Good vidoe coar comparisons?

G

greyt_Autumn

Gawd
Joined
Oct 2, 2001
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572
Title is totally mispelled

I'm looking at a $250 or so Price point for a new build.

The 3870 and 8800GT are the front runners. I'm primarily a flight simmer- mostly FSX.

I'm looking for a good comparison of the two. Right now I run a CRT mostly at 1280x1024- up to 1200x1600, but I foresee the day when I upgrade to a LCD and run at the native res of that display, but that's either on failure of my existing display or a minimum of a year out.

I know that ATI's OpenGL is less than stellar- I cannot run Flight Gear on my X800XL due to a total texture disaster (7.12 drivers). That's certainly not a deal breaker. I'm not hugely concerned with DX 10.1 either, so It's a wash.

FS is terribly CPU limited and I can live without tons of AA/AF. I'm expecting that at this price point.

TIA
 
I've seen too many poor results from the 8800GT 256MB to recommend it, the 38xx series appear to handle 256MB memory better.
However the 512MB 8800GT rocks, as does the 3870.
OpenGL has improved massively on ATI hardware but I dont know if its enough for you.
If anyone has their own experience of the 3870 and 8800GT 512MB, I'd like to hear about it as well.

Get a 512MB card if you can posssibly afford it, especially as you are going to use over 1280 res and are looking to the future.
If I was you I'd check every review possible to see which performs better for the games/sims you play.

One advantage the 3870 has is that its a very cheap way to get dual cards running as most 2xPCI-e x8/x16 motherboards support Crossfire whereas only NVidia boards support SLI. Nvidia need a kick up the arse for doing that!!
Sadly not all games etc support Crossfire very well though but this will inevitably improve.
Because the power draw of the 3870 is really low, you wont need a huge PSU, but then again its only 5W per card less than the 8800GT so the same applies. to them too :)

My personal recommendation is the 8800GT 512MB.
 
No question about a 512 card. It's just budget- I've got a 6 month old at home. Only reason this build is happening is that I got most of the parts as gifts :)

I'm on the hook for CPU and Video at this point.
 
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