GTX 275+9600GT or Radeon 4830 Crossfire

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LAiN_OfTheWired

Gawd
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Nov 6, 2008
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See my sig for my current system setup... basically an ASUS M4A79T Deluxe platform, 720BE, and 9800GTX+. My current monitor is 19" 1440x900, but that may be changing this summer since I've recently gone TV-less so I'm now contemplating a 26" or 30" monitor.

So my question is, should I pull the trigger on a new GTX 275 and sell my 9800GTX+ on craigslist to add a 9600GT for dedicated physx, or should I just ditch Nvidia altogether and get 2 Radeon 4850s and crossfire them? (I'm not biased toward either company, I moved from a 3870x2 to a 9800GTX+ for energy savings but I got a new job so...)

Most of my games do benefit (however little) from physx (Gears of War PC, Mirror's Edge... thats pretty much all I play and I dont play very often since I dont have time). I planned on maybe picking up Mass Effect, and possibly Fallout 3 (not a physx title, but it is built on Gamebryo which has physx integrated so you would think it would make a difference?). Overall, though, I believe 2x4850 would be the GPU solution with more raw power...

Opinions?
 
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neither. if your looking a 4mp screen (30") then I would keep crossfire as the option for the high end. if your going to a 2.3mp screen in that case a single 4870 1gb would be fine with the option to crossfire latter. the only issue with the nvidia cards is that it kills your upgrade path,

really outside of the demos I have yet to make use of phsyx
 
LAiN_OfTheWired said:
Most of my games do benefit (however little) from physx (Gears of War PC, Mirror's Edge... thats pretty much all I play and I dont play very often since I dont have time). I planned on maybe picking up Mass Effect, and possibly Fallout 3 (not a physx title, but it is built on Gamebryo which has physx integrated so you would think it would make a difference?). Overall, though, I believe 2x4830 would be the GPU solution with more raw power...
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Only games specifically designed for GPU PhysX will benefit from having a physics card. The only game you listed which has hardware PhysX support is Mirror's Edge.

As for what you should go with, it depends heavily on the resolution you'll be using. The 4830s will choke at higher resolutions due to their small memory capacity, but at lower resolutions they'll do better because of their raw power.

I suggest you also take a look at some alternative options. You should see the prices of 4870s hovering around the $150 mark for the 512MB models and a bit more for the 1GB models, so a pair of those in Crossfire might also be a good route if you can afford it. Again, whether or not the 512MB models will be good enough depends on the resolution you'll be running. Since you're looking at fairly large monitors though, I assume you'll be going to either a 1920x1200 or 2560x1600, so a pair of 1GB 4870s would be a better option.
 
GTX 275 is a lot of card for the money, since the $100 more 285 is only barely faster, and you can move to SLI down the road without breaking the bank (probably with a pricedrop and rebates by then).

That's the route I took anyway...
 
Logan321 said:
GTX 275 is a lot of card for the money, since the $100 more 285 is only barely faster, and you can move to SLI down the road without breaking the bank (probably with a pricedrop and rebates by then).
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I don't have an SLI motherboard, so that's definitely out of the question. The 275 IS a lot of card for the money, though, and since I'm not a retardedly serious gamer I don't think I'd be going SLI with 2 of them anyway. Given an SLI AM3/DDR3 mobo (which dont exist yet I dont think), I would just SLI 2 9800GTX+ since that would be more than enough horsepower.
 
HD4890 WIN

thx for playing.. =)


Seriously though, it should give you a nice upgrade path with your current gear, future 4890 or maybe a 4890x2 if/when they make it.
 
unless you plan to get SLI now or with in a month after you buy the first card don't bother, because you'll never do it other wise and something newer will come out that will be faster.

If want SLI, get it from the start or don't do it at all, other wise get the fastest single card you can afford. There is no reason to buy the card tailored to your monitor res because games will always get more hungry to GPUs and as you said, you might get a bigger monitor that does a higher res. Even on so called lower resolutions, the faster card is going to give you a better time over all and will last you longer.

And you can never have enough horse power....
 
LAiN_OfTheWired said:
The 4890 costs more than the GTX 275 and performs worse. I fail to see the logic in getting one.
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From what i've read, the performance is about equal, and the gtx 275 isn't going to be available in retail for another week anyways.

Pricing will likely end up being equal, or the ati slighly cheaper.
 
kioras said:
From what i've read, the performance is about equal, and the gtx 275 isn't going to be available in retail for another week anyways.

Pricing will likely end up being equal, or the ati slighly cheaper.
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They are currently at the same price point, $249 and available for sale now, near me.
 
I would naturally have been all over the 4890 jsut to root for "the lil guy" but honestly... I'd rather pay the same and get more.

