8800GTS to 4850 thoughts?

[Magusigne]

AoC is killing my graphics card at 16x12 and I'm not running native on my 24" monitor and getting not that great of frame rates. I realize that AoC isn't quite optimized but I need your opinions.

I'm running the rig in the Sig, a Asus P5k mobo that supports Xfire.

I currently have the g92 8800GT and I will not be upgrade my build until nahelems become affordable (300 or under) so about 2 years from now.

Thoughts are selling 8800GT and getting a single 4850 and eventually another for xfire

This sound like a good idea? I've heard Xfire runs bad on some mobo's

 

[DaveSimmons]

4850s are held back with x8 / x8 crossfire per the Tweaktown.com tests, so getting a single 4870 now instead might be a better idea.

Also, the 4850 is more of a 1600 x 1050 card than 1900 x 1200.

 

[tvdang7]

it shouldnt hold it back that much though maybe a few frames but not significant. either way the 4850 is a decent improvement to your cards . i just upgraded from g92 gts's and my cod4 feels a little more smooth in big servers.

 

[AzN]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons


Also, the 4850 is more of a 1600 x 1050 card than 1900 x 1200.

That's really subjective at best.

 

[Ike0069]

Originally posted by: Azn

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons


Also, the 4850 is more of a 1600 x 1050 card than 1900 x 1200.

That's really subjective at best.

Yes it is, but I would agree with Dave here. For 19x12 I would suggest a 4870 or 4850 in CF right now. Of course having a 24" monitor doesn't mean that you have to play at that resolution obviously, so it just becomes an issue of budget and what resolution you are satisfied with.

 

[MyLeftNut]

Crossfire with p35 isn't going to be efficient. 16x/4x.
Also, a single 4850 in my opinion isn't going to be much of an increase over an 8800gt to be worth the trouble. Perhaps a 4870 or a X2 card later on would be a better choice with a P35.

 

[AzN]

Originally posted by: Ike0069

Originally posted by: Azn

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons


Also, the 4850 is more of a 1600 x 1050 card than 1900 x 1200.

That's really subjective at best.

Yes it is, but I would agree with Dave here. For 19x12 I would suggest a 4870 or 4850 in CF right now. Of course having a 24" monitor doesn't mean that you have to play at that resolution obviously, so it just becomes an issue of budget and what resolution you are satisfied with.

Some of us could care less about AA. There isn't set standard either.

4870 is still incapable of running 24xAA at that resolution. Does that mean it can't play a game @ 1920x1200?

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: MyLeftNut
Crossfire with p35 isn't going to be efficient. 16x/4x.
Also, a single 4850 in my opinion isn't going to be much of an increase over an 8800gt to be worth the trouble. Perhaps a 4870 or a X2 card later on would be a better choice with a P35.

+1

 

[sgrinavi]

My G92 8800 GTS still outperforms my 4850... It worked great with AoC at 1900x1200. I think I saw one for $129 AR in the HOT DEALS forum

 

[SickBeast]

The 4850 looks like an incremental upgrade from an 8800GTS.

Unfortunately there is still not a single GPU that is an order of magnitude better than your card (and there probably won't be for at least 6 months or so).

The terrible thing is that you're stuck with SLI/CF in order to get a serious performance boost at this point.

I'm personally waiting it out for a bit with my 8800GTS 320mb. I'm impressed with the new ATI cards, but they really don't look like *that* much of an upgrade to me under most conditions.

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: Azn

Originally posted by: Ike0069

Originally posted by: Azn

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons


Also, the 4850 is more of a 1600 x 1050 card than 1900 x 1200.

That's really subjective at best.

Yes it is, but I would agree with Dave here. For 19x12 I would suggest a 4870 or 4850 in CF right now. Of course having a 24" monitor doesn't mean that you have to play at that resolution obviously, so it just becomes an issue of budget and what resolution you are satisfied with.

Some of us could care less about AA. There isn't set standard either.

4870 is still incapable of running 24xAA at that resolution. Does that mean it can't play a game @ 1920x1200?

And some actually do care. And no, there is no set standard.
4870 would do just fine at 1920x1200 in most games I would imagine. But there are levels
of AA between 0x and 24x.

 

[Magusigne]

Thanks for the reply all,

So what I'm hearing is that with my mobo being 16x/4x CF would not be in my best interest and help much?

The idea would be basically exchanging (more or less) for a 4850 and adding a second one eventually.

The end result is that a single card 4870 @299ish vs 2x 4850's in xfire on a 16x/4x board?

