Nvidia Hints at coming GTX280 GX2

ya dude idk i can't see 3 GTX 280's beating xfired 4870 x2 cards. i just don't see it. something is off in that review.

not bagging on the GTX 280 here. its a freakin fast card. but it doesn't win in every game, no way.

as for this GT200 x2 card. i'm sorry, not happening. like what someone said above. 2 of these cores would be a TDP of 350 WATTS! Thats enourmously hot, and a dual slot cooler will choke on that.
 
AmongTheChosenX said:
ya dude idk i can't see 3 GTX 280's beating xfired 4870 x2 cards. i just don't see it. something is off in that review.

not bagging on the GTX 280 here. its a freakin fast card. but it doesn't win in every game, no way.

as for this GT200 x2 card. i'm sorry, not happening. like what someone said above. 2 of these cores would be a TDP of 350 WATTS! Thats enourmously hot, and a dual slot cooler will choke on that.
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But what if they made the cooler take up... DUN DUN DUUUUNNNNN! 3 slots!

*crowd gasps in shock*
 
Riftsaw said:
But what if they made the cooler take up... DUN DUN DUUUUNNNNN! 3 slots!

*crowd gasps in shock*
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then they couldn't scam people with tri SLI...

unless they made everyone buy the brand spanking new prototype "795i" motherboards with extra space in between the PCI express slots and extra extra long SLi bridges, all so we could have 3 slot coolers :p :p :p

i think we'd have to make a new form factor for that, XATX (the first X meaning xtra as in extra large :p)
 
3 slot would be utterly stupid... why not just have an external cooling box (not neccesarily WC) that just plugs into the back of the card and is jsut a huge copper heatsink that sits outside the case, pointless for dual or tri sli though...
 
soundguy said:
3 slot would be utterly stupid... why not just have an external cooling box (not neccesarily WC) that just plugs into the back of the card and is jsut a huge copper heatsink that sits outside the case, pointless for dual or tri sli though...
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haha i dont even see how that would even cool the card! it'd have to be water! the whole thing would cost like $900-$1000!!!!! :O
 
AmongTheChosenX said:
ya dude idk i can't see 3 GTX 280's beating xfired 4870 x2 cards. i just don't see it. something is off in that review.

not bagging on the GTX 280 here. its a freakin fast card. but it doesn't win in every game, no way.

as for this GT200 x2 card. i'm sorry, not happening. like what someone said above. 2 of these cores would be a TDP of 350 WATTS! Thats enourmously hot, and a dual slot cooler will choke on that.
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You mean like the 4870x2 cooler chokes on it's 350w TDP? Two GTX280 cores would be closer to 500w TDP.
 
vick1000 said:
You mean like the 4870x2 cooler chokes on it's 350w TDP? Two GTX280 cores would be closer to 500w TDP.
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I can't see NV trying an X2 card before the 55nm shrink. The Tdp of the GTX280b is unknown (to me, anyways) but it may be on par with the 350 range for an X2, especially if clocked with X2 intent.
 
DeadSkull said:
Is that site credible? Their numbers in other reviews seem to be rather off.
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To be quite honest I don't know. They're numbers do look way off to me but they are running 3-Way SLI on an Intel chipset (which NVIDIA said couldn't be done) and they are using a driver version that I can't find out on the web. So there is a possibility they are accurate, but there is also the possibility that they aren't.
 
AmongTheChosenX said:
ya dude idk i can't see 3 GTX 280's beating xfired 4870 x2 cards. i just don't see it. something is off in that review.

not bagging on the GTX 280 here. its a freakin fast card. but it doesn't win in every game, no way.

as for this GT200 x2 card. i'm sorry, not happening. like what someone said above. 2 of these cores would be a TDP of 350 WATTS! Thats enourmously hot, and a dual slot cooler will choke on that.
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I think the Geforce GTX 280 in 3-Way SLI absolutely could beat dual 4870 X2's in CrossfireX. The problem is that with current drivers the scaling is screwed. Driver Heaven used drivers I can't find. So I'm not sure what's going on there. You are lucky to get 40% to 60% or so with the second card and the third card gives 10% or nothing much of the time. We know Call of Duty 4 scaled well with 3-Way SLI on 8800GTX's and 9800GTX's so it isn't impossible. It's just that up to this point we haven't seen SLI scaling like that in 99% of the titles out there.