The GTX 275 I can get for $238 before shipping from CompUSA (5% cashback for Bank of America customers). no matter what, even with that 5% cashback I couldn't get a 4890 for that price. Thats sorta why I asked about a crossfire setup instead of a single card in relation to ATI. Shipping isn't unreasonably priced for me from CompUSA, either.

Likewise, I can get 2 4830s (possibly 2 4850s if I do newegg open box cards) for roughly the same amount. At that point, it really comes down to a few things that need to be considered:

Games I might pick up that are physx enabled
Price vs performance
Energy use
What will crank out more for F@H
What will look prettier in my case

I'm HEAVILY considering the MSI GTX 275 Frozr or 2x HIS IceQ4 Radeon 4830. I would be willing to go with a single 4870 if I could find an awesome open box deal on newegg for an ASUS DK one, with the intention of buying another one later (ASUS EPU FTW)... there really is a lot of choices for $250 these days.
 
LAiN_OfTheWired said:
The GTX 275 I can get for $238 before shipping from CompUSA (5% cashback for Bank of America customers). no matter what, even with that 5% cashback I couldn't get a 4890 for that price.
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The 4890 costs $250, or $230 after rebate.
 
lathode said:
The 4890 costs $250, or $230 after rebate.
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Ok, the price is *technically* beaten, but cash back is instant, and who knows when I'm gonna see the rebate check. I tend to avoid MIR like the plague and for good reason (3 bad experiences in a row, one with my new phone, one with my wireless n router, and one with a videocard for my WIP HTPC)
 
hmm... idk if you want a 512mb 4870 or not, but I do have a BNIB asus dk version in the FS/FT section.
 
Bigbacon said:
unless you plan to get SLI now or with in a month after you buy the first card don't bother, because you'll never do it other wise and something newer will come out that will be faster.

If want SLI, get it from the start or don't do it at all, other wise get the fastest single card you can afford. There is no reason to buy the card tailored to your monitor res because games will always get more hungry to GPUs and as you said, you might get a bigger monitor that does a higher res. Even on so called lower resolutions, the faster card is going to give you a better time over all and will last you longer.

And you can never have enough horse power....
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++ bingo! SLI only ig a single card cant get the performance for less which most times it can, and only after a few months.
 
Go with the single most powerful card you can get, I have a xfired setup of 4850s and and its very nice, however it leaves you with very few expanision options as you have to give the cards room to breath making adding pci/e nearly impossible, at least on a Asus P5Q Pro. Just some food for thought.
 
buy the gtx 275, but either keep your 9800gtx+ for physics, or just sell and dont buy another card.

in games that dont support crossfire, your current card will be as fast as 4850 crossfire almost.
 
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LAiN_OfTheWired said:
The 4890 costs more than the GTX 275 and performs worse. I fail to see the logic in getting one.
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:confused: Newegg has the 4890 for $230 after MIR and the 275 for $260. If you look at anandtech's review and average all the numbers from the different games, you will see that the 4890 has a higher average fps in those games combined in both 1680 and 1920, and then the average is within 1fps of the 275 at 2560. Maybe you don't play any of those games but taking the average of such a wide variety will definetly show a trend for other games as well.
 
CamaroZ28 said:
:confused: Newegg has the 4890 for $230 after MIR and the 275 for $260. If you look at anandtech's review and average all the numbers from the different games, you will see that the 4890 has a higher average fps in those games combined in both 1680 and 1920, and then the average is within 1fps of the 275 at 2560. Maybe you don't play any of those games but taking the average of such a wide variety will definetly show a trend for other games as well.
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While doing research for myself on the cards, including the [H] 4890 review, it seemed that Anandtech's reviews were... wonky... for instance, if one card is better than the other at lower res and the other is better in the higher res, you should be able to pick it up within a few different benchmarks. Anandtech's goes back and forth with which card is better at which resolution, sometimes multiple times per game, and sometimes the differences are pretty big (look at the CoD WaW bit). Normally I trust them, but it seems a little odd.

Also, I don't do MIR (3 bad experiences in a row), and I get instant 5% cashback on the GTX 275. If I were going for a single ATI card, I'd be looking at an ASUS 4870 DK.

Another note to whoever mentioned keeping the 9800GTX+ for physx... yeah, this card crashes with physx. Can't run the physics test in 3DMark Vantage, can't run the physx screensaver... The card is decently fast, has a 1GB framebuffer, but in my opinion... not doing one of the features Nvidia touts around AND Gigabyte having shite customer service makes the card not worthwhile. I'd rather trade it for a non-Gigabyte 9800GT or sell it.
 
kioras said:
From what i've read, the performance is about equal, and the gtx 275 isn't going to be available in retail for another week anyways.

