So It Begins!!!

[Sunny]

Well what I am referring to are price cuts of the GTX280 and GTX260. I have not seen any dramatic price cuts at retailers yet. I have seen little changes in price but not much. At least its good to know that it seems to be on Nvidia's Mind.

http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=8252&Itemid=1

"The reason for this sudden price cut is that the cards are not selling as well as Nvidia expected. The second part of the story is that Radeon HD 4870 ended up better than Nvidia had hoped."

-Fuad Abazovic
Fudzilla

So I am thinking this great news for people who want to buy the higher end Nvidia cards. Now they just need to keep the price drops Coming!!!

Competition is exactly what we need for us consumers to benefit.

[Radiator]

Unfortunately , nVidia doesn't have much room for cutting prices , though ...the cost of manufacturing the GT200 core is pretty damn high .
But yeah... price cuts = even more price cuts = even more price cuts... and eventually all the cards will be riddiculously cheap :) .

[Die Auslese]

Good thing, its not that I don't like ATI, its just the cards draw to much power, and the drivers are horrible! Nvidia has always had the better drivers, and for that reason i appriciate there cards more, becuase I know that when I buy an Nvidia card I know its gonna live up to both the paper it was designed on, as well as real world applications. ATI is pretty shiffty, there cards are UBEr powerful, but you never know, or rather they don't know, how the cards work. Either way I buy both, and prefer Nvidia.

[Radiator]

Mr Die Auslese , ATi's cards simply work differently from nVidia's cards .
As for drivers , ATi has had the better drivers for a while now .
You can't directly compare nVidia's shader processors to ATi's .
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3341&p=3
Read pages 3-8 , if you'd like to know more about it , it's rather interesting in my opinion .

[Sunny]

Its a good thing that I am starting to see some of these price cut articles. I am about to buy 2 GTX280 next week. But I am not sure whether I should wait a bit more to see the price cuts go into effect.

[Sunny]

Yeah the ATI cards are pretty good performers and I am not a fanboy of either side. My very first card was from ATI and I really loved it. You know what used to bug me a lot though. Was seeing that The way its meant to be played logo everytime I started a game. I was like what the hell. ATI really needs to get out there with the game developers.

Well on another note.
It looks like the price drops have begun. YEEEEESSSSSS!!!!

The lowest GTX280 on Newegg is the MSI GTX280 for 459.99 after mail in rebate of $40. That is like a $200 price drop. It seems that mostly all GTX280's have dropped in price except for the BFG ones. They are lagging over at BFG.

[Die Auslese]

Mr Die Auslese , ATi's cards simply work differently from nVidia's cards .
As for drivers , ATi has had the better drivers for a while now .
You can't directly compare nVidia's shader processors to ATi's .
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3341&p=3
Read pages 3-8 , if you'd like to know more about it , it's rather interesting in my opinion .

Then explain the 3870X2, that card should have kicked the crap outta the GX2, but it got beat by a single 9800GTX, yes the driver improved, but only on certain games. And I know ATI's card work differnetly, infact VERY differently.

[Radiator]

Then explain the 3870X2, that card should have kicked the crap outta the GX2, but it got beat by a single 9800GTX, yes the driver improved, but only on certain games. And I know ATI's card work differnetly, infact VERY differently.

That's because the GX2 is run by two 9800 GTX cards , and a single 9800 GTX IS more powerful than a single HD 3870 . Even a 8800 GT is more powerful in gaming applications . Think things through , before you post .
Holy crap! 459 USD for a GