Its quite clear at this point that Nvidia is pushing for a very high transistor count card with loads of throughput, but for the average gamer do we really need to be thinking that a $650 vide card is justifiable ??
Consider the fact that Nvidia's now soon to be End Of Life'd 9800GX2 scores higher in some of the benchmarks and it costs nearly $200 LESS than the flagship GTX280 ... that's not good news, unless you just bought a 9800GX2 !
Now, lets also consider that Nvidia has decided to go purely performance and left out some of the features that AMD is now offering, such as DX10.1 support. Yea, I know .. its hardly worth mentioning considering the bust that DX10 has been so far, but other features such as GDDR5 and better video support make ATI/AMD the clear winner for any PC hooked up through a flat panel TV.
AMD/ATI has gone the other direction and is offering the best price/performance cards available, as the 4850 offers better than 9800GTX performance for nerly $100 LESS than the GTX. Nvidia, surprise, surprise, has just announced a major driver update that greatly improves performance on the 9800 GTX cards (they are internally calling it 9800GTX+). Could it be that Nvidia was holding off on this driver update to steal some thunder from the 4850 ??
We won't know anything until all the cards are on the table (bad pun, sorry), but at this point you need to take serious look at AMD as a player in the gaming scene again, as I'll go on record as saying the 4870X2 will be the fastest card available by the end of July, and that means the GTX280 will be eating its dust.
Nvidia is well aware of this, so a planned die shrink and possibly a GTX280X2 will be the counter to ATI's X2 card. So lets chat about it and see what happens. The AMD 4850 cards in Crossfire mode show a dramatic improvement in high end games like Crysis, and that means you are paying less than $400 to run Crysis at higher than 40FPS in 1920x1200 with 4X AA/AF. Crossfire's new implementation, unlike previous SLI setups, seems to have both cards working much better in tandem, so the scores are quite a bit higher than the 35% we've seen from past SLI configs.
So there it is ... two ways of dealing with an issue, and both seem to have clear advantages, but the more I read about it, the more it looks like AMD has some very favorable hardware on the horizon. Also note I have never bought ATI in my life, altho I owned an XT1300, a 9600 and a pair of 9800s, but I have been a Team Green guy for quite some.
That may just change in about two weeks ...
The topic is now open for discussion. Keep it flame free, and keep in mind all benchmarks are invalid until all of the cards are available and run through numerous tests to determine that the playing field is indeed level. So, what are you most interested in buying ??
Consider the fact that Nvidia's now soon to be End Of Life'd 9800GX2 scores higher in some of the benchmarks and it costs nearly $200 LESS than the flagship GTX280 ... that's not good news, unless you just bought a 9800GX2 !
Now, lets also consider that Nvidia has decided to go purely performance and left out some of the features that AMD is now offering, such as DX10.1 support. Yea, I know .. its hardly worth mentioning considering the bust that DX10 has been so far, but other features such as GDDR5 and better video support make ATI/AMD the clear winner for any PC hooked up through a flat panel TV.
AMD/ATI has gone the other direction and is offering the best price/performance cards available, as the 4850 offers better than 9800GTX performance for nerly $100 LESS than the GTX. Nvidia, surprise, surprise, has just announced a major driver update that greatly improves performance on the 9800 GTX cards (they are internally calling it 9800GTX+). Could it be that Nvidia was holding off on this driver update to steal some thunder from the 4850 ??
We won't know anything until all the cards are on the table (bad pun, sorry), but at this point you need to take serious look at AMD as a player in the gaming scene again, as I'll go on record as saying the 4870X2 will be the fastest card available by the end of July, and that means the GTX280 will be eating its dust.
Nvidia is well aware of this, so a planned die shrink and possibly a GTX280X2 will be the counter to ATI's X2 card. So lets chat about it and see what happens. The AMD 4850 cards in Crossfire mode show a dramatic improvement in high end games like Crysis, and that means you are paying less than $400 to run Crysis at higher than 40FPS in 1920x1200 with 4X AA/AF. Crossfire's new implementation, unlike previous SLI setups, seems to have both cards working much better in tandem, so the scores are quite a bit higher than the 35% we've seen from past SLI configs.
So there it is ... two ways of dealing with an issue, and both seem to have clear advantages, but the more I read about it, the more it looks like AMD has some very favorable hardware on the horizon. Also note I have never bought ATI in my life, altho I owned an XT1300, a 9600 and a pair of 9800s, but I have been a Team Green guy for quite some.
That may just change in about two weeks ...
The topic is now open for discussion. Keep it flame free, and keep in mind all benchmarks are invalid until all of the cards are available and run through numerous tests to determine that the playing field is indeed level. So, what are you most interested in buying ??
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