Edit: Also gaming can be done at 16x12 no problem. Thats close enough to being native for me

 

[Denithor]

Your best bet for your setup is probably a single 4870, which beats up the GTX 260 and should give more than adequate fps at 19x12 for smooth gameplay.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Originally posted by: Azn

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
Also, the 4850 is more of a 1600 x 1050 card than 1900 x 1200.

That's really subjective at best.

Somewhat. Here are some hard numbers:

AnandTech average FPS, min can be much lower
Assassin's Creed - 19x12 no AA - 46.6 vs. 55
Crysis - 16x10 no AA = 29.8 vs. 35.6
Oblivion - 19x12 4x AA = 34.8 vs. 41.5
The Witcher - 19x12 2x AA - 34.5 vs. 48

Ars Technica 1680x1050 with 4xAA
(average / min fps)
Company of Heroes - (48.9 / 25.8) vs. (52.8 / 30.8)
Crysis - (23.8 / 12.5) vs. (30.9 / 23.1)
World in Conflict - (37 / 22) vs. (44 / 27)

both >60 fps at 19x12 no AA: Bioshock, COD4 (low min FPS for 4850), Quake Wars

The 4850 will run some games well at 19x12, but even ignoring Crysis the minimum framerate will often be annoying for others.

 

[AzN]

Originally posted by: keysplayr2003

Originally posted by: Azn

Originally posted by: Ike0069

Originally posted by: Azn

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons


Also, the 4850 is more of a 1600 x 1050 card than 1900 x 1200.

That's really subjective at best.

Yes it is, but I would agree with Dave here. For 19x12 I would suggest a 4870 or 4850 in CF right now. Of course having a 24" monitor doesn't mean that you have to play at that resolution obviously, so it just becomes an issue of budget and what resolution you are satisfied with.

Some of us could care less about AA. There isn't set standard either.

4870 is still incapable of running 24xAA at that resolution. Does that mean it can't play a game @ 1920x1200?

And some actually do care. And no, there is no set standard.
4870 would do just fine at 1920x1200 in most games I would imagine. But there are levels
of AA between 0x and 24x.

That's not what I was trying to get at. Dave says 4850 is a 1680x1050 card and I said it was subjective and would depend entirely on the person obviously. When there isn't a set AA standard how can you say it's more like a set resolution card because 4850 can handle many games @ 1920x1200 even with 4xAA?

 

[AzN]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons

Originally posted by: Azn

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
Also, the 4850 is more of a 1600 x 1050 card than 1900 x 1200.

That's really subjective at best.

Somewhat. Here are some hard numbers:

AnandTech average FPS, min can be much lower
Assassin's Creed - 19x12 no AA - 46.6 vs. 55
Crysis - 16x10 no AA = 29.8 vs. 35.6
Oblivion - 19x12 4x AA = 34.8 vs. 41.5
The Witcher - 19x12 2x AA - 34.5 vs. 48

Ars Technica 1680x1050 with 4xAA
(average / min fps)
Company of Heroes - (48.9 / 25.8) vs. (52.8 / 30.8)
Crysis - (23.8 / 12.5) vs. (30.9 / 23.1)
World in Conflict - (37 / 22) vs. (44 / 27)

both >60 fps at 19x12 no AA: Bioshock, COD4 (low min FPS for 4850), Quake Wars

The 4850 will run some games well at 19x12, but even ignoring Crysis the minimum framerate will often be annoying for others.

So you are basing your judgment on crysis alone?

 

[Sylvanas]

Originally posted by: Powernick50
Thanks for the reply all,

So what I'm hearing is that with my mobo being 16x/4x CF would not be in my best interest and help much?

The idea would be basically exchanging (more or less) for a 4850 and adding a second one eventually.

The end result is that a single card 4870 @299ish vs 2x 4850's in xfire on a 16x/4x board?

Edit: Also gaming can be done at 16x12 no problem. Thats close enough to being native for me

Well, we haven't really seen 4850 Crossfire results on a P35 yet but it would not be pretty and a waste of the potential of two great cards. I would stick with a single 4870.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Originally posted by: Azn
So you are basing your judgment on crysis alone?

No,

---
Oblivion - 19x12 4x AA, 4850 = 34.8 average vs. 41.5
The Witcher - 19x12 2x AA, 4850 =- 34.5 average vs. 48

Ars Technica 1680x1050 with 4xAA
(average / min fps)
Company of Heroes - 4850 = (48.9 / 25.8) vs. (52.8 / 30.8)
World in Conflict - 4850 = (37 / 22) vs. (44 / 27)

The 4850 will run some games well at 19x12, but even ignoring Crysis the minimum framerate will often be annoying for others.
---

I still have Shivering Isles and The Witcher to play, along with Fallout 3 and whatever else comes out, The 4850 is going to stumble at 19x12 with about half of the new games based on how it handles the current ones.

