|
|
| Page 1 of 1 |
chiv
Posts: 27530
Location: Behind You...
|
 Posted: Sun, 23rd May 2010 02:51 Post subject: time for a vid card upgrade... |
|
 |
soooo looking to update some stuff.. my main 'i dunno..' issue im having is graphics cards... and im looking at dx11...
been with nvidia for quite a while now, was looking at their 480 card, but ive read that its a: loud and b: its hot. ive also heard that it runs really loud and really hot...
so how about ati - whats their solution like? or should i wait till around xmas or something - whats on the horizon? whats my best option? i dont want my computer to sound like a jet engine every time im playing something demanding.
oh and im looking at sli'ing (or crossfiring if i go ati) two cards, because im running at a high resolution.
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Werelds
Special Little Man
Posts: 15098
Location: 0100111001001100
|
| Posted: Sun, 23rd May 2010 10:54 Post subject: |
|
|
Right now, NVIDIA's parts aren't worth it. You pay around 30-40% extra for 5-10% performance, and it indeed runs hot and loud. Some are going to say that they have the fastest cards, but that's bullshit. ATI's dual GPU card is twice as fast (literally) and generates the same amount of heat/noise as the GTX 480.
What do you consider a "high" resolution? Because a single 5870 runs everything perfectly fine at 1080p (1920x1080). Is your resolution higher than that?
In terms of the future, ATI has a refresh of the current HD5 series lined up for somewhere after the summer, most likely it'll be september/october again, just like last year. You can expect those parts to be anywhere from 50-100% faster than the current parts, easily.
NVIDIA also has a GTX465 lined up for next month, but that's a slower card anyway. Their full refresh of their current parts should arrive in Q3/Q4 of this year. If they got off their asses, they fixed all the problems the current parts have, and the new parts might actually give ATI some competition again.
My advice: go with ATI. They have the faster, cooler and quieter cards, and they have Eyefinity. Eyefinity lets you use multiple monitors as one single monitor. NVIDIA has a similar thing but that's a software solution, and the driver is not ready yet; Eyefinity is a hardware solution.
If you can tell me what resolution you want to be gaming at, I can tell you what you need. I've got a 5870 myself, and there's very little that pushes this card to the edge at 1080p, with all the crappy console ports out there atm 
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
chiv
Posts: 27530
Location: Behind You...
|
| Posted: Sun, 23rd May 2010 11:53 Post subject: |
|
|
i said high, not 'normal', so its 2560x1600 
you seem to be in the know... what can you tell me about in terms of setting up multiple monitors?
i have my main monitor, a 30" running @ 2560x1600 which requires a dual-link dvi setup... i have a secondary monitor at the moment, but if i move to a dual card system, how difficult would it be to set up three monitors?
and how are ati's drivers compared to nvidia?
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
| Posted: Sun, 23rd May 2010 12:11 Post subject: |
|
|
Ati 5-series cards support 3/6 monitor setups by them selves, that was one of their selling points - Eyefinity and all that, so there shouldn't be any problem with setting it up... except that there are only 2 DVI ports, so you'll need a HDMI or a DisplayPort equipped monitor to go for 3 screens. Don't really know how this works with 2 cards though.
But, unless you are in a rush, it might be a better idea to wait for the new cards, there should be some announcements made soon enough. What's your current GPU?
Driver wise, I didn't have any issues with Ati, but you'll find plenty of people who will say otherwise... I don't know where all their troubles come from 
Edit: Just checked: seems that you can't use a DVI- DVI - HDMI configuration. So the third one will have to be a DisplayPort screen, or you could use a DP-DVI (or VGA) adapter.
And you'll probably need all screens to have the same resolution if you intend to use it for gaming, not just extended desktop. It will scale to different resolutions, but the quality will suffer obviously.
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
chiv
Posts: 27530
Location: Behind You...
|
| Posted: Sun, 23rd May 2010 12:26 Post subject: |
|
|
oh im not in a huge hurry, so ive allready pretty much decided that ill wait until towards the end of the year.
i have a nvidia 285 at the moment, which will definately keep me happy for now... its adequate for most games in fullscreen, but does just fine for anything that lets me play in a window.
i plan for my third monitor to be a tv, so hdmi would work quite nicely in that regard.
