 Vamp9190Premium
join:2002-02-11
Chantilly, VA
kudos:1 | Vid Card upgrade opinion Should I upgrade now, or wait a few months?
Currently have (2) 8800 GT eVGA cards in SLI
rest of set-up is not bad - Q6600 quad core, 8GB RAM, etc.
I am thinking about a mid-range upgrade to either a Radeon 5770 or an Nvidia GTX 250/260. Not looking to spend $300+
But I have seen people complain about the Radeon Catalyst drivers and I am kinda concerned.
Games I play:
(will get BF BC2)
BF2
BF2142
COD 4
Company of Heroes OF
Crysis
etc...
Thoughts? |
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 kvn864
join:2001-12-18
Simpsonville, SC
kudos:1 | I think you can get 5850 on your budget, very good card, and there is nothing wrong with ATI drivers, don't be too concern. |
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| reply to Vamp9190
A 5770 or 260 isn't going to outperform an 8800gt sli setup.
A 5850 would be a bit faster but not enough to justify spending all that money.
Just stick with what you have. |
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1 edit | reply to Vamp9190
I would have to agree, u have 2 8800gt sli that should hold u atleast for another year. Hopefully, fermi by then will go down price wise.
By the way, when you do get battlefield bad company. Can you post your frame rates? Im curious on what you are getting with your set up - Thanks.
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Education is the best defense against the media |
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| reply to Vamp9190
One more opinion can't hurt:
I also agree and would vote to stick with your current Dual 8800Gt's. (Very nice cards  ) |
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| Yeah, probably best to hold out a bit longer if you can. Fermi should drive the prices down across the board.
Also, after you do upgrade you can keep one of the 8800 GTs around for dedicated PhysX. |
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1 edit | reply to Vamp9190
No one asked the important question of what monitor size and what resolution.
That has a huge impact on SLI usefulness in particular. |
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| reply to Vamp9190
HD5870 or bust |
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| reply to Vamp9190
Get a 5850.. |
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Vamp9190Premium
join:2002-02-11
Chantilly, VA
kudos:1 | reply to Dentist
said by Dentist:No one asked the important question of what monitor size and what resolution. That has a huge impact on SLI usefulness in particular. I run dual screens. One is a 26" at 1920 x 1200, the other is a 22" at 1680 x 1050
This is in Vista Ultimate x64
I have the desktop extended, 26" is the primary, but during gaming that is the only monitor I use, so just one screen
*Side note: When I used to enable SLI like 6 mos ago, the other monitor would go black (the 22"), now when I enable SLI it does not.
In most games I will run at 1920 x 1200, but usually some details at medium/high and AA off or maybe at 2x. If needed I drop down to 1680x1050 or 1440 x 900. |
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| reply to Vamp9190
With that size of a screen, definitely added benefit from SLI and the extra ram. I think it starts to shine after 1920 res or so. |
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| reply to Vamp9190
I just picked up a 5770 to replace a single card 8800 GTS 320. I have a mixed opinion so far--the hardware seems solid (pretty quick, but still runs cool and doesn't use a lot of power), but I am NOT impressed with the drivers. That said, I doubt a single 5770 or GTX260 (which are comparable in performance) would outperform an 8800GT SLI setup.
I intend to write a quick review soon enough...
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It's only hubris if I'm wrong. |
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Vamp9190Premium
join:2002-02-11
Chantilly, VA
kudos:1 | reply to Tempus45
said by Tempus45:I would have to agree, u have 2 8800gt sli that should hold u atleast for another year. Hopefully, fermi by then will go down price wise. By the way, when you do get battlefield bad company. Can you post your frame rates? Im curious on what you are getting with your set up - Thanks. OK, so just got the game from Amazon last night on my doorstep after work.
Installed it and immediately set up the video  and went into multiplayer (*swearing edited out*....the server list took forever to load, but I did get the pings to show up. Jumped into a VA server since it's in my area and seemed fast).
I will post screenshots if people want to see. Here are my settings and results. I used FRAPS to track my FPS (sometimes having Fraps running causes games to slow down a bit too, but not normally that much).
Settings:
Resolution: 1920x1200 (I went for the cake!)
Overall Quality: Advanced
Advanced Settings:
Level of Detail > HIGH
Texture Quality > HIGH
Shadow Quality > MEDIUM
Effects Quality > MEDIUM
Anti-Aliasing > 1X
Anisotrophic Filter > 2X
Vsync > OFF
HBAO > OFF
Results:
I was getting 65 frames per second at times, then it would drop down to 30-35 other times during firefights and heavier action.
So 30-65 FPS with (2x) 8800 GTs in SLI (on a 26" monitor) at 1920x1200 resolution. Hum....not really a consistent result. I do not like the huge swing in frame rates.
What I am going to do is to test the other lower resolutions like 1680x1050 and 1440x900 to see if I get noticable improvement, or at least less of a DROP.
I will post those results soon.
P.S. This was all without editing the settings.INI file, or doing other tweaks, so I will try doing some of that to see if it makes a difference too. |
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| reply to Vamp9190
crank AF to 16x, there's almost no performance loss with max AF with modern cards.
you're getting pretty much the same FPS as me with same CPU/amt of ram but i have HD5870 and W7 64 and i have max everything quality @ 1080p.
looks like you wouldnt benefit from anything less than 5870.
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Somnambulator - t3h 5133pw41k3r
~Choosy moms choose Jif~ |
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