Nah. 4870 is out of question for me. IMO it wouldn't be such a big performance leap from 88GTX which i could get for 50$ or even less from a friend. That's why i mainly have thought's about getting GTX280 too. But 4870X2 just looks to be quite better.
Im going to wait for the 2nd Gen GTX280 ( Die-Shrink ) and the price reduction , ow and ofcourse PhysX . Then i will make my move...prolly.
GTX280 From my point of view nVidia has much better driver support, better game support and simply kickass single GPU products. It's down to you in the end, but I'd choose nVidia over ATi any day.
I had a hd4850 in a spare and after so many years since my last ATI failure i figuered... theres no way their drivers could still be total garbage... Opps.. good thing you can take back cards at stores like best buy before 30 days even when its been used and still get your money back! If one single card has major driver and old game related issues, i dont even want to think about running crossfire/X2 card. Just my opinion though. Heck, just buy it and witness the drivers for yourself... just dont say i did not warn you.
I'm happy with my 8800 GT... in any case I'll just get another (cheap now ) and SLI them, wait it out 'til the next generation of cards. Which will slaughter the X2. ;P
Install everything correctly? Fresh windows installation? It's mostly bad installation that gives the ATi cards a bad name. Seen as over 90% of ppl are very happy with their 4850 cards
I d buy the radeon 4870x2. Ati's performance is far better then the nvidia(except Crysis). But it works more hotter and needs more energy.You can visit the website that i give. Well its turkish but you can understand the graphs http://www.pckoloji.com/f114/-nvidia-geforce-gtx280-ve-ati-radeon-hd4870-x2-karsi-karsiya-3032-gars11/
The microstuttering was never an issue with the 4870 X2. Everything I read that claimed to be microstuttering was in actual fact just normal stuttering, because they had things like Crysis running at like <15 FPS. That's not microstuttering, it's just low frames -_-
Is there any indication that games will me better optimized for the radeon 4870 x2 cards in the future? Cause im standing in front of the same dillema. I am planing to buy a (sli/crossfire) system with only one card (280 or 4870x2), keeping the possibility open to upgrade later on. Now preformance wise this looks like an easy decision on paper the X2 is mutch faster then the 280. But I keep on hearing bad stuff about the x2 ( especially 2 x2's in crossfire) so it's a difficult decision, im only a student and i cant afford to keep ong buying these expensive gpu's each year.
I would just get hd 4870 x2 if needed card now as it is king of the hill in graphics cards, it is nearly as cheap as the gtx 280 atm anyway (£306)
I'd just go with 8800 GT SLI then... really good scaling (usually better than a 280, for less $$$). Ofc the 280 and X2 would be better, but you'd be paying for overkill. In fact, I can max any game with my 8800 GT (except Crysis); SLI performance increases (iirc) by an average of 60%.
Remember CryTek worked along with Nvidia, while ATI had to upgrade drivers after release... that game is heavily biased towards Nvidia--in other words, an X2 is always > a 280.
Worked with or not, crysis is already an old game. Ati had a lot of time since end of 07 to tune drivers no ? 280<X2 ok your right but 280 with high frequencies like mines is far better than X2.