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ati 3870 vs nvidia 8800

Discussion in 'Computers & Modding' started by equitypetey, Nov 29, 2007.

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  1. equitypetey

    equitypetey Well-Known Member

    i am in the next few months building a pc and i have spent the last week trying to make up my mind about gfx card i have looked at all the cards and its between the ati 3870 and nvidia 8800. i have looked at like a million benckmark tests and other tests like it and they're all different. it seems that each test done is one sided to the card that the site wants to favor. the ati looks better on paper as it has more memory and a faster gpu and its cheaper but its hard to think about with the over powering presance of nvidia. i prefer ati cards always will so i don't realy want to go to nvidia

    but here is my question to you people:

    does any of you have one of these cards if you do how does it perform when playin any of the next gen games manly
    COD4, assasins creed, crysis

    thanks
     
    equitypetey, Nov 29, 2007
    #1
  2. Loonylion

    Loonylion Administrator Staff Member

    As a system builder, I have experience of both brands, although not the exact models in question. My experience is that ATi's drivers let them down badly. They produce good cards, but under real world gaming conditions, Nvidia cards are more stable due to better drivers. If ATi improved their drivers to the standard of Nvidias, there would be very little to chose between them. In terms of Crossfire/SLi, Crossfire is vastly inferior to SLi because of design limitations, so if you want multiple graphics cards, then Nvidia is the way to go. I have contacts, so if you want more information, let me know and I'll see what I can get for you.

    Edit: Just remembered another thing to consider; a lot of modern games use a physics engine called 'Havok/Havok2', which allows intensive physics calculations to be offloaded onto the graphics processor, which is more suited to these types of calculations, and it frees up CPU cycles, making for a smoother gaming experience. The relevance of this? Havok is a Nvidia technology, systems with ATi cards have less realistic physics and they are a lot more CPU intensive, because they cannot make use of the havok engine.
     
    Loonylion, Nov 29, 2007
    #2
  3. kanwarrulz_123

    kanwarrulz_123 Well-Known Member

    I think Nvidia is better than Ati-I have Nvidia 7800...it plays Crysis superbly .....
     
    kanwarrulz_123, Nov 30, 2007
    #3
  4. equitypetey

    equitypetey Well-Known Member

    thing is i'm not just gaming i do a lot of encoding and for that i know ati is better. so realy its the balence i'm trying to get. thanks for the info you gave me it might just make me spend more for the 8800. i'm not to bothered about the cpu issuse as i'm getting the amd 6400+ and i know thats going to be able to cope with that. i'm deffinately not bothered about ether card if the 7800 can run crysis superbly, what quality/res have you got that.
     
    equitypetey, Nov 30, 2007
    #4
  5. sir spamalot

    sir spamalot Well-Known Member

    price vs performance, again. this generation is looking a little heated and i'm pretty sure ati will have the sense to release some decent drivers. just had a look at some benchmarks for the 256MB version of the 8800gt - there isn't much between it and the 512MB version with antialiasing switched off, give or take 2 FPS.

    the HD3870 should in theory have the 8800gt beat (superior hardware) but is let down by it's drivers. price wise, though, the HD3870 is priced a little above the 256MB 8800gt the potential performance would exist to make it a worthwhile purchase... if ati released decent drivers ;)

    but if you want my true opinion... don't fall for this DX10 bull until some more cards come out. take advantage of the falling prices of the 7600 or ati's alternative. you can buy one of those great dx9 cards and have your work done with it. then the decent dx10 cards will be out and you'll be laughing
     
    sir spamalot, Nov 30, 2007
    #5
  6. Loonylion

    Loonylion Administrator Staff Member

    I do video too, and you know what gave me a real speed boost? Ditching Adobe Premiere. I now use Sony Vegas, and it renders considerably faster.
     
    Loonylion, Nov 30, 2007
    #6
  7. equitypetey

    equitypetey Well-Known Member

    i'm not going to run games on vista, dx10 has no benafit at the moment with the performance drop at high settings. but that the question is isn't the 8800 and 3870 going to be faster than the 7800 in dx9 anyway i hate lag
     
    equitypetey, Nov 30, 2007
    #7
  8. sir spamalot

    sir spamalot Well-Known Member

    yes. but i think it can and should have been much faster.

    and off topic, the hd radeon 3870 beats the 8800 gt in a crossfire vs SLi shootout :eek:

    http://en.expreview.com/?p=53

    i couldn't believe it, but apparently while the sli gave around a 20 - 30% performance increase at 1280x1024 resolution, the crossfire gate up to 50%. that's impressive. if only phenom was as...