Then again if it all comes down to drivers being the problem with the scaling it is possible ATI could counter. There are afterall 4 GPUs in the 4870 X2 CrossfireX configuration.
 
Dan_D said:
I don't see a 9800GX2 being very feasable at present. The power requirements and thermal evelope even at 55nm might just be too much. Additionally I hadn't really given this much thought as there isn't much information available about 3-Way SLI and Geforce GTX 280's but it would seem that (at least according to Driver Heaven) that3-Way SLI'ed Geforce GTX 280's beats out 2 4870 X2's in CrossfireX. In that article the Geforce GTX 280 3-Way SLI configuration beats out the 4870 X2 CrossfireX setup every time at 2560x1600. If that's true then it would seem that NVIDIA is still really on top in terms of absolute performance. You can use 3 Geforce GTX 280's together but you can only use 2 4870 X2's together in CrossfireX since CrossfireX maxes out with 4 GPUs.

That paints a bit different picture of the top end. So NVIDIA may not feel the need to release a GX2 style card at present. I'm not sure how accurate these results are. All the other 3-Way Geforce GTX 280 results I've seen don't show SLI scaling in such a positive light especially when more than 2 GPUs are present. Though the driver used in this review is newer than what all the other sites have used. These results might be a result of the tests being performed on the Skulltrail setup which uses an Intel chipset (server chipset at that) and it may also be a result of new driver optimizations that improve 3-Way SLI scaling. If that's true the 179.83 is a massive leap forward in terms of improving that scaling. Also you can argue that from a bang for your buck perspective that Geforce GTX 280's in 3-Way SLI is insane but these types of setups are a dog and pony show anyway. The average gamer won't have SLI'ed Geforce GTX 280's or 4870 X2's in CrossfireX either. Even with those points aside one can always argue that for the regular gaming masses that can't afford a D5400XS motherboard and two LGA771 CPUs that going with the required NVIDIA 680i SLI/780i SLI or 790i Ultra SLI chipset based boards isn't worth the gains over a CrossfireX setup. Sticking with Intel chipsets is certainly worth a reduction in performance given the fact that 4870 X2's in CrossfireX are massively powerful anyway.

This is also an interesting article as NVIDIA told us that the Intel D5400XS motherboard was incapable of supporting 3-Way SLI because it used the nForce 100 MCP's and not the nForce 200 MCP's. The latter of which was a physical requirement for 3-Way SLI to work.
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This is actually very good information, sli'd GTX280's would stomp all over a single X2, but with 3 beating CrossfireX is indeed nominal, what I would like to know (if this information is indeed true) how well CrossfireX is supported in drivers right now, it seems you get very small increases in performance on games in CFX mode.
 
I haven't seen very much in the way of information concerning the performance of the Geforce GTX 280 in 3-Way SLI. Often when I've seen a review concerning 3-Way SLI performance they were testing at 1920x1200 or a lower resolution which doesn't help things. Plus they'll use canned benchmarks which aren't totally useless but aren't as helpful as I'd like. Driver Heaven claims to do real world testing as well, but I don't read enough of their articles to know if they are accurate about this or not.

I want to find the 179.83 driver they used, but so far I've been unable to do so. If I could find that I'd be able to determine if SLI scaling was fixed even with regular SLI.
 
vengence said:
Once you break 100fps then it simply doesn't matter anymore. Since there are really only 2 games that are demanding on this hardware, we will have to wait. And crysis isn't useless as there are a number of games under development using the Crytec engine. The other is AoC. Probably not going to see that many games on the same engine as that.


Link please, because I don't recall the devs ever saying it was poorly optimised




Debut price on the GTX 280 is a mute point. Street price vs street price. Last I checked the street price on a 280 is near 400 and the street price on the x2 is 550. Last time I checked, 550$ would break most peoples banks.



30% isn't domination. It's 30%.



The card excels at insane shader power, which isn't the same thing as AA. You only get "free AA" until your shader power gets tapped.




