GTX480-SLI Overclocked Vs ATI 5970 Overclocked..

for me, 50% higher clocks leads to 40% higher performance in bfbc2 and crysis, which is something im happy with. dirt2 going from single card to dual made a big ass difference, going from 55fps to 115fps (both with 10.3a), so scaling is good there.

for nvidia, sure 100mhz oc leading to 15% performance improvement isnt bad, thats 15% oc. but thats the limit of the 480 with stock cooler. most people on here can vouch for their asus 5850s going over 1000mhz core, which is >275mhz oc, and thats not bad for a stock cooler card.

the funny thing is, a 5850 oc'd above 1000mhz will use less power than a 480 overclocked 100mhz.

now heres the thing im curious about, redemption80, you claim that its impossible for us to get >=100% crossfire scaling, yet did you not just flaunt nvidias >=100% crossfire scaling earlier?

as far as im concerned, both sli and crossfire can be considered equal. it all depends on the game and driver optimisations.

 

What truly saddens me is that all of our enthusiast hardware is primarily going to waste. Most PC games released these days are console ports. Only a tiny fraction of titles will ever actually need the horsepower that we can obtain to run them.

Don't misunderstand me, I love to blow money on new stuff as much as anyone else. But outside of Crysis and a few other titles, a single 480 GTX or 5870 will run them at the highest settings.

Unfortunately, it's going to take the release of the next-gen consoles before our costly investments truly prove their worth. My current rig handles everything I play with aplomb. Is it worth it to invest in a 5970 or SLI'd GTX 480's right now? Sadly, no.

I long for the days of the Radeon 9700 Pro or 8800 GTX, which were truly game-changers. Given the contemporary market situation, we PC gamers are held hostage to the state of current console hardware and it makes the debate over top-of-the-line multi-GPU configurations almost moot.

 

I'm not calling either of you liars, i never said it was impossible, it just hasn't been confirmed anywhere but by anyone but ATI users, so you have to let me have some sort of pessimism, no benchmark i've saw for the 5850 CF or 5970, which are essentially the same, can show me the same thing.

Guru3D is one of the few sites i trust, and none of their reviews seem to claim anywhere near this, but i am very open to be proven wrong.

 

I agree with you, but the console ports are proving so badly optimized the muscle is certainly proving useful.

Granted I upgraded from a 8800U starting to run at 40fps which got on my nerves so upgrading to a 5970 was worth it, but like you if I had a GTX295 I would also wait another generation or two till a new console is out then upgrade as you know then the gfx power needed will increase tremendously.

 

You seemed to be biased towards Nvidia a little. I'm not calling you a fanboy or anything, because I feel drawn towards ATI, but do you think your letting your previous wants of this card make your glasses rose colored?

 

Yeah, I'm going to wait until ATI's next-gen cards come out(which I assume will be before Nvidia's given Fermi's delays) before making another buying decision.

Fortunately, it seems that CPU horsepower is relatively static for the moment and I won't have upgrade my entire rig. I can push my 920 higher but it has been shown to serve no purpose at the moment. The new 6-core Intel chips display practically no advantage in gaming and that's the entire purpose for my PC.

 

I'm sticking with what I got for 2-3 years if I can keep my urges in check, I very much doubt I will need more CPU power. When are the new consoles coming out? 2-3 years would be a good bet right now. I doubt I will need more GFX power. I will upgrade to 8gb memory at some point though.

Worst case scenario I would upgrade the 5970 if it started hitting 40 fps regularly, but I don't think CPU power in games is going to be limits any time soon. Be ages till we even see 4ghz retail CPU's anyhow.

 

You have a sweet rig man. My 6GB isn't even being close to tested. I think we both can stand pat for quite a while at this point. Current console hardware is over 5 years old(taking into account development time), and you're right, it's probably 2-3 years before the next-gen stuff hits.

Your current RAM situation is probably sufficient. But, given the usually cheap cost of it, it may be nice to upgrade to 8GB.

I can get my 920 to 4.2-4.3 pretty easily. I'm figuring it will be at least 2012 before an upgrade is necessary, which will hopefully segue with the release of the new console generation. We'll see.