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Werelds
Special Little Man
Posts: 15098
Location: 0100111001001100
|
| Posted: Sun, 23rd May 2010 12:36 Post subject: |
|
|
Most of those people with "problems" are full of shit, and haven't owned an ATI card in the last decade; the few that have one now and are having issues are either doing something wrong, or something else in their system is conflicting 
The only real downside to ATI's drivers atm is the fact that their powersaving function doesn't work 100%, but there's plenty of tools to use to fix that. You want to use those tools anyway to maximise the silence these cards can give :>
Anyway regarding your setup chiv: MinderMast is correct in the fact that you can't connect 3 DVI monitors for example. One always has to be connected through DisplayPort; however, there are active adapters you can get to convert DisplayPort to DL DVI. In your case, I'd suggest hooking the 30" up through that, and the other two with the normal DVI and/or HDMI connectors. An HD5870 comes with 1 DP, 2xDVI and 1xHDMI. Due to some technical limitations, you can only use 2xDVI or 1xDVI+1xHDMI though. DP can always be used
At 2560x1600 I'd suggest a 5970, or 2x5870. The latter combination actually outperforms the 5970 nowadays, because ATI have made some serious driver improvements, Crossfire scales ridiculously well on the HD5 series.
I'd wait till the end of the year though, we'll know if NVIDIA stopped slacking by then.
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
LeoNatan
Banned
Posts: 73193
Location: Ramat Gan, Israel 🇮🇱
|
| Posted: Sun, 23rd May 2010 14:58 Post subject: |
|
|
The only problems ATI drivers have is with Crossfire setups, but similar problems are also seen with SLI as well.
But I'd wait to see the 5 series refresh that ATI is supposed to release soon (summer?).
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
| Posted: Sun, 23rd May 2010 16:45 Post subject: |
|
|
If I were you I'd wait for the next gen Nvidia/ati cards, possibly 28nm. If you don't care about the physx gimmick go for the HD6700 (they claim it will be 20-30% faster than GTX480, and upto 2x performance for tessalation than Hd5800 -if my memory serves me well) If I were you I'd go with ati since I don't believe next gen fermis will be better than current fermis. It will be like hd2900-hd3870 transform in this short time.
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Werelds
Special Little Man
Posts: 15098
Location: 0100111001001100
|
| Posted: Sun, 23rd May 2010 20:47 Post subject: |
|
|
| iNatan wrote: | The only problems ATI drivers have is with Crossfire setups, but similar problems are also seen with SLI as well.
But I'd wait to see the 5 series refresh that ATI is supposed to release soon (summer?). |
The "problems" are microstuttering, which is inherent to any multigpu set really
Scaling wise I dare to say ATI outperform NVIDIA on that part, they actually achieve 90+% scaling in a lot of games these days.
| Lord_IpwnU wrote: | | If I were you I'd wait for the next gen Nvidia/ati cards, possibly 28nm. If you don't care about the physx gimmick go for the HD6700 (they claim it will be 20-30% faster than GTX480, and upto 2x performance for tessalation than Hd5800 -if my memory serves me well) If I were you I'd go with ati since I don't believe next gen fermis will be better than current fermis. It will be like hd2900-hd3870 transform in this short time. |
ATI haven't claimed anything, any performance guestimates you've seen come from people who base that on previous iterations. All of the guestimates I've seen have been higher than that though 
About Fermi vs. Fermi2: Fermi itself has a good architecture, that does work. What NVIDIA did wrong was that they told TSMC to fix the problems, even though the problems lie on NVIDIA's side. The next die shrink is a pretty good one, so Fermi2 should be able to do it faster than Fermi, and with a lot less heat so it might turn out to be better than most people think atm
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
chiv
Posts: 27530
Location: Behind You...
|
| Posted: Mon, 24th May 2010 03:03 Post subject: |
|
|
yeah ok i think its pretty clear. ill resurrect this sucker around xmas see ya all then
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
| Page 1 of 1 |
All times are GMT + 1 Hour |
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
Powered by phpBB 2.0.8 © 2001, 2002 phpBB Group
|
|
 |
|
