8800gt vs 37x0s

[konakona]

I have not kept up with the most recent developments in the scene in terms of driver tuning and pricing. To my best knowledge though, the nVidia card is still generally preferred for performance (correct me if I am wrong).

As I was looking at anand's charts in the most recent article on video, I noticed how the ATi cards took the lead in all but crysis. However, there was no mention of overclocked results or how much overclocking we should expect out of respective cards. IIRC, 8800s OC better and thats what makes them more attractive if at all, right? Also, I am curious as to if AMD-ATi managed to sort out heavy toll their cards were known to take with AA.

I havnt touched any high-req games since farcry, and thus there is no "killer ap" that would sway my decision either way. But I am hanging onto a 7300LE as we speak, which shows its limitations even in much less demanding games I am playing currently. Once I go for an upgrade, I imagine I would get into playing games with more eyecandy at will.

Luckily, I feel I can live without AA in most cases, since I was never so impressed (or spoiled) by tunring it on. The bad part is I am stuck with a 24'' LCD with the native res of 1920x1200. Another thing I should mention is I am somewhat concerned about power consumption/heat. Noise management is a rather big deal to me, and I dont plan on dealing with significantly higher noise floor, maybe adding a pair of 120mm nexus's (or undervolted yate loons for that matter). The PSU I am using is an Antec EW430, which I was told should suffice for any single card variant.

I wonder if this is a good time to get a new video card? People still seem to have a hard time procuring the nVidia card at a decent price...

 

[hclarkjr]

i would get a radeon 3870 and one can be found in the for sale forums for $220 right now link

 

[Tempered81]

a 256mb 8800gt is 189 at zipzoomfly.com right now

 

[Munky]

Originally posted by: jaredpace
a 256mb 8800gt is 189 at zipzoomfly.com right now

For 1920x1200 I would not even consider a card with less than 512MB. The 3870 is a about 10% slower on average than a 512MB 8800gt, but it has a quieter dual slot cooler, so one has to decide which aspect is more important, and it's cheaper too.

 

[konakona]

Originally posted by: munky

Originally posted by: jaredpace
a 256mb 8800gt is 189 at zipzoomfly.com right now

For 1920x1200 I would not even consider a card with less than 512MB. The 3870 is a about 10% slower on average than a 512MB 8800gt, but it has a quieter dual slot cooler, so one has to decide which aspect is more important, and it's cheaper too.

Sounds more and more like I would be happier with 3870. Does it OC much better than the 3850? Do ATi cards scale well with OC?

Thanks for the link hclarkjr, I may go for it depending on what input I get in this thread.

 

[chizow]

Not sure where you got the impression the 3800s were faster than G92 8800s, but the general concensus is that a G92 8800GT is 10-15% faster than a 3870. You might have looked at the 256MB version, but like Munky said, that's not a very good option for 1920x1200 because the decrease in vRAM results in a significant performance penalty:

256MB vs. 512MB GT
I think some reviews show the difference can be as high as 30% at higher resolutions.

As for overclocking, not really sure how much the ATI cards OC and how much benefit they see from overclocking, but the 8800GT I had did 729/1000 with many hitting 700MHz without much difficulty. G92 does seem to be bandwidth limited at higher resolutions with AA, so that might not translate into much performance gain for you. I saw very little difference in performance when increasing bandwidth, although I rarely run AA @ 1920. Might be the same for the 3800s but I don't know for certain.

For heat/power/noise, the single-slot GT can get very hot if run at stock 29% fan speeds. Newer versions have updated BIOS or fans that either ramp the fan speed up or aren't as noisy. Anything over 60% on my GT was too loud imo, but 60% was sufficient to keep it cool under load at 729 with linked shaders (1839 or something). The 3800s do have an edge in terms of power consumption, which is definitely a consideration with a 430W PSU.

Overall either the 3870 or 8800GT 512MB would be a good choice, probably leaning towards the 3870 as well in your case. May want to research OC'ing and benefits a bit more. The one thing that would sway me towards the 8800GT despite its extra cost, heat, power draw etc. is that @ 1920, current games will heavily tax current GPUs to the point any gain in FPS is desirable.

 

[hclarkjr]

here is an 8800gt for sale for $230 here

 

[JPB]

3870 = GDDR4..which I think is rated for 2400mhz.

I seen a review today, ill look it up again for a link. That shows the 3870 overclocking to 862 core