taltamir
Lifer
I am looking for an upgrade from my evga 7900GS KO and made a little assessment of the current video card situation, that to me it just screams "wait a few monthes"... I would appreciate input though as the validity of my assessments so far.
My assessment is based on the notion of "bang for buck"... I set price brackets and then select the most bang for the buck in that price bracket. Exclude empty price brackets and make a chart of "valid choices"... and then choose...
As far as I can tell AMD isn't even in the picture right now... it has no offer that is worth it as far as "bang for the buck"... their X2900XT costs 250$ and is about 20% slower then a GTS... worse compared to a GT...
If their new cards are really 150$ though then they will offer quite a nice bang for the buck at the cheap bracket, giving much more performance then a 8600GTS for the same price.
I am interesting in playing the native resolution on my 24inch 700$ dell ultrasharp OR on my HD projector when I am done setting up the home theater in my new home... so we are looking at 1920x1200 or 1920x1080 resolutions
Price chats with performance baseline for crysis and future DX10 games:
~150$ 8600GTS or a 7900 = performs like crap, low settings on 1920x1200
~265$ 8800GT (currently price gouged but already dropping, wait two weeks it should go down more) = medium settings on 1920x1200
EDIT (per other users suggestions): ~500$ for Crossfire X2900XT = medium high settings... Should be about 70% better then one GT. Good choice if you already have an xfire board.
~530$ for SLI 8800GT = medium high settings... should be about 80% better then a single GT. (according to tests with games in which SLI works well, as of latest drivers it gives 25% performance boost in crysis over a single card, but the game isn't final)
~1100$ for SLI 8800GTX = medium high settings... should be about 5% faster then SLI GT.
~2000$ for SLI 8800ultra = medium high settings... should be about 5% faster then SLI GTX
EDIT: I would like to point out that I currently do NOT own a crossfire or sli board... only one 16x slot...
That means I will have to replace my mother board if I want to upgrade (and I replaced it 3 weeks ago from an nforce based gigabyte to the nForce 570 ultra based ASUS M2N-E so that I will have 6 built in SATA port in order to hold all my data on one computer... it now has a raptor for OS. a 500GB RAID1 array, and a 750GB RAID1 array. 5 drivers).
This means that I will have to take the cost of these boards into account for any type of upgrade... I Would prefer an asus mobo, but MSI And gigabyte are also capable choice for their quality boards (not asus quality, but close, if you can overlook the engrish). So what is a good xfire board and how much does it cost?
There is no point of buying anything else except these, and unless you are filthy rich no real point of buying anything above SLI GT.... a single GTX will perform about 60% of two GTs for the exact same price (same price cause SLI board/PSU costs extra).. not worth it.
If you wait a month new cards are comming though.
The problem with crysis is that the engine is too ambitious and unoptimized, It isn't even a matter of how much money you are willing to spend. SLI 8800 ulta cannot get playable fps on high settings on 1920x1200. So basically even if you get the absolute best of 1800$ just for video cards you can't max it out... so it is a matter of how much you want to spend... do you want to spend 250$ EXTRA per GTX compared to the GT for its 5% performance boost? Seeing as I don't enjoy flushing money down the drain I will consider nothing more then the SLI GT... and even that I consider with suspecion because I hate the notion of duel graphics cards.. I only want one really. But I MIGHT be convinced to get dual GT because of how good it is right now (if nothing good hits in the next two monthes that is)
The one drawback for SLI is that the drivers need more work, and always WILL need more work... right now its iffy.. on the first day it wasn't working in SLI period... as of now it gives a 25% boost over a single GT for crysis, which makes it about 10% better then the GTX... (for same price)... but it should go up FAST, as games with solid SLI support on it are getting 80% better scores, wiping the floor with anything else. But I am worrying about future capability and support of SLI for GT... SLI is always lagging behind single card in terms of support, drivers, and stability.
My assessment is based on the notion of "bang for buck"... I set price brackets and then select the most bang for the buck in that price bracket. Exclude empty price brackets and make a chart of "valid choices"... and then choose...
As far as I can tell AMD isn't even in the picture right now... it has no offer that is worth it as far as "bang for the buck"... their X2900XT costs 250$ and is about 20% slower then a GTS... worse compared to a GT...
If their new cards are really 150$ though then they will offer quite a nice bang for the buck at the cheap bracket, giving much more performance then a 8600GTS for the same price.
I am interesting in playing the native resolution on my 24inch 700$ dell ultrasharp OR on my HD projector when I am done setting up the home theater in my new home... so we are looking at 1920x1200 or 1920x1080 resolutions
Price chats with performance baseline for crysis and future DX10 games:
~150$ 8600GTS or a 7900 = performs like crap, low settings on 1920x1200
~265$ 8800GT (currently price gouged but already dropping, wait two weeks it should go down more) = medium settings on 1920x1200
EDIT (per other users suggestions): ~500$ for Crossfire X2900XT = medium high settings... Should be about 70% better then one GT. Good choice if you already have an xfire board.
~530$ for SLI 8800GT = medium high settings... should be about 80% better then a single GT. (according to tests with games in which SLI works well, as of latest drivers it gives 25% performance boost in crysis over a single card, but the game isn't final)
~1100$ for SLI 8800GTX = medium high settings... should be about 5% faster then SLI GT.
~2000$ for SLI 8800ultra = medium high settings... should be about 5% faster then SLI GTX
EDIT: I would like to point out that I currently do NOT own a crossfire or sli board... only one 16x slot...
That means I will have to replace my mother board if I want to upgrade (and I replaced it 3 weeks ago from an nforce based gigabyte to the nForce 570 ultra based ASUS M2N-E so that I will have 6 built in SATA port in order to hold all my data on one computer... it now has a raptor for OS. a 500GB RAID1 array, and a 750GB RAID1 array. 5 drivers).
This means that I will have to take the cost of these boards into account for any type of upgrade... I Would prefer an asus mobo, but MSI And gigabyte are also capable choice for their quality boards (not asus quality, but close, if you can overlook the engrish). So what is a good xfire board and how much does it cost?
There is no point of buying anything else except these, and unless you are filthy rich no real point of buying anything above SLI GT.... a single GTX will perform about 60% of two GTs for the exact same price (same price cause SLI board/PSU costs extra).. not worth it.
If you wait a month new cards are comming though.
The problem with crysis is that the engine is too ambitious and unoptimized, It isn't even a matter of how much money you are willing to spend. SLI 8800 ulta cannot get playable fps on high settings on 1920x1200. So basically even if you get the absolute best of 1800$ just for video cards you can't max it out... so it is a matter of how much you want to spend... do you want to spend 250$ EXTRA per GTX compared to the GT for its 5% performance boost? Seeing as I don't enjoy flushing money down the drain I will consider nothing more then the SLI GT... and even that I consider with suspecion because I hate the notion of duel graphics cards.. I only want one really. But I MIGHT be convinced to get dual GT because of how good it is right now (if nothing good hits in the next two monthes that is)
The one drawback for SLI is that the drivers need more work, and always WILL need more work... right now its iffy.. on the first day it wasn't working in SLI period... as of now it gives a 25% boost over a single GT for crysis, which makes it about 10% better then the GTX... (for same price)... but it should go up FAST, as games with solid SLI support on it are getting 80% better scores, wiping the floor with anything else. But I am worrying about future capability and support of SLI for GT... SLI is always lagging behind single card in terms of support, drivers, and stability.