Pricing will likely end up being equal, or the ati slighly cheaper.
Click to expand...

its been in stock on newegg for the past few days.

i would get the gtx275.
 
LAiN_OfTheWired said:
While doing research for myself on the cards, including the [H] 4890 review, it seemed that Anandtech's reviews were... wonky... for instance, if one card is better than the other at lower res and the other is better in the higher res, you should be able to pick it up within a few different benchmarks. Anandtech's goes back and forth with which card is better at which resolution, sometimes multiple times per game, and sometimes the differences are pretty big (look at the CoD WaW bit). Normally I trust them, but it seems a little odd.
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I'm not quite sure I agree with you about it Anandtech's going back and forth with which is better at a given resolution. It definetly looks like that at 2560x1600, but if you look at this page you can clearly see that the 4890 is ahead in both 1680x1050 and 1920x1200 in every single benchmark except Age of Conan. The reason for the better performer switching a lot at 2560x1600 is because some games are going to prefer the wider memory bus of the GTX 275 or some games are going to prefer the higher bandwidth of GDDR5 memory in the 4890. Their review makes a lot of sense when you think about the hardware behind each card.

LAiN_OfTheWired said:
Also, I don't do MIR (3 bad experiences in a row), and I get instant 5% cashback on the GTX 275.
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That is understandable, with that 5% cashback that technically puts the GTX 275 at 3 dollars cheaper then a 4890 without MIR. In that case I would say it is worth it if you are getting the 30inch monitor you mentioned initially. However, I still feel that even $3 more for the 4890 is worth the extra performance if you are playing on anything less then 2560x1600 resolution.
 
Eh, to each their own, but the CoD benchmark instantly caught my eye as there may be something wrong with that. Like I said, it wasn't JUST the flip-flopping faster cards, its was doing that and showing pretty large differences at the same time. Besides, I don't trust just one or two sites, I take review results from at least 5, if not more (usually there are 6-8 that can be viewed as decently reputable yet slightly biased).

What it really boils down to is I'm totally un-interested in the 4890. I have decided I'm not overclocking, so its OC headroom doesn't phase me. It isn't offered with a better cooling solution than the same boring exhaust solution, which I don't care for since it will be exhausting hot air onto my sub. I have 2 74CFM thermaltake case fans exhausting for the videocard out of the side of the case, so something like the ASUS Dark Knight or MSI Frozr is far more ideal (the side exhausts toward the wall, away from my expensive Cerwin Vega sub). And MIR is still a deal-breaker. I'm actually willing to pay the full $250 for an MSI Frozr GTX 275 just because of the cooling solution. I was actually just contemplating getting the GTX 260 OCv3 (same cooler design) and waiting out the DX11 cards. I was also looking at the ASUS MATRIX 4870, its a pretty spiffy card, plus it would work well since I can add it to my ASUS EPU profile.

Like I said, there are A LOT of options in the $250 bracket and lower. I'm really weighing the feedback, but the 4890 is really an enthusiast card with enthusiast features that I won't utilize. I am honestly leaning more toward Nvidia right now because I just got Badaboom bought for me for my birthday (last month). I mean, I haven't used it, and probably won't more than a couple times, but it is something I should probably consider.
 
LAiN_OfTheWired said:
Eh, to each their own, but the CoD benchmark instantly caught my eye as there may be something wrong with that. Like I said, it wasn't JUST the flip-flopping faster cards, its was doing that and showing pretty large differences at the same time. Besides, I don't trust just one or two sites, I take review results from at least 5, if not more (usually there are 6-8 that can be viewed as decently reputable yet slightly biased
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The thing is that the flip flopping and showing large differences is absolutely normal. If you look at Race Driver Grid, you will find that it favors ATi hardware like crazy to the point that my Radeon 4850 gets better fps then a GTX 280 @ 1680x1050. Yet try the same comparison on Crysis and you will see that the GTX 280 gets much better fps because it runs better on nvidia hardware.

LAiN_OfTheWired said:
It isn't offered with a better cooling solution than the same boring exhaust solution, which I don't care for since it will be exhausting hot air onto my sub. I have 2 74CFM thermaltake case fans exhausting for the videocard out of the side of the case, so something like the ASUS Dark Knight or MSI Frozr is far more ideal (the side exhausts toward the wall, away from my expensive Cerwin Vega sub). And MIR is still a deal-breaker. I'm actually willing to pay the full $250 for an MSI Frozr GTX 275 just because of the cooling solution.
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I find these reasons a little silly because it is very easy to find multiple typs of cooling solutions for nearly every card. Also from what I can tell isn't avalible anywhere and looking on newegg shows that all 4890's and 275's are offered with the same rear exhaust refrence cooler. Not only is this something that easily be changed with a aftermarket cooler but after the market is better saturated there will be plenty of models that come with such a cooler on either card.