4870x2 isn't just 2 GPUs slapped onto a card, there is a added bus called a "sideport" which allows the GPUs to talk directly to each other. This is the reason the 4870x2 is so good.




There are serious problems preventing them from doing such a thing. Mostly the power/thermal envelope. Read the above posts for more info on that.
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Doesn't matter what kind of FPS its getting, its definetly not getting 100fs at 25x16 though. What other games are using the CryEng other then the new crysis game? haven't heard of any.

Don't have the link anymore, it was the article on gamespot where they explained there would be no further support given to it (and there was an apology in there as well).

Debuted price means alot here, ATI debuted the single fastest card on the market and still had it under then what Nvidia tried to shove up our nose, in any case $550 is alot but seeing how quick these things sold out all over the place (even with those going for CrossfireX) it seems they didn't make enough to support those that weren't bothered by the big pricetag (in my opinion its cheap as hell).

30% is pretty damn dominant in my mind, even if it gets 30% more with more AA abilty.

Don't think I mentioned the "free AA" but that is something also we could bring up with current games that the ATI definetly gives us, it doesn't matter how the AA performance was gained if there is no performance lost.

Sideport has been reportedly disabled in drivers with the next official driver supporting it next round, doubt there is any bottle neck with the onboard PCI-e chip but this should help reduce any lag related bugs to onboard Crossfire support. Either way its still pretty much 2 gpu's on the same card with out any butchering done to the core and with increased memory.

And I already mentioned why they can't place two 260's or two 280's on the board, I ment the 260GPU, that seems to be the best bet right now for them to achieve their goal (if they need to) Dan_D definetly posted something interesting about Tri SLI beating out CrossfireX, but it remains to be seen how well CFX is supported in drivers and if they can get better support out for this or not.
 
Trimlock said:
Doesn't matter what kind of FPS its getting, its definetly not getting 100fs at 25x16 though. What other games are using the CryEng other then the new crysis game? haven't heard of any.

Don't have the link anymore, it was the article on gamespot where they explained there would be no further support given to it (and there was an apology in there as well).

Debuted price means alot here, ATI debuted the single fastest card on the market and still had it under then what Nvidia tried to shove up our nose, in any case $550 is alot but seeing how quick these things sold out all over the place (even with those going for CrossfireX) it seems they didn't make enough to support those that weren't bothered by the big pricetag (in my opinion its cheap as hell).

30% is pretty damn dominant in my mind, even if it gets 30% more with more AA abilty.

Don't think I mentioned the "free AA" but that is something also we could bring up with current games that the ATI definetly gives us, it doesn't matter how the AA performance was gained if there is no performance lost.

Sideport has been reportedly disabled in drivers with the next official driver supporting it next round, doubt there is any bottle neck with the onboard PCI-e chip but this should help reduce any lag related bugs to onboard Crossfire support. Either way its still pretty much 2 gpu's on the same card with out any butchering done to the core and with increased memory.

And I already mentioned why they can't place two 260's or two 280's on the board, I ment the 260GPU, that seems to be the best bet right now for them to achieve their goal (if they need to) Dan_D definetly posted something interesting about Tri SLI beating out CrossfireX, but it remains to be seen how well CFX is supported in drivers and if they can get better support out for this or not.
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According to wiki the following are using or will use Cry Engine 2
Crysis - Crytek, Finished, Release November 16, 2007 in Europe and the U.S. (2007).
Crysis Warhead, the expansion to Crysis, will use an upgraded version of the engine.
Game based on new intellectual property- Crytek, in development (TBA).
New, possibly non-fps game- Crytek, in development (TBA).
Entropia Universe - signed a license agreement on July 25, 2007. Expected to be ready late-2008.[4]
Merchants of Brooklyn[5] - Paleo Entertainment, in development (TBA).
The Day by Reloaded Studios[6]
Blue Mars - Avatar Reality, inc., in development (TBA).
Forged by Chaos - Panzar Studio, in development (TBA).
Vigilance (Military Training Game) - The Harrington Group, Inc. (Not for public release).[7]
New, MMORPG - XMLGames, in development (TBA).[8]
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I think I remember the article your talking about, where they said they were dropping support. However, I don't recall them saying it was poorly optimized in that game.

