Want a new card

xXPattycakes

OK so i just graduated and I've got a bit of money to spend and i want a new GPU...

Right now i have the 8800GTS 640mb Superclocked

I plan on SLI-ing the cards eventually

These are my questions
1. Is a 9800GTX worth buying?
I've heard its not much different than the old GTX.

2. I have a motherboard with PCIex16 slots, if i get a 2.0 card will it work?

3. I want some recommendations for a card in the 250 - 400$ range

SacredTbag

from what i've read, the price to performance ratio between the 8800gtx and the 9800gtx isn't worth it. the only real reason to go with the newer cards is if you want to use more than 2 cards.

to answer the 2.0 question, yes, the new 2.0 cards will work in the "legacy" PCI-E slots.

personally, if i were to upgrade your setup, i'd get a single 9800 GX2. then later if you want to "sli", you'll be running quad instead.

xXPattycakes

yeah i thought about that...its a little out of my price range but it would be awesome

but what would the performance be if i had 2 of these cards?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814150289

anthonyg45157

i wouldnt get the GT if i were you..if you are gonna get a 9 series card, i would deff look at the 9800gx2 like the guy above you said. Its about 450$ now i would get one of those then later if you get more money add another. having one gx2 is like having two cards in sli. but if you want cheaper. buy 2-3 9800gtx's dont get the GT have heard very many bad things on it. Hope I helped

m0f0iswin

If you've got the PSU for it I'd say just go all out you basicly have 3 options at the moment in terms of top cards you could buy , The GTX 280 by Nvidia which is slightly faster then the 9800 GX2 then you have the ATi Radeon HD 4870 which after further benchmarkng has been proven to get quite a bit more fps at insanely high resolutions/anti aliasing/high dynamic range lighting so if you want or can play at those high resolutions or want very good performance maxed out resolution for your lcds and with 2 or more cards I would suggest the HD 4870 , in terms of price wise it all depends on what you want to spend some cards are cheaper then others , in terms of Nvidia I usually always buy BFG for the lifetime warranty and damn fast cards in terms of ATi I've found the nicest cooled cards are HiS but there is several brands with either stock Artic Cooling or if you are worried about heat and power consumption you can replace the stock cooling with a 3rd party cooler , I doubt you'd notice much difference between them though unless you are playing very graphicly intensive games on maximum settings which only looks and performs well if you have the pc for it , some of the cards will seem very nice then you start cranking the aa , hdr and all the lighting effects and particle effects to the max and your card doesnt perform well at all , if you play steam games you should set all your games to the * settings those are your recommended settings and alot of games will detect your optimal settings for you , the main difference is that on a brand new card most games will turn everything to as high as it can go and still not lag so it's really up to you on what you choose

obobskivich

uh, the GX2 is faster than the GTX 280 in most tests,

as far as 8800GTX vs 9800GTX, 8800GTX boards tend to cost more new than 9800GTX boards (due to the RAM and the age) while the 9800GTX tends to be a hair faster, except at super high res, where the 8800's extra RAM sometimes helps it, overall the 9800GTX's are better

i know this dude already bought his boards, but I figured i'd just put up an honest answer if anyone else wanted to view the thread

m0f0iswin

You can go to http://nvidia.com and use the "How well will it run in my PC VisualMark test" It'll tell you how much performance you'll get out of one card over the other and the GTX 280 is alot faster for me then compared against the 9800 GX2 so I guess it just depends on your configuration I dunno..

obobskivich

dude, nvidia would tell you anything to sell the GTX 280

look at actual benchmarks:
http://www.guru3d.com/category/vga_3/

at least more than 60% of the time, the 9800GX2 is faster than the GTX 280

stop being such a tool

obobskivich

dude, benchmarks show real world performance in real world applications

the GTX 280 is shown as being faster in 3DMark, due to various architectural things that 3DMark looks for (which is why I don't agree with Futuremark's policy of only testing the absolute latest technology to set their standards, because their synth benches run about 2 years ahead of realworld applications)

now, if you compare 9800GX2 to GTX 280 in terms of real world FPS, across the board, the 9800GX2 is accepted as being a tad bit faster, it has a tad bit more processing power due to having a pair of cores, but the performance isn't consistent (if you'd read my link you'd find that to be true as well) due to, having a pair of cores, although generally its faster, and given the ~$150 less that it costs, its generally a better buy

as far as "10-15 features the 9800GX2 doesnt have" list them for me, and explain what each of them improves over the G80/G92 architecture, and why we should need it