LAiN_OfTheWired said:
Like I said, there are A LOT of options in the $250 bracket and lower. I'm really weighing the feedback, but the 4890 is really an enthusiast card with enthusiast features that I won't utilize. I am honestly leaning more toward Nvidia right now because I just got Badaboom bought for me for my birthday (last month). I mean, I haven't used it, and probably won't more than a couple times, but it is something I should probably consider.
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I agree the 4890 is an enthusiast card, but that would apply to the 275 as well since their perfromance is almost identical. Now if you have Badaboom, then that is a very excellent reason for wanting to go Nvidia and I completely understand that. Also Asus makes a 4890 so you can use that with your EPU profile since you mentioned that being something you were interested in.
 
Yeah, EPU is something I'm interested in for sure, but I dont think it or badaboom will be an absolute dealbreaker.

If I got a GTX275, it would be the MSI flavor with the aftermarket cooling. I really don't want to heat up that Cerwin Vega if I can avoid it. It sounds absolutely phenomenal.

I really like the ASUS DK and Matrix cards, but they've done little in the Nvidia market with those compared to the ATI cards, a little disappointing. I don't find it in me to buy an aftermarket cooler, though, since 1) that adds to the cost 2) everybody said the Zalman coolers were amazing and I have been sorely let down by mine (my friend Luke has, too). SO the only REAL choices in GPU coolers are $40+ basically throwing out anything over $200 card-wise (limiting me to GTX 260/Radeon 4870/lower).

I'm definitely being picky about the card, yeah, but if you're not then you will sometimes wind up unhappy. I'd rather be completely confident I'm off to purchase the card that's gonna work best. I'm really trying to wait it out to see what non-reference things may come of both cards, as well as what deals may come in the near future. I almost pulled the trigger on that Sapphire 4890 from ewiz the other day, what was it, like $215 after rebate or something like that? BUT I can only benefit from waiting to see what they'll entice people with, right? I mean, prices usually only go down over time.
 
LAiN_OfTheWired said:
Yeah, EPU is something I'm interested in for sure, but I dont think it or badaboom will be an absolute dealbreaker.

If I got a GTX275, it would be the MSI flavor with the aftermarket cooling. I really don't want to heat up that Cerwin Vega if I can avoid it. It sounds absolutely phenomenal.

I really like the ASUS DK and Matrix cards, but they've done little in the Nvidia market with those compared to the ATI cards, a little disappointing. I don't find it in me to buy an aftermarket cooler, though, since 1) that adds to the cost 2) everybody said the Zalman coolers were amazing and I have been sorely let down by mine (my friend Luke has, too). SO the only REAL choices in GPU coolers are $40+ basically throwing out anything over $200 card-wise (limiting me to GTX 260/Radeon 4870/lower).

I'm definitely being picky about the card, yeah, but if you're not then you will sometimes wind up unhappy. I'd rather be completely confident I'm off to purchase the card that's gonna work best. I'm really trying to wait it out to see what non-reference things may come of both cards, as well as what deals may come in the near future. I almost pulled the trigger on that Sapphire 4890 from ewiz the other day, what was it, like $215 after rebate or something like that? BUT I can only benefit from waiting to see what they'll entice people with, right? I mean, prices usually only go down over time.
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Couldn't agree any more, I'm always the type who likes to wait around a little to take advantage of the best deals avalible. Good luck with your purchase.
 
Well, I would say bite the bullet and get you a GTX 285. I moved from crossfire 4870's to a single GTX 285, and more games ran better(smoother on the GTX 285), some faster, but without that stupid CCC. I now have GTX 285's in SLI on a 24" dell. No game I have now,(and I have alot), can drag these down. I am on an I7 rig, so I could run either on my EVGA X58. Or if you are seriously thinking about sli on a no nvidia board, get a GTX 295. If you want this last a little while, price shouldnt matter anymore, as all cards, ATI or Nvidia are pretty darned low now. I am glad I ditched my buggy 4870's, wife and son each have one now, and will not go back to ATI until they can improve a few minor things. Another note. Don't let the 3DMARK06 and Vantage scores make your decision, as they are not a deciding factor for gaming. My 4870's did score a little better in 3dmark06, but vantage my GTX 285 win. 06 being an ATI favorable benchmark. Vanateg leaning towrads NVidia.If you plan on goin i7 later on down the rd, then pick whichever. My opinion is NVidia at this time. I had dang near all of em since the ATI Rage 3Dpro,voodo3000,nvidia Ti4400 , etc, etc. Ati has not taken my heart like it did back in the 9800Pro days.
 
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