Where's the current "sweet spot" for some moderate gaming?

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: happy medium

Originally posted by: Arglebargle
It appears that the 512 bit 2900 Pros are back in stock at Ewiz for anyone who wants to bite. Wonder if I should get a second....and a new power supply...and more fans...and...

http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=AT-29PRO51

Thats the 512mb,512 bit version for 170.00$. With a little overclock should at least = if not surpass a 3870. Nice find!

of course that 3870 can also be oc'd
--i was *thinking* of it for my own rig ... then thought of a less power-hungry 3750 ...

 

[zeroburrito]

looks like newegg put the 512 version back up for 160. 1 page says in stock the other says out of stock. keep an eye out, if it comes in they go fast.

 

[JoLLyRoGer]

Originally posted by: happy medium

Originally posted by: Arglebargle
It appears that the 512 bit 2900 Pros are back in stock at Ewiz for anyone who wants to bite. Wonder if I should get a second....and a new power supply...and more fans...and...

http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=AT-29PRO51

Thats the 512mb,512 bit version for 170.00$. With a little overclock should at least = if not surpass a 3870. Nice find!

Just pulled the trigger on this - Thanks for posting! FYI, the price went up a little. It was at $174.07 when I got there. Cost $11.xx for S/H so roughly $185 and change out the door...

For a card on par with the 3870 plus some added memory bandwidth, I think this should do for now.

A final heartfelt THANK YOU to everyone who replied and lent their thoughts resources and expertise to this thread! You guys are what makes this place so grand! :thumbsup::beer:

JR..

 

[zeroburrito]

haha, it just dropped back down to 169. you got screwed!

 

[happy medium]

Just cancel your order and reorder. save 15$

 

[1EZduzit]

So what's difference between DirectX 10 and 10.1?

 

[SlowSpyder]

Does anyone know what the 3870's top out at for overclocking? I know they are limited to somewhere around 860mhz due to the bios, has anyone figured out how to get around that? I -think- the 2900 card typically get to near 850mhz.

 

[zeroburrito]

bios flash can get you by the 860 problem. from what i hear though, it doesn't go much more than that. getting to 900 would be extremely lucky, needs volt mod. the main boon for the 3870 is the gddr4. can get that pretty far to 2600 and beyond.

 

[JoLLyRoGer]

Originally posted by: zeroburrito
haha, it just dropped back down to 169. you got screwed!

Not actually, I cancelled and re-ordered for the lower price. $169.00 now, but thanks for the heads up!!

 

[kalrith]

Originally posted by: JoLLyRoGer

Originally posted by: zeroburrito
haha, it just dropped back down to 169. you got screwed!

Not actually, I cancelled and re-ordered for the lower price. $169.00 now, but thanks for the heads up!!

Good timing too. The item's gone from ewiz.com now.

 

[SorryImLate]

Hi, just wondering i read through the posts and didnt see anything about this but im just wondering if you overclocked the 2900 pro are you going to see more FPS or how many more FPS do you think you would see as compared to the same card at stock speeds?

 

[zeroburrito]

a good bit. it's a pretty big jump and there is no reason not to overclock as you are buying an xt...just at lower clocks. here is a link to compare the pro and xt. the difference is bigger with filters turned off.

http://www.firingsquad.com/har...0_pro_review/page4.asp

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: 1EZduzit
So what's difference between DirectX 10 and 10.1?

Direct X 10.1 allows a new "bicubic filtering" thing that is a little more efficient, and standardizes 4x MSAA capability (where a DX10 card could use any 4x AA implementation they wanted in DX10)

Not very significant, but potentially impreves performance slightly over DX10...

DX11 would bring GPU accelerated physX as part of the DX API.

 

[SlowSpyder]

Originally posted by: zeroburrito
a good bit. it's a pretty big jump and there is no reason not to overclock as you are buying an xt...just at lower clocks. here is a link to compare the pro and xt. the difference is bigger with filters turned off.

http://www.firingsquad.com/har...0_pro_review/page4.asp

The link zeroburrito provided shows a pretty good jump between the pro and the XT. That's a 145mhz difference on the core, and I think 50mhz difference on the memory. My pro runs at 800mhz (200mhz higher then the stock Pro) which I think is pretty good. That's a 33% jump on the core from the stock speed. I don't know that will translate to 33% in frame rates, but I'm sure it's a significant jump from stock. Maybe someday I'll run fraps on some games at stock speed and the overclocked speed just to satisfy my curiosity. Right now I'm only runing an Opteron dual core 1.8ghz processor, it's probably getting to be time to upgrade that.

 

[KeypoX]

Originally posted by: SlowSpyder

Originally posted by: taltamir
I mean easily 30$+ a year... if you leave the computer on 24/7 than over 100$ a year, easily. 50watt difference adds up to a LOT over time.


EDIT: I couldn't find exact figures for the 2900Pro
But: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3151&p=11
The 2900XT is 78watts more on idle and and 123 watts more on load.

So I would be GENEROUS and say the pro is only 50 watts more on either... And the ABSOLUTELY LOWEST power cost in texas of 12 cents per KWH (average being 14+taxes)
@2 hours a day gaming and 5 hours a day general use:
7 hours/day x 50watt = 0.350kwh/day.
0.35kwh/day x 365 days/year = 127.75 kwh/year
127.75 kwh/year x 0.12$/kwh = 15.33$/year

But it likely will take even more electricity. And I DOUBT you only use your computer for 2 hours of gaming and 5 hours of general on an average day (yea i know you sometimes dont use it at all, but then you have the occasional 14 hours in a row of playing a specific game, right?)

Assuming you leave your computer on 24/7 though... well... a quick and dirty calculation would be to devide the result by 7 (the assumed hours per day before) and multiple by 24 (the currently assumed hours per day)...
52.56$ per year.

And again, I am being very generous... your electricity might not be the lowest priced, you probably use the computer for more hours of gaming. and I would bet that it takes closer to 100 watts more when gaming, not 50 more. Which would make it much more expensive.

EDIT2: From what I have read... the 2900Pro is an underclocked 2900XT with some ram differences... I would hazard an educated guess that it takes probably 10 watts less in both load and idle. So that would mean probable consumption increase over a 3850 of 68watt idle and 113 load... Not pretty, and VERY close to the numbers I originally tossed about (I calculated electricity cost differences for so many components recently that I have gotten experienced in it)

So you're saying if I use my computer for 7 hours a day/365 days a year it'll cost me a whole $15.33/year more in electricity for the 2900Pro? I think you just kind of proved that the difference in electricity useage is really not a big deal at all...

actually he is totaly wrong... i guess he assumes if you dont not buy this card you will not have a computer at all???

so figuring another card has half the power consumption you would spend 8 more per year

 

[taltamir]

No, I am totally right AND I was not comparing to not having a computer at all, but to having a computer with a 3850 instead (3870 will work too, they take almost the same power compared to the 2900), and you are even looking at the outdated numbers... if you play only a couple of hours per day, you will pay abour 30$ per year more with that card. If you leave it on 24/7 you will pay about 100$ more per year. I say more because the total yearly bill will be closer to 300, vs 200 with the other card.

You can half all of these numbers if you live somewhere really cold where the electricity cost is 6 cents per kwh instead of 12.