With the current pricing structure with a 4870x2 being 550, that puts the price/preformance price of a 280 at 385$. Last I checked that was pretty close the street price of a 280. Everyone who buys these cards on release day know they are going to get burned on price within a month, however this time it was more than most. But some companies offered rebates after the fact, so I don't really see the launch price as a valid point with the rebates and the current price.

You are right on the sideport being disabled. I had a mental fart there.

Tri-SLI GTX 280s is beating out Dual 4870x2s, and the preformance of both is insane. If only I could find a winning lotto ticket on the ground!

Crossfire drivers and support.... This is the reason I went with Nvidia on my build. Fair or not, right or not, Nvidia is getting the latest games optimized to thier hardware. While ATI is doing well, AMD is really dragging it down, so I think this trend will continue.
 
I wonder if Driver Heaven made a typo and the drivers they used were the 177.83's and not 179.83's. The latter version I can find no other real references to.
 
Dan_D said:
I wonder if Driver Heaven made a typo and the drivers they used were the 177.83's and not 179.83's. The latter version I can find no other real references to.
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I think the 179.89’s are real, web searches reveal that some people are already using them but like you I can’t find them. At any rate, I don’t think it’s the drivers as much as those 4.4GHz CPUs that are producing the amazing results. Just from my observation, 3x SLI scales very well but it’s very CPU bound at 1920x1200. I can however smoothly run games like CoD4 and the GRID with all in games settings fully maxed out and 16xAA and 16xAF and still have great performance. That just isn’t possible with 2x SLI with these games.

These results seem possible to me. TechReport’s review of the 4870x2 was using a stock clocked QX9650 which even at 2650x1600 I bet is hitting some CPU limits with 3x SLI and 4870x2 CF. Plus 4870x2 doesn’t seem to scale all that well in the reviews I’ve seen thus far. AMD seems to have concentrated on 4870x2 scaling first and that seems to work very well.

Also Dan, what 30” monitor do you use? Do you have any problems scaling down to 1920x1200? I’m in the market and I know how much you dig your 30” monitor. Thanks!
 
GTX280bX2 = hair drier.

Sorry I am not seeing this. Nor am I seeing a reason to go crossfire X or triSLI, I have seen a lot of benches that they just don't add much or for SLI actually hurt your performance. As no one every comes up with the same results you have to take the accumulative results. you can always pick single results (hey phenoms will beat core two quads in games depending on the benches) but at the end of the day the practical results are what matters. and that means that the 4870X2 is (at the moment, and maybe not by much) is faster then the Nvidia offerings.

If Nvidia really wants to compete with the 4870X2 they are going to have to drop the propitiatory SLI requirement. If SLI worked on intel chip set, maybe even ATI chip sets I think you would see a different reaction. that was an interesting result on the skull trail board. but even for H people that is just a waste of money.
 
heatlesssun said:
I think the 179.89’s are real, web searches reveal that some people are already using them but like you I can’t find them. At any rate, I don’t think it’s the drivers as much as those 4.4GHz CPUs that are producing the amazing results. Just from my observation, 3x SLI scales very well but it’s very CPU bound at 1920x1200. I can however smoothly run games like CoD4 and the GRID with all in games settings fully maxed out and 16xAA and 16xAF and still have great performance. That just isn’t possible with 2x SLI with these games.!
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Yeah I've uncovered forum threads in other languages mainly where they claim to be using those drivers. I also didn't catch that they had overclocked their CPUs to 4.4GHz. I figured 4.0GHz for some reason. (Probably because that's what most of the review sites hit on air cooling.) It is possible that we are seeing large CPU limitations with SLI and Crossfire configurations. I noticed that in the article the SLI setup didn't scale as well at 1920x1200 but at 2560x1600 it often lead the Crossfire setup by a large margin.

heatlesssun said:
These results seem possible to me. TechReport’s review of the 4870x2 was using a stock clocked QX9650 which even at 2650x1600 I bet is hitting some CPU limits with 3x SLI and 4870x2 CF. Plus 4870x2 doesn’t seem to scale all that well in the reviews I’ve seen thus far. AMD seems to have concentrated on 4870x2 scaling first and that seems to work very well.!
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That's possible.

heatlesssun said:
Also Dan, what 30” monitor do you use? Do you have any problems scaling down to 1920x1200? I’m in the market and I know how much you dig your 30” monitor. Thanks!
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I'm using a Dell 3007WFP. It has no built in scaler so all scaling is done by the video card drivers. Yes I am quite fond of it but if you are going to buy one today the Dell 3007WFP-HC is about as good as it gets.
 
