Which of these would suit my needs better ?

[JPB]

In the very near future, I will be upgrading my monitor from a 19 in wide to a 22 in wide.

Right now, my resolution is 1440x900 but the 22 will be 1680x1050. I will be doing mostly gaming on the rig. I don't do anything else on it really.

Now, I am deciding between the HD 4870 or the XFX XFX 9800GTX Black Edition.

The ATI card will be faster as we all know, but will that be needed for my resolution I plan on gaming at ? Or can I suffice with the GTX for about a year or so ?

The rig that will be using this card is in my sig.

EDIT: I know the HD 4850 is a really nice performing card as well. But I don't like the single slot cooler. And I will more than likely be buying a card before aftermarket coolers hit the market for it.

Update: I went through all the review sites I could find with my favorite games, and found my five favorite games I like to play.

The resolution I will be playing at is 1680X1050.

Here is the chart

I did this only to obtain an average on the 5 games I like to play. So yea, it looks like the HD 4870 is the obvious choice.

I think why the ATI cards are that close to the GTX series, is because of Bioshock !

 

[gamephile]

Are you interested in any of the CUDA/PhysX stuff coming out for Nvidia cards? Anandtech just put up an article about a CUDA h264 video encoder. I don't know what ATI has planned for running C on its cards though.

 

[JPB]

Nope, not interested in the least. As long as the games perform excellent at the 1680x1050 res...Ill be totally satisfied. But would like future games to run well also up to a year or there abouts.

 

[Quiksilver]

4870...

 

[bryanW1995]

4870. I did read (on toms i think) today that amd is allowing board partners to introduce non-spec boards sooner this time around, most likely to head off 9800gtx+ at the pass. This means dual slot coolers, nice oc's, etc. If one of those is in the $200-$220 range by the time 4870 comes out then it would probably serve you better at that low resolution.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

Well not only does it look like the 4870 will be considerably faster, I'd wager the 4870 will end up being more future resistant. Although for 1680x1050 a 4850 really would be all you'd need (especially if you're considering a 9800GTX), however getting a 4870 would allow you to really crank up the AA on most games (I say really because the 4850 does surprisingly well with AA seeing as how its a major reason to get the 4850 over the 9800)

 

[JPB]

Hmm...seems like the 4870 is the way to go then.

I wonder if any AIB's will release a black pcb version like the 4870X2 w/ black pcb and cooler that I read about ?

 

[Sylvanas]

Originally posted by: JPB
Hmm...seems like the 4870 is the way to go then.

I wonder if any AIB's will release a black pcb version like the 4870X2 w/ black pcb and cooler that I read about ?

4870. Maybe, HIS always release a cool looking IceQ card on a Blue PCB which looks nice but if you have you're heart set on black PCB you may have to play the wait and see game.

 

[JPB]

My quicky chart in the OP.

 

[BadRobot]

the 4870 gets better the higher the resolution and higher the AA compared to nvidia's offerings