 

Not biased, but i prefer the features the Nvidia cards offer me, i won't deny that.
No previous want either, maybe i had more realistic expectations, but these cards perform better than i was expecting.

I use Cuda on a daily basis, and i love physics effects, be it PhysX, Havok or Euphoria, add's alot of realism, and also fun to a game, and in the last 6months 3D movies have given me a reason to bother going to see the crappy movies at the cinema.

I don't like 3D and PhysX because Nvidia use them, i like Nvidia because they chose to support 3D and PhysX.
I'm a single player gamer mostly, and atmosphere means alot to me, both those tech's help provide that in games.

The 5800 cards do offer HD Audio bitstreaming, but unfortunately it is the only thing i want, i don't have anything against ATI, infact i used to only use their cards when i was in my early 20's but nowadays, they just don't seem to offer me the features i want from a GPU.

I know that is Nvidia's marketing plan, and it has worked to keep me as a customer, but instead of criticising Nvidia for it, i just wish ATI could offer me a identical or better alternative :cry:

 

to be honest, i wanna see how amd flops out their fusion concept. if they could, say for the sake of argument, make something like a 5800 series gpu run as a cpu as well, that would prove to be interesting.

altho the hardware for the current gen consoles is old, you cannot deny that it was somewhat revolutionary. take the ps3 for example, 8 logical cores from a single core (iirc) was quite an achievement. and the fact that the ram runs at 3.2ghz is still quite an achievement. however, i kinda wish that sony went back to ati. the ps2 used an emotion engine designed by ati, and that lasted nearly a decade (heck, games are still coming out for the ps2 in japan).

 

Nvidia better get their Wattage and Temperature way down before the next console GFX chips bidding war starts eh? If not ATI so far is looking like they going to be clear winners of those contracts.

Can you imagine a Fermi based chip in a 360 style case? Red ring of death after an hour lol.

 

Console tech was revolutionary back in the day. However, that day was over 5 years ago. The GPU aspect of current consoles is woefully obsolete.

That is the entire reason for my assertion that a top-of-the-line multi GPU setup is almost useless right now. Depending upon what you're upgrading from of course.

I got a huge LOL about the PS2 statement though. I can't believe anyone still uses those fossils anymore.

 

It is quite good what their managing with the old tech on consoles, of course because their only running 720p or less on the renderer without upscaling. But the biggest drawback (As a PC gamer) that is bothering me now is the the low textures because of lack of vid memory and slow drives on them console things
.
Because of that we PC gamers suffer and get woefully low res textures. Man if we get these low res textures for another 2-3 years it is going to suck.

 

besides, the PS3 uses a GPU based off of the 7800GTX and the 360 uses a GPU that was based off of ATI's first DX10 cards(dont remember the name and no im not saying 360 has DX10, although it has been stated that it can do like 2 features of it)

so really, the GPU's are just probably gonna be based of last gen GPU's really

 

Yeah, no sh*t. I love Borderlands but the texture quality sucks butt. Not to mention BF2BC, Fallout 3, COD MW2, etc..

 

eh, i still play BFBC2 a lot though, on a HDTV it aint that bad

 

Actually, I believe it was based off of ATI's 1800 or 1900 series. I had a X1900XTX and loved it. Great card.

 

Was thinking of BFBC2 when writing that, at times when playing I think it reminds me of DOD a Half life 1 mod... thats how bad the textures are at times.

While we going on about consoles, the 360 has "free" AnitAliasing of x2 thanks to eDRAM? or whatever it was. It was supposed to filter down to PC and yet we never got it? Why not?

 

Couldn't tell you bro. I don't own a console. Every spare dollar I have goes into my PC. Even though I have a huge 1080p TV. When you're a fogie with a child, some solitude with PC gaming becomes quite a bonus.

 

I get you, in the same boat... But I have a reason for owning a console, I have a 360 but I never use it so I found a perfect use for it. The other half uses it, I rent games for her. Then I'm free to use the PC while she is occupied using that pos