::edit
and another thing, when you finally get out of middle school, and make it into the real world of academia, you'll learn that opinions are like *******s, everyone has one, and not too many people want to see them, facts however are much more valuble, and generally more relevant to any discussion

m0f0iswin

Ok 15 new features (roughly)

1. Shader Model 6 over 4
2. 8 Cores Over 4
3. 300-400 GB/s of bandwidth over 125 GB/s
4. 512 bit x 2 Width of Memory Bus over 256 bit x 2
5. Close to 40 x AA over 22 x AA
6. Faster HDR lighting effects
7. Some 280 models with 2800/3200 Core/Mem clock over about half as much for the 9800 GX2
8. Over 2.2 Teraflops Throughput over Less then 1 Teraflop
9. Max of 4 DVi , 4 HDMi over 2 DVi , 2 HDMi Ports
10. Designed for the next generation of games instead of the previous
11. Your tests are threw VGA which is a huge performance difference over DVi and HDMi
12. Actually Less Power Consumption then the 9800 GX2
13. More games being designed to use the Power of the GTX 280 over the 9800 GX2
14. The price is lower for the GTX 280 over the 9800 GX2 they just havent been put up on most sites or most stores
15. You can run 2 on less power supply wattage and usage the 2 9800 GX2s

obobskivich

the only points that you put up, that are actually relevant and mean anything are 12 and 15 (which are the same point) and thats probably the ONLY advantage of the GeForce GTX series is power consumption improvement (which is still relatively nothing when you consider HD 4850 and HD 4870 use less power than HD 3850/3870 and perform better than 9800GTX and on-par with GTX 260 a lot of the time)

VGA does not impact performance at all against DVI and HDMI (and HDMI actually uses DVI standards for its video signaling), its just a different interface, "next generation of games", both are DirectX 10 compliant parts, so thats bunk, "faster HDR lighting effects", based on what? because nvidia said so? again, realworld games with realworld HDR is showing GX2 as faster

300-400GB/s of bandidth vs 125GB/s, again, realworld tests are showing the GX2 still being faster, so extra memory bandwidth isn't helping it any, same for extra "cores" (although they aren't really cores, and i'm not getting into a discussion on GPU architecture that'd go right over your head)

#7 and #8 are bogus, because it all depends on what level of optimization the code has, how well its written, how good the drivers are, etc (adn given that, oh yeah, GX2 IS SHOWING FASTER, so, yeah)

#13 is also bogus, nobody designs a game for a single GPU (not anymore) games are designed to use DirectX 9 or DirectX 10, which means 9800GX2 is just as capable of running the API as GTX 280 is, in terms of features (both are unified shaders + etc, to meet the DX10 standard)

#14 is also wrong, GTX 280 is selling at around $500-$650, the 9800GX2 is selling at around $400, so how is it lower? and saying "oh it should be lower", i dont think anyone would argue you on that, but the truth is, it isn't

#9 - "max of 4 DVI or 4 HDMI over 2 DVI", 9800GX2 can also drive 4 dual-link DVI, because it has, oh yeah, two GPUs (not that this matters, because a pair of dual-link DVI outputs can drive higher resolution than any monitor you can buy, period)

hmm, what haven't i touched on, #4 goes back to my point that just because its talking more bandwidth doesnt mean its better, Pentium 4 has higher clock speeds than anything on the market, and isn't faster, Itanium2 has higher bandwidth on its FSB than anything except Phenom X4, neither are the fastest CPU in the world (we're ignoring supercrunch vector chips like the Cray X1 here, because that stuff is just insane)

what else is there, i can't really think of anything else I haven't touched on, but yeah, with the exception of power efficiency (which is still crap because its a fat die) theres really no solid advantages, especially since it isn't offering killer performance

granted it *is* a single GPU that pushes more than anything else on the market, and the only single card solution that can compete has a pair of GPUs (and i'm sure 4870X2 will be as fast, if not faster, but its also a pair of GPUs), i'm not discounting GTX 280, i'm just saying that at the current time, 9800GX2 is honestly the best buy for performance, especially when you take price into account, because its cheaper and faster, while it uses a bit more juice (and idles a lot harder than the GT200's, again, i'll give you power efficiency) most computers running hardware at that level are pushing a 750-1000W PSU, so it isn't really an issue either way (if 9800GX2 used like 3-4x as much power as GTX280, so it was like comparing HD 2900XT to HD 3870, i'd totally agree that the power efficiency is a huge point, but the honest truth is that 9800GX2 vs GTX280 isn't a MASSIVE disparity)

OH, the antialiasing point, right, name one current game that the GTX 280 can actually run 40x AA in without lagging

ALSO
have you ever seen 32x (or higher) AA in realtime 3D? it looks about as soft as as suede, not really a good look for most videogames (commerical AA is implemented differently, like when a Rockwell machine pushes 128x AA out, its not the same, hence why it looks so nice (and takes FOREVER on any decently sized model))

SacredTbag

i have to agree with oboskivich here. m0f0, the reason these sites do these benchmarks is so that we can all see how the cards perform without having to buy them ourselves. i'm sure the gpu makers would LOVE it if the only way we could test their product was to have to buy ALL of them and then pick the one we want to keep. because that makes perfect sense. or we could just take their word on everything, because that makes sense too.

3dmark or anything from Futuremark is pretty much useless these days. it's a synthetic benchmark that shows absolutely no real world performance at all. that's why everyone does benches with popular games.

just because something has more features than something else doesn't make it the better product. look at ATI. on paper some of their products are better than their Nvidia equivalent. but when put to the test, they're lacking.

and no, i'm not siding with obob, if you look around you'll find another thread where i bitch him out pretty good i just happen to agree with him this time.

obobskivich

yeah you dont like me hatin on ur blizzard softwares

and the whole "buy everything and keep what you like" honestly reminds me of how most audiophiles shop, they'll go buy like 8 pairs of speakers, and return the ones they dont like (...yeah, so maybe i need to find new friends?)

anyways
futuremark has been worthless since 3d03 (i forget what thread i outlined why i refuse to accept the scoring) because they try so hard to push the newest technology, like 3D05 was doing HDR synth tests before any full length FPS was using real HDR (SM3.0 HDR, not the half-assed SM2.0 crap that valve runs in CS:S and HL2/LostCoast) and other stuff like that, it just kills whatever GPU exists in the era

futuremark is nice for marketing agents and those types, because it lets them justify to you, the consumer, why you should buy their new massively overpriced toy

m0f0iswin

I was only stating how a single gpu card was almost matching the 9800 GX2 stats wise I mean it's not up to me to decide what card you get I just thought if you are thinking price wise both would be decent options that's all

obobskivich

price wise it isn't matching it though, its running about $100-$150 more, for 5-10% less performance

if it cost $400 (like top end graphics cards used to, before they got INSAAAANE (like GeForce 4 Ti and GeForce FX (the original FX)) it'd be totally worth it because the 5-10% performance hit would be fine vs a $400-$450 dual GPU card that uses more power, so you'd take the performance hit in stride and be happy for saving power, but when its more expensive, slower, and price gouging has begun, whats the point...

::edit
AND
if that was your point, starting a post with "dude stop being such a fag" is NOT the appropriate way to make it, wonder why your reputation is a solid red line in your userCP?

m0f0iswin

I don't get why it's costing 100-150 more to buy it for you , here in canada the gtx 280 and the 9800 GX2 are nearly identical maybe a 10-20 dollars difference that's it , I'm not sure if that has something to do with marketing but I find in canada everything is priced about the same I mean I can pick up a 9800 gx2 for 250 and a GTX 280 for 255 so I mean maybe it's just where I live or something but cards arn't priced at 400-450 here 400-450 in canadian over us dollars is a **** of alot more expensive to buy in canadian and I haven't I don't think ever paid that much for a video card as it is all priced very well at the main computer store I go to

SacredTbag

and you don't like me hatin on your id softwares all fun and games though.



god i wish i could shop like that.

agreed.



i'm kinda liking this m0f0 guy. i've missed our keyben character type adds some flavor back to the forum.

m0f0iswin

Odd to clear things up sir , I'm not fighting with you I'm merely discussing with you , I feel as if we can make an enlightened decision to help people , talking about factors and comparison is a worthwhile and beneficial touch we can add to the forums , I have no disrespect for you , If I get to carried away it's only because I'm trying to help the user who made this thread make a decision on his purchase :)

SacredTbag

lol, THAT'S an enlightened discussion!

i'm sorry, but that had me ROLLING. rick roll style O.o

m0f0iswin

Ya there's some good benchmarks of The NViDiA 9800 GX2 over the GTX 280 check it out..

http://youtube.com/watch?v=eBGIQ7ZuuiU