Valset said:
GTX280bX2 = hair drier.

Sorry I am not seeing this. Nor am I seeing a reason to go crossfire X or triSLI, I have seen a lot of benches that they just don't add much or for SLI actually hurt your performance. As no one every comes up with the same results you have to take the accumulative results. you can always pick single results (hey phenoms will beat core two quads in games depending on the benches) but at the end of the day the practical results are what matters. and that means that the 4870X2 is (at the moment, and maybe not by much) is faster then the Nvidia offerings.

If Nvidia really wants to compete with the 4870X2 they are going to have to drop the propitiatory SLI requirement. If SLI worked on intel chip set, maybe even ATI chip sets I think you would see a different reaction. that was an interesting result on the skull trail board. but even for H people that is just a waste of money.
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Where have you been for the last few weeks? Nvidia has released SLI to the latest Intel chipsets. SLI 280s beats the 4870x2 in nearly every games, and the only ones it doesn't is where SLI is known to have scaling problems. Even in games where SLI has scaling problems, I've never seen the SLI rig have lower fps than a single card. Price/preformance the 280 competes very well with the 4870x2.
 
vengence said:
Where have you been for the last few weeks? Nvidia has released SLI to the latest Intel chipsets. SLI 280s beats the 4870x2 in nearly every games, and the only ones it doesn't is where SLI is known to have scaling problems. Even in games where SLI has scaling problems, I've never seen the SLI rig have lower fps than a single card. Price/preformance the 280 competes very well with the 4870x2.
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you still have to have a board with a Nvidia chip on it, they are just selling them to board makers for the X58 (if I remember correctly) as for the benches there is a thread on this http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1325393

as for the price performance ratio, I am actually looking very hard at a GTX280 right now. its kind of a tossup with me between two 4850 vs GTX280.
 
Valset said:
you still have to have a board with a Nvidia chip on it, they are just selling them to board makers for the X58 (if I remember correctly) as for the benches there is a thread on this http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1325393

as for the price performance ratio, I am actually looking very hard at a GTX280 right now. its kind of a tossup with me between two 4850 vs GTX280.
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Lets look at that thread...

PCper (http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=605) reviews the 260 SLI, not the 280, and that is within 2 FPS of the 4 games they did.

Hothardware (http://www.hothardware.com/Articles/ATI-Radeon-HD-4870-X2--AMD-Back-On-Top/?page=1)

tested 3dmark, UT3, HL2 espisode 3, ET:Quake wars, and Crysis.
UT3 4870x2 lsot by about 3-5% depending on resolution.
HL2 episode 3, the 4870x2 edged out the 280 SLI by 2% at 1920x1200, but lost by some 20% at 2560x1600.
Crysis the GTX SLI was 45% faster than the 4870x2.

Hexus (http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=14928&page=1)
From them we'll add oops, they didn't test anything in SLI.

Extreme tech (http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2327871,00.asp)
oops, they also didn't test SLI.

Techpowerup (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Sapphire/HD_4870_X2/12.html)
oops, they also didn't test SLI.

Legit reviews (http://www.legitreviews.com/article/766/7/)
They tested 260 SLI, which did score higher at 1280x800, but the 260s were a lot slower at 1920x1200. But again, that's 260s.

There are a lot of reviews on that link. The end story is for the most part, SLI 280s are faster. There are some instances where the 4870x2 is faster. Which isn't surprising it has a lot of shader power. But it isn't faster on everything.
 
vengence said:
I think I remember the article your talking about, where they said they were dropping support. However, I don't recall them saying it was poorly optimized in that game.

With the current pricing structure with a 4870x2 being 550, that puts the price/preformance price of a 280 at 385$. Last I checked that was pretty close the street price of a 280. Everyone who buys these cards on release day know they are going to get burned on price within a month, however this time it was more than most. But some companies offered rebates after the fact, so I don't really see the launch price as a valid point with the rebates and the current price.