    EDIT: here's that review i was looking for

    http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/3270-his-radeon-hd3870-review-crossfire-performance-preview.html

    overclocking this card will give performances that often beats the stock 8800gt. and i wouldn't recommend overclocking the 8800gt for the sake of heat and stability issues, some manufacturers stupidly overclocked their cardsand consumers have found they've had it crash on them
     
    sir spamalot, Dec 1, 2007
    #8
  9. Loonylion

    Loonylion Administrator Staff Member

    I have an overclocked 7800GTX thats never given any issues, why would the 8800 be any different, unless it was a cheaply produced one and the manufacturers didn't know what they were doing.
     
    Loonylion, Dec 1, 2007
    #9
  10. ultra

    ultra Guest

    i agree, ati has some great cards with great speeds and some great features along with great prices. but their drivers sucks and it's confusing as hell. dx 10 as of now don't really do anything super. we need to wait until more development and new releases of dx's from microsoft before we will see something super.

    btw, if you can wait till like spring time in 2008 or maybe earlier, nvidia is planning on releasing a newer geforce card [i believe the 9000 series, but i don't know]. i don't know what sort of features it will have but hopefully it's good and gets in full use.
     
    ultra, Dec 4, 2007
    #10
  11. dzpliu

    dzpliu New Member

    i prefer nvidia :)
     
    dzpliu, Dec 23, 2007
    #11
  12. swangtal

    swangtal Member

    Seems like a thread from long time ago--but I have another question to ask:
    Does it help if you use AMD CPU with ATI gfx card? (Now that they supposedly merged and everything)
     
    swangtal, Dec 26, 2007
    #12
  13. Loonylion

    Loonylion Administrator Staff Member

    Not to my knowledge.
     
    Loonylion, Dec 26, 2007
    #13
  14. onereddog

    onereddog Member

    It makes no difference.
    XFX was hinting at it in some recent ad campaigns (for the 8800 with the 680i), but in essence there is no benefit.
     
    onereddog, Mar 2, 2008
    #14
  15. sepsep

    sepsep Well-Known Member

    i like nvidia
     
    sepsep, Mar 16, 2008
    #15
  16. Loonylion

    Loonylion Administrator Staff Member

    I am getting an 8800GTX so I will report how it performs in Crysis, and how it compares to my current set up (7800GTX SLI). Watch this space for a couple of weeks :)
     
    Loonylion, Mar 16, 2008
    #16
  17. equitypetey

    equitypetey Well-Known Member

    well we know it will own especially on your OS but how it performs on dx10 with vista is the question.
    but still let us know what it looks like in high res. should be awesome
     
    equitypetey, Mar 16, 2008
    #17
  18. Loonylion

    Loonylion Administrator Staff Member

    I was actually caught out with SLI. What I did not find out until it was too late was that Nvidia disabled Windows 2003 SLI support in drivers above 91.46 (they steadfastly denied it until their userbase presented them with incontestable evidence to the contrary; i.e screendumps of SLI working under 2003 with older drivers and not with newer ones. They have already lost a number of customers due to this, and have not yet had the sense to remove the lock) So basically I can't really do SLI until they undo that. Just one reason for upgrading. I have expressed my displeasure to Nvidia, but I will continue to stick with them because their drivers are better for gaming.

    Equitypetey I suggest you look at the Quadra/FireGL cards if you can afford them, A friend of mine upgraded from a FireGL 3200 to a Geforce 7800GTX, and he said he got much better video transcoding performance from the FireGL.
     
    Loonylion, Mar 16, 2008
    #18
  19. sir spamalot

    sir spamalot Well-Known Member

    that's the thing that appears to be hurting ati at the moment. they're focusing on the mainstream - end of. the hd3870 is their highest performing cars (the X2 doesn't really count), and it's aimed squarely at the "performance junkies with little cash students" like me *grumblestilltoodamnexpensive*

    while nvidia still own the very high end market. i don't mind, because only drug enfused numbskulls with tons of cash and live next to a nuclear powerstation would even consider tri-sli with a pair of watercooled overclocked geforce 8800 ultras. i know - my neighbour has.

    ati and amd have changed their tactics recently, i miss the crazily mad athlons of yester year
     
    sir spamalot, Mar 16, 2008
    #19
  20. Loonylion

    Loonylion Administrator Staff Member

    I used to use ATI, but to be honest I got so fed up with the 'Your display adaptor/driver has crashed, VPU Recover has reloaded the driver' message that I switched to Nvidia. Nvidias drivers don't have a crash recovery mechanism, but maybe that's because they don't need one. ATI seem to take VPU Recover for granted, their attitude seems to be 'we have crash recovery. we don't need to work on preventing the crashes' which is just the wrong attitude. getting bounced out of a game every 15-20 minutes because the display driver has crashed is just damn annoying, especially when its not a particularly graphical game such as GTAIII.
     
    Loonylion, Mar 16, 2008
    #20
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