibly stupid analogy. More memory is better, but only with everything else being EQUAL. But the GTX 260 gets beat most of the time so clearly these cards are anything but equal. Cherry-picking results FTL.

That said, GTX 260 is the better deal if you can get a rebate to price it >$30 below a 4870.
 
heatlesssun said:
Overall the 4870 is probably about 10% faster at standard speeds but that doesn't usually translate into any real world performance difference. These guys are very close to each other. I'd go with the 4870 if I had a CF motherboard and the 260 if I had an SLI motherboard.
Click to expand...

Where does it say that? That the HD 4780 is ten percent faster? I own one...and i've done the research of about 8 different reviews....one site will say the HD is faster overall...the other site will say the 260 is faster.

Everyone keeps saying the HD is faster...
 
milkweg said:
GTX 260 comes configured with 896mb of ram and not just 512mb. MSI GTX 260 is same price as 4870 too. Too bad I live in Canada or else I would order this card right now.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127361

MSI N260GTX-T2D896 OC GeForce GTX 260 896MB 448-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Retail



$299.99
Click to expand...


Yeah, but as I understand it, that 896 MB of RAM counts against addressable system RAM recognized in XP. If you have 3 GB of RAM installed...how much will XP see? 2 GB? 2.1 GB? 2.5 GB?

At least with the HD 4870...I can install 3 GB of RAM and have the OS available to use those 3GB of RAM. I'd be all over the 260 deal, if that weren't the case. Unless someone who owns a 260 wants to say i'm wrong (please say i'm wrong...)
 
travbrad said:
I'd rather have XP with 2GB RAM, and save myself hundreds of dollars by not buying Vista and extra RAM ;)
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Really? Then you are a Luddite by my estimation. What are you going to do when your piddly 2GB of ram is just not enough for game X and your OS can't handle more than 4gb of ram and only gives you access to 3GB anyway?
 
travbrad said:
Yep, I can't tell you how many times I've heard people say "but it's a good card it has x amount of memory". Take for example the 512MB 7300GT and compare it to a 256MB 8800GT, and it's clear that the amount of memory isn't the only thing that matters. Of course more memory is better with everything else being equal though (ie 8800GT 256MB vs 8800GT 512MB)
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I remember all the people buying 640mb versions of the 8800gtx at a $100+ premium over the 320mb flavor. They were all fooling themselves into believing that they would get an appreciable difference sometime in the unnamed future with bigger textures and voodoo magic. I still haven't seen any evidence of a real performance gap.

I don't see the extra ram in the 260 to yield any crazy improvement either.
 
milkweg said:
Really? Then you are a Luddite by my estimation. What are you going to do when your piddly 2GB of ram is just not enough for game X and your OS can't handle more than 4gb of ram and only gives you access to 3GB anyway?
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I'll get more RAM and maybe get Vista (or XP64/Windows7). Both the OS and the RAM should be cheaper by then. I didn't say I'd NEVER get more RAM or a new OS, just that it doesn't seem necessary right now (especially considering the cost). So far there aren't any games that need more than 2GB (many still don't even need more than 1GB with XP).

Also calling me a Luddite implies that Vista is an innovation from other OS's, which I don't really agree with. It's better than XP overall in terms of features (although it's also slower in some areas), but it's not really anything new when compared to linux or macOS
 
Look at the minimum fps using Crysis at 1680x1050 with 2xAA. AA eats up RAM and that is probably why the 4870 drops well below the GTX260 from the benchmarks I have seen. As games will soon require more than 512mb of RAM the 4870 will become obsolete quickly.

However, if you game at 1280x1024 or 1440x900 you should be alright with a 4870. Which of the two cards to choose I think depends on what resolution you game at and how much AA you use.
 
I should also add that I think it depends on how often you upgrade. If you upgrade your gpu every 6-12 months then the 4870 would be the better choice. If you want to hold on to a card for 18 months then go with the gtx260.
 
Ogilvy said:
Where does it say that? That the HD 4780 is ten percent faster? I own one...and i've done the research of about 8 different reviews....one site will say the HD is faster overall...the other site will say the 260 is faster.

Everyone keeps saying the HD is faster...
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Techreport.com seemed to come to that conslusion along with Firingsquad.com. I didn't actually crunch the numbers in spreadsheet or anything.

The 4870 and the GTX 260 are so similar in performance that in the real world you just won't notice. Of course there are exceptions where one does much better than the other and vise versa, but overall its just not a big difference.
 
heatlesssun said:
Techreport.com seemed to come to that conslusion along with Firingsquad.com. I didn't actually crunch the numbers in spreadsheet or anything.