 

[Tropicocity]

Originally posted by: Powernick50
AoC is killing my graphics card at 16x12 and I'm not running native on my 24" monitor and getting not that great of frame rates. I realize that AoC isn't quite optimized but I need your opinions.

I'm running the rig in the Sig, a Asus P5k mobo that supports Xfire.

I currently have the g92 8800GT and I will not be upgrade my build until nahelems become affordable (300 or under) so about 2 years from now.

Thoughts are selling 8800GT and getting a single 4850 and eventually another for xfire

This sound like a good idea? I've heard Xfire runs bad on some mobo's

The first sentence says it all there dude.
I'm an ex-AOC player and even running two 8800gts g92 in sli i still saw drops into the lowe 30s, oddly even high 20s on a couple of occasions. The game itself is whack, How can a DX9 game product similar/lower framerates by standard, than Crysis itself on high 16x10, with dx10?

The developers must've made a huge graphics engine error man, for a game that takes up 25.2gb on install (yes folks, over twenty-five gigabytes by default, 2 dvds) the choppiness you get from it is something to laugh at.

Also, whilst i can't see a 4850 as a viable upgrade from a g92 gts, nor can i see the 4870 being _that_ much better if at all (due to the vast amount of nvidia-optimized games these days), the ability to run crossfire more than sways the decision towards ati cards for me.

Even if you believe the crap about the 8x/8x crossfire mode (so what? a pci bus has HUGE bandwidth, it'd hardly even be saturated at 4x let alone 8), the 4850 is insanely good value for money and two of them can rival a gtx 280 for ~2/3 of the cost or less.

Then again, gddr5 on the 4870s would certainly futureproof you, and crossfire is also an option in future even if they release something like the 4870X2 - you could grab a single 4870 at that time for crossfire, or splash on an x2 version for 3-way crossfire.

 

[Magusigne]

Alright. Looks like I may grab a 4870 when they come down in price.

 

[AzN]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons

Originally posted by: Azn
So you are basing your judgment on crysis alone?

No,

---
Oblivion - 19x12 4x AA, 4850 = 34.8 average vs. 41.5
The Witcher - 19x12 2x AA, 4850 =- 34.5 average vs. 48

Ars Technica 1680x1050 with 4xAA
(average / min fps)
Company of Heroes - 4850 = (48.9 / 25.8) vs. (52.8 / 30.8)
World in Conflict - 4850 = (37 / 22) vs. (44 / 27)

The 4850 will run some games well at 19x12, but even ignoring Crysis the minimum framerate will often be annoying for others.
---

I still have Shivering Isles and The Witcher to play, along with Fallout 3 and whatever else comes out, The 4850 is going to stumble at 19x12 with about half of the new games based on how it handles the current ones.

Did you actually play those games to come up with that conclusion?

Personally I either played or finished all those games and I happen to disagree quite a bit with that assumption. You are also basing your assumption that everyone will be using 4xAA/whatever AA or dx10 path ars benchmarked which doesn't do anything for image quality even with 20/20 vision which I posses. You do not need a minimum frame of 25-30fps in a game like oblivion, WIC, CoH, or Witcher. It isn't a First Person Shooter.

With your benchmarks and logic 4870 really is a 1680x1050 card considering when looking at those minimum frame which is barely playable at those settings.

 

[Tequila]

Originally posted by: Powernick50
AoC is killing my graphics card at 16x12 and I'm not running native on my 24" monitor and getting not that great of frame rates. I realize that AoC isn't quite optimized but I need your opinions.

I'm running the rig in the Sig, a Asus P5k mobo that supports Xfire.

I currently have the g92 8800GT and I will not be upgrade my build until nahelems become affordable (300 or under) so about 2 years from now.

Thoughts are selling 8800GT and getting a single 4850 and eventually another for xfire

This sound like a good idea? I've heard Xfire runs bad on some mobo's

You really have to play around with AoC settings to get it right. After reading the AoC forums I followed one piece of advice and that was to set graphics to high and disable shadows and set shader version to 2.0. After doing that with a 8800gt I get nice framerates now. I average about 40fps overall. I only dip down to 20fps in OT and Nobles but in FoD, Eiglophian, Conall I get 40-60. This is with 2x AA and 16x AF.

I also noticed a lot of posts about people getting low fps in villas but I haven't had this problem. I get 40-60fps in villas easily, only dipping to mid 30s when looking at the fires.