You are right on the sideport being disabled. I had a mental fart there.

Tri-SLI GTX 280s is beating out Dual 4870x2s, and the preformance of both is insane. If only I could find a winning lotto ticket on the ground!

Crossfire drivers and support.... This is the reason I went with Nvidia on my build. Fair or not, right or not, Nvidia is getting the latest games optimized to thier hardware. While ATI is doing well, AMD is really dragging it down, so I think this trend will continue.
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You are right about some of those games, but forged by chaos looks like the only game to make it to anouncement, most of those may just be dust in the wind already

You are right on right on the pricing, but lets get off of the pricing war right now, the prices are already going down, the 280's price went WAY down, I think you won on this argument :D

but I must say that that the crossfire support in drivers right now is spot on, it works really well and I like it alot more then SLI. But CrossfireX right now is so behind it needs alot of work it seems, so far it seems to benefit with AA enabled a little bit but that scaling doesn't really show off the horsepower of 4x 4870 GPU's.

Panzer has been a good developer in the past so I'm looking forward to Forged by Chaose!
 
vengence said:
Where have you been for the last few weeks? Nvidia has released SLI to the latest Intel chipsets. SLI 280s beats the 4870x2 in nearly every games, and the only ones it doesn't is where SLI is known to have scaling problems. Even in games where SLI has scaling problems, I've never seen the SLI rig have lower fps than a single card. Price/preformance the 280 competes very well with the 4870x2.
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u are really beating that NVIDIA drum pretty hard
 
vengence said:
Where have you been for the last few weeks? Nvidia has released SLI to the latest Intel chipsets. SLI 280s beats the 4870x2 in nearly every games, and the only ones it doesn't is where SLI is known to have scaling problems. Even in games where SLI has scaling problems, I've never seen the SLI rig have lower fps than a single card. Price/preformance the 280 competes very well with the 4870x2.
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How is 2x $400 to 1x $570 a good price comparison for nvidia ?
Right now, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 got the most impressive performance gain, which can only be seen at the resolution of 2,560 x 1,600+ or with high levels of Anti Aliasing. Whereas 1,920 x 1,200 – and lower resolutions or lower levels of AA, the gains just aren’t there at all.
So it wont be untill xmas and the new game industry comes out with a new high end games that can bring any of these cards to its knees to see which performs bettter on full loads.'
 
GunzofNavarone said:
u are really beating that NVIDIA drum pretty hard
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I'm not trying to beat the Nvidia drum really hard. They have a lot of faults, as does ATI. The 48XX are amazing. However, the GTX 2XX are also amazing. I don't understand why people think for a card to be a good or even a great card it has to be better than the other offerings by a huge amount. With the lineup that is out there you can pick the amount of preformance you want, or the amount of money you want to spend and have a linear near 1 to 1 preformance to dollar ratio.


Both companies are now producing INSANELY powerful setups for very very cheap.
 
iPearl said:
How is 2x $400 to 1x $570 a good price comparison for nvidia ?
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Single 4870x2 is 550. Single 280 is roughly 70% as powerful (I'm being generous to the 4870x2 here) 550*.70=385$ Street price of a 280 is very close to 385, if not lower.
 
vengence said:
Single 4870x2 is 550. Single 280 is roughly 70% as powerful (I'm being generous to the 4870x2 here) 550*.70=385$ Street price of a 280 is very close to 385, if not lower.
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So you are comparing street prices vs retail...
 
vengence said:
Where have you been for the last few weeks? Nvidia has released SLI to the latest Intel chipsets. SLI 280s beats the 4870x2 in nearly every games, and the only ones it doesn't is where SLI is known to have scaling problems. Even in games where SLI has scaling problems, I've never seen the SLI rig have lower fps than a single card. Price/preformance the 280 competes very well with the 4870x2.
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Increased CPU overhead of SLI means that from time to time the FPS does dip a little lower, especially in the min FPS condition where something suddenly becomes increadible back-logged, adding increased driver overhead simply means you get a lower minimum FPS.

SLI and Crossfire have come along way, I mean it, when people were talking about SLI with their 6800s I thought this technology would never fly (again), but its looking pretty robust, but its still got more than its fair share of problems.

With all this bru-haha about the new 5gb/s interconnect bus on the R700 we sure didnt get much. But aside from that, to say one technology is superior to the other as a blanket statement is just ignorant, especially considering they're practically the exact same thing. ATI used to do a couple things which sounded nice to me, such as a compiler engine on the Crossfire Master cards (which could theoretically remove this new-found microstuttering issue), the more even "checkerboard" style of SFR, running all graphics pci-e lanes to the northbridge only. If anything, crossfire is superior, but again they're both the same technology these days.
 
iPearl said:
So you are comparing street prices vs retail...
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Other than a deal from bestbuy, the street prices I have been seeing on the 4870x2 has been MRSP. Especially considering that every deal that was below mrsp is sold out. Which means if you actually want to buy one to use, you'll have to pay the mrsp. Street price is what you can actually buy one at, not what you could have if you were lucky to click in time.
 
MrWizard6600 said:
Increased CPU overhead of SLI means that from time to time the FPS does dip a little lower, especially in the min FPS condition where something suddenly becomes increadible back-logged, adding increased driver overhead simply means you get a lower minimum FPS.

SLI and Crossfire have come along way, I mean it, when people were talking about SLI with their 6800s I thought this technology would never fly (again), but its looking pretty robust, but its still got more than its fair share of problems.

With all this bru-haha about the new 5gb/s interconnect bus on the R700 we sure didnt get much. But aside from that, to say one technology is superior to the other as a blanket statement is just ignorant, especially considering they're practically the exact same thing. ATI used to do a couple things which sounded nice to me, such as a compiler engine on the Crossfire Master cards (which could theoretically remove this new-found microstuttering issue), the more even "checkerboard" style of SFR, running all graphics pci-e lanes to the northbridge only. If anything, crossfire is superior, but again they're both the same technology these days.
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You should have a look at that article about a skulltrain and 4870x2s and tri-280s. In the ultra highend setups it looks like the 4870x2s don't deliver "as smooth" as an experiance.

It is a shame the sideport didn't turn out to do much on the R700.

SLI is a mess. That's for sure. As is crossfire. So much reliance on drivers, without them you end up with 1/2 the power. It's much like multicore support. It's just going to take time for the developers to see SLI and crossfire solutions as "main-stream".
 
vengence said:
You should have a look at that article about a skulltrain and 4870x2s and tri-280s. In the ultra highend setups it looks like the 4870x2s don't deliver "as smooth" as an experiance.

It is a shame the sideport didn't turn out to do much on the R700.

SLI is a mess. That's for sure. As is crossfire. So much reliance on drivers, without them you end up with 1/2 the power. It's much like multicore support. It's just going to take time for the developers to see SLI and crossfire solutions as "main-stream".
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SLI a mess? I have to disagree. I've not had any major issues with 3x SLI and games. The only problem that I've seen that I think could be SLI related is in Crysis. There are a couple of spots in the game that slow down to a slide show. In one case even restarting the machine didn't fix the problem, I had to drop down to single card mode and get past the area. Single card mode actually performed better than SLI thus leading me to think that the problem was SLI related. However, this is Crysis and it does have some rough spots but I still think its an awesome game.

Simply put, I've been a PC gamer since the begining, and my current setup is more robust than anything I've ever put my hands on. I've had fewer overall problems with 3x SLI than some single GPU setups with XP.

Sure, you need the drivers, and sometimes the support isn't there but SLI works very well these days, at least its working fantasticlly on my sig rig.
 
SLi ruined my gaming experience for almost 2 years until I sold my extra 8800GTX, destroyed my last 680i (1 out of 4 that kept frying my memory) with a hammer, and bought the P35 in my sig rig. I will NOT be using SLi again unless it is in an Intel based motherboard. When I was on my 8800GTX's in SLi I was actually trying to fix my computer more than I was using it. I had 8 kits of memory from different manufacturers completely brick on me because nVidia makes horrible chipsets. That is not even opinion it is fact. nVidia should NEVER try to make a comeback in the chipset market. I wasn't even overclocked and I had to run the memory clocked lower than the spec of the memory just to get the damn things to boot. The 790i Ultra is better, but for God's sake why do I have to overpay for a handpicked motherboard just so I can run stable at stock speeds? Some people just don't understand how much of a miracle it is to be able to buy an Intel motherboard and be through with the bullshit.

Edit: And just for the record I am not just some noob that has no clue about puters. I have been tweaking and overclocking using some of the most exotic cooling available for the past 15 years.
 
For the record, I use SLI, I have found it to be wonderful about 95% of the time.

I didn't mean to come off as being so negative towards SLI. What I ment (and realize now, rereading is not what I wrote) is that SLI and crossfire being dependent upon games supporting them it can be a mess. It is not allways a mess. Only that rare case when a game doesn't like SLI.
 
vengence said:
Other than a deal from bestbuy, the street prices I have been seeing on the 4870x2 has been MRSP. Especially considering that every deal that was below mrsp is sold out. Which means if you actually want to buy one to use, you'll have to pay the mrsp. Street price is what you can actually buy one at, not what you could have if you were lucky to click in time.
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Then what you suppose to do is compare MSRP with MSRP.
Most comparisons start with with MSRPs. I dont think major reviews sites make comparisons based of Street prices for one card and MSRP for the other.
 
iPearl said:
Then what you suppose to do is compare MSRP with MSRP.
Most comparisons start with with MSRPs. I dont think major reviews sites make comparisons based of Street prices for one card and MSRP for the other.
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550 IS the street price. Do some research. Wait, I'll do it for you.


Newegg: Newegg 4870x2s
lowest 549.99

Zipzoomfly

lowest 549.00

Google shopping

Lowest price found was 529$ at one dealer. Next price up is 550.

Same techinique with 280

Newegg stockclocked

375$ AR

ZipZoomFly

370$ AR.



What did we learn? That I was overly conservative with my estimate of 385 being the street price of the 280. It would seem 370-375$ is a much better guess. Those were the first two sites I checked too, I didn't have to go bargin hunting allover the net. BTW, if you'd like to argue that you can get one for 530, so that should be the street price, fine go for it. Before you make you do, you might do the math and find out that the price/preformance assuming the GTX280 is 70% of a 4870x2 and it's 530 makes for a GTX priced at 371$.

I allways use conservative numbers. Infact, assuming the GTX280 as 70% of a 4870x2 is a fallacy really. It's overly conservative. The 4870x2 is 30% better. Assuming it to be 30% better instead of 70% brings a 550 price point to 423$.
 
Don't forget these sites:

NCIX: $510

Best Buy not too long ago: 469.99. The 370-385 deals on the 280gtx are all after rebate though. The average price for the 380 is still at about $450 easy.
 
BigCactus said:
Don't forget these sites:

NCIX: $510

Best Buy not too long ago: 469.99. The 370-385 deals on the 280gtx are all after rebate though. The average price for the 380 is still at about $450 easy.
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Meh Veng sounds like a Nvidia "fan"atic
AR
Not saying which is better, but ur way of comparing them doesn't put them on a leveled play ground. First RETAIL and then USED then u Compare AR and non AR.
Go Glorify ur Card Fantastic !!! No one said the 280 is a bad card or not cheap.
But the way you compare them makes no sense.
 
I'm exicted by this....first they cock up the 280{I have no real prob with the 260}, then they're gonna compound it with a x2.....YES, YES, this is great for submission, I mean competition:D
 
if they do actually come out with the 280 gx2 then i think they really need to think about firing there engineers and recruiting some new talent, especially with all there resources.
 
vengence said:
Where have you been for the last few weeks? Nvidia has released SLI to the latest Intel chipsets. SLI 280s beats the 4870x2 in nearly every games, and the only ones it doesn't is where SLI is known to have scaling problems. Even in games where SLI has scaling problems, I've never seen the SLI rig have lower fps than a single card. Price/preformance the 280 competes very well with the 4870x2.
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Only by way of a chip incorporated on future nehalem m/boards. Its certainly not the case that nvidia have decided to stop being bastards by removing the artificial lock in their drivers which prevents SLI on current intel boards. From what I understand, most motherboard producers are not interested in this solution from nvidia given the costs and added hassles involved.
 
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