The 4870 and the GTX 260 are so similar in performance that in the real world you just won't notice. Of course there are exceptions where one does much better than the other and vise versa, but overall its just not a big difference.
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Well you could say the same for the GTX 280 compared to the 4870. And the price difference between those cards are huge, but people still bought the 280...
 
Good points leh, I agree the 260 is looking like the better card with the new prices, especially for longevity and at higher settings (resolution and AA). The 4870 has DX10.1 support, but I don't think that'll help much if you run out of memory. Of course if you upgrade often, then the 4870 may be the better bet for now, but when I spend $300 on video card I want it to last awhile.

All that said, I personally won't buy MSI products anymore. I had 2 MSI motherboards that died in a few month period (never had any other mobo die). A friend also had a Ti4600 die awhile ago. The other card makers should be lowering their prices to near-MSI levels soon though.
 
I think the GTX 260 is the better buy for $260.... and like op said, because of the extra memory.

I was playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R the other day on my 8800GT 512mb.. at 1920x1200 runs flawlessly with great fps. ( Float32 OL and Shaper Texture mod )

I bumped it up for fun, 2048xXXXX resolution ( forgot exact numbers ) on my FW900. The fps wise was great on maxed settings was more than playable 50-60ish.. but it was stuttering/hitching because the 8800gt ran out of memory :(
 
Belgain Roffles said:
I remember all the people buying 640mb versions of the 8800gtx at a $100+ premium over the 320mb flavor. They were all fooling themselves into believing that they would get an appreciable difference sometime in the unnamed future with bigger textures and voodoo magic. I still haven't seen any evidence of a real performance gap.

I don't see the extra ram in the 260 to yield any crazy improvement either.
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The 640MB versions are actually are a bit faster in new games now, especially at higher resolutions, but I agree the price premium wasn't worth it at the time (better to use the $100+ on your next video card upgrade IMO).

With the 260 vs the 4870 however, the prices are very similar now, and performance in current games is also similar. The 260 will probably benefit from the extra memory in future games and at high settings, but even if it doesn't, it's still basically the same speed and cost of a 4870
 
milkweg said:
I didn't cherry pick results asshole. I can pull those out of my magic hat all day.

Video ram and system ram basically do the same thing. Or haven't you noticed the mb's with onboard video that use system ram as video ram? Dumbass. More ram is better if you run at very high res and play games with massive textures. Dem's the facts homeboy. Too bad all these benchmarks don't measure stuttering because I can guarantee you more ram will give a better overall gaming experience than a faster card with less ram. Who cares if 4870 scored 100fps in a game and 260 only scored 80fps. Both frame rates are well above the level needed for a smooth frame rate. What matters is which has the less stuttering when massive textures are loaded. Consider that most gamers now run widescreen LCD's with very high resolution then lots of ram is needed on the video card. More of everything is always better. And if GDDR5 is so much better then why did they put GDDR3 on 4850 when they had already started using GDDR4 on the 3870?
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lol good luck you are not going to get anywhere by name calling

and this is what Toms Hardware has as the title for their 4870 article

Radeon HD 4870: Better Than GTX 260!

Anand has this to say

The Radeon HD 4850 & 4870: AMD Wins at $199 and $299

but in our testing we definitely saw this $300 part perform at the level of NVIDIA's $400 GT200 variant, the GTX 260. This fact clearly sets the 4870 in a performance class beyond its price.

Tech Report

In practical terms, what all of this means is that the Radeon HD 4870, a $299 product, competes closely with the GeForce GTX 260, a $399 card based on a chip twice the size.

benchmarks from a majority of the sites show results like this

grid.gif

cod4-1680.gif

cod4-2560.gif



http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-4870,1964-13.html

I mean I could go on and on and on but what's the point?
 
Belgain Roffles said:
I remember all the people buying 640mb versions of the 8800gtx at a $100+ premium over the 320mb flavor. They were all fooling themselves into believing that they would get an appreciable difference sometime in the unnamed future with bigger textures and voodoo magic. I still haven't seen any evidence of a real performance gap.
Click to expand...

No performance gap? In a lot of games with AA the 320mb version would run out of memory and get about 5fps where the 640mb version would be 5-10x that framerate. Just look at [H]'s World in Conflict performance evaluation, for example.

. The GeForce 8800 GTS 320 MB is not suitable for playing World in Conflict with "Very High" settings in DirectX 10. We even turned AF off, and it still wasn't playable. However, the 8800 GTS 640 MB and the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT (with their larger memory capacities) had no such problems
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Nuker said:
Well you could say the same for the GTX 280 compared to the 4870. And the price difference between those cards are huge, but people still bought the 280...
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There's a lot more to it than the performance vs. price ratio. I already had a $400 SLI motherboard and I wanted the fastest system I could build for my budget, that's why I got 3 280's. The 4870 is great, 4870 CF is great but just doesn't compare to 3x GTX 280 SLI in some situations. Of course that's like three times the money of 4870 CF. But for that money you can almost max out Crysis at 1920x1200, very high 4xAA. That's something that 4870 CF doesn't even begin to be able to do.
 
milkweg said:
I didn't cherry pick results asshole. I can pull those out of my magic hat all day.

Video ram and system ram basically do the same thing. Or haven't you noticed the mb's with onboard video that use system ram as video ram? Dumbass. More ram is better if you run at very high res and play games with massive textures. Dem's the facts homeboy. Too bad all these benchmarks don't measure stuttering because I can guarantee you more ram will give a better overall gaming experience than a faster card with less ram. Who cares if 4870 scored 100fps in a game and 260 only scored 80fps. Both frame rates are well above the level needed for a smooth frame rate. What matters is which has the less stuttering when massive textures are loaded. Consider that most gamers now run widescreen LCD's with very high resolution then lots of ram is needed on the video card. More of everything is always better. And if GDDR5 is so much better then why did they put GDDR3 on 4850 when they had already started using GDDR4 on the 3870?
Click to expand...
I remember back when I used to get angry and resort to name calling on the internet. I was 14 at the time. I suppose getting the best card for your money doesn't matter to you since Mommy buys it for you.

Here are the facts: there are web sites that DO measure gameplay experience, thus taking into account stuttering - [H] is one of them. Yet we have not seen any site recommending a GTX 260 over a 4870. It is not as cut and dry as bigger numbers = better - it would be if we were talking about a 4870 1GB vs 4870 512MB or a GTX 260 448MB vs GTX 260 896MB. But you are comparing across entirely different architectures here. In fact, the 4870 trounces the GTX 260 (and sometimes the 280) as AA is cranked up, and as you (hopefully) know, AA results in much larger VRAM usage. Some people at B3D have speculated that the 4k series has better memory management than the current Nvidia line-up. It's interesting stuff and you ought to go check it out instead of spewing BS and getting angry. In regards to GDDR4, it was a meager improvement over GDDR3 which is why Nvidia skipped it entirely and ATi went back to 3. GDDR5, on the other hand, is a massive improvement even in its current state and has the potential to get much better.
 
heatlesssun said:
There's a lot more to it than the performance vs. price ratio. I already had a $400 SLI motherboard and I wanted the fastest system I could build for my budget, that's why I got 3 280's. The 4870 is great, 4870 CF is great but just doesn't compare to 3x GTX 280 SLI in some situations. Of course that's like three times the money of 4870 CF. But for that money you can almost max out Crysis at 1920x1200, very high 4xAA. That's something that 4870 CF doesn't even begin to be able to do.
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heatlesssun said:
Of course that's like three times the money of 4870 CF. But for that money you can almost max out Crysis at 1920x1200, very high 4xAA. That's something that 4870 CF doesn't even begin to be able to do.
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heatlesssun said:
But for that money you can almost max out Crysis at 1920x1200, very high 4xAA.
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heatlesssun said:
you can almost max out Crysis
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heatlesssun said:
almost
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:(:(:(

Let's face it, three GTX 280s is currently the fastest consumer GPU setup availible on the planet. Wonder if two 4870X2s in crossfire will do any better...
 
It lasted almost one page with an nv and amd card in the topic.. Impressive!
 
LstOfTheBrunnenG said:
:(:(:(

Let's face it, three GTX 280s is currently the fastest consumer GPU setup availible on the planet. Wonder if two 4870X2s in crossfire will do any better...
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Not sure what you're were trying to say here. I said ALMOST max out because you can turn up the AA to 16x and there games out there that sputter when you do that, Lost Planet I found is unplayable with 3x SLI when I cranked up the AA to max, had to notch it down.

Every in game setting on maximum and 4xAA, that's pretty much maximum territory by most people standards. I to am interested in seeing how 4870x2 CF would do in Crysis. The 4800's don't seem to perform well in this game in standalone of CF configurations however.
 
Mega666 said:
It lasted almost one page with an nv and amd card in the topic.. Impressive!
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That's what I was just thinking.
Mocking each other for what card you purchased = intelligent discussion?
I cannot believe the fan-boys on this site sometimes, some of the most pathetic arguments I have seen :(
 
heatlesssun said:
Overall the 4870 is probably about 10% faster at standard speeds but that doesn't usually translate into any real world performance difference. These guys are very close to each other. I'd go with the 4870 if I had a CF motherboard and the 260 if I had an SLI motherboard.
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QFT!
i'd buy a 4870 if i were upgrading since i have a CF board. i've never run dual cards but when cards are ~equal in performance and price i lean towards ATI/AMD. since i have a stepup available from evga, as soon as they lower the GTX260 to $300 i'll be upgrading from my 9800GTX for all of $30 + s/h...

i wasnt planning on upgrading any time soon, but for 30 bux it's a no brainer IMO.
 
Ogilvy said:
Yeah, but as I understand it, that 896 MB of RAM counts against addressable system RAM recognized in XP. If you have 3 GB of RAM installed...how much will XP see? 2 GB? 2.1 GB? 2.5 GB?

At least with the HD 4870...I can install 3 GB of RAM and have the OS available to use those 3GB of RAM. I'd be all over the 260 deal, if that weren't the case. Unless someone who owns a 260 wants to say i'm wrong (please say i'm wrong...)
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It's time for you to move on to a 64 bit OS and leave this rubbish behind.
 
baddog121390 said:
No performance gap? In a lot of games with AA the 320mb version would run out of memory and get about 5fps where the 640mb version would be 5-10x that framerate. Just look at [H]'s World in Conflict performance evaluation, for example.
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Great, you found one game that choked the card when using high texture settings, not that we could turn them down and turn other things up or anything. The only point I was trying to make is that paying a LARGE premium for "future proofed" video card is a bad idea, as was clearly the case shown here. A person could have saved the $100, and be 2/3rds of the way to a 4850.
 
In lower res, the gts 320 outperforms the 640 due to less memory needed to be handled by the GPU.
 
I suggest at 300$ they're both great buys.
I would personally go with AMD for now because of DX10.1 support and the ability to Crossfire on Intel chipsets.
As it stands Nvidia's latest 7 series chipsets have had too many ups and downs (as have have the 6 series) for me to trust them.
If you only plan a single card anyway, then it's really a toss up of personal preference. As I see it some games will run a bit better on a 260 and some on a 4870.
All of the differences are at extreme resolution 0f >= 1920*1200, which means most folks will be happy either way.

I am happy that Nvidia recognized that there is competition and lowered prices to be competitive.
 
milkweg said:
Did I say it is better? I said it is a better deal because it has more ram. But just to humour you anyway. Start playing games with huge textures and of course it will be better. More ram means less swapping of textures I/O which can cause stuttering. It's not all about FPS. Which would you rather have, a Vista PC with 2GB or ram or 4GB of ram? That's a rhetorical question because the answer is obvious.

You guys claiming min fps is better is not proven by these benchmarks either so I have to call FUD on you.

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/1481/6/sapphire_radeon_hd_4870_in_crossfire/index.html

min fps @1920x1200

PT Boats

4870 = 22.9

260 = 26.6

WIC

4870 = 24

260 = 30
Click to expand...

Lol, stop cherrypicking reviews that fit into your view of 260 dominance. Look around anandtech, [H], toms and others show that 4870 dominates in most games even with aa.
 
ATI marketing droids like YeuEmMaiMai and DeadSkull would like to convice you that extra memory wouldn't matter by linking to reviews that dont even test the settings needed to stress the card. Fortunately, one site did, and they included far more tests than AT and Toms.

Just a few here.









Read the full review here: http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/...8/test_radeon_hd_4870_cf_geforce_gtx_260_sli/

A lot of tests, a lot of games, and some surprising results, including awful performance in some older games, a testimony for the state of ATI drivers at the moment.
 
AndyJ said:
ATI marketing droids like YeuEmMaiMai and DeadSkull would like to convice you that extra memory wouldn't matter by linking to reviews that dont even test the settings needed to stress the card. Fortunately, one site did, and they included far more tests than AT and Toms.

Just a few here.








Read the full review here: http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/...8/test_radeon_hd_4870_cf_geforce_gtx_260_sli/

A lot of tests, a lot of games, and some surprising results, including awful performance in some older games, a testimony for the state of ATI drivers at the moment.
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Sigh you still fail. First of I dont speak/read german so i have no idea how they run their benches. But if the extra memory in 260 means it would dominate in higher res with aa then what about this
. Go all the way down to 2560 res and see how 4870 and 4870 cf beats 260 / 260 sli with a a cranked to 4.
RB6 vegas is a mix up too.
4870 cf beats 260 most of the time except at max res with max aa. UT3 higher res high aa 4870 also kicks ass.


Actually I don't know how they tested 4870 vs 260 in that site cause a lot of their numbers are wrong when compared to toms/ anand and [H]. hmmm nice find when barely anyone can even understand how they ran their review. BTW Im not an ati fanboy or droid, a dominating 280 would have simplified my next build to a large degree but now I have to wait for whenever 4870x2 comes out. Just trying to get a rig with the best gpu here, nothing wrong with that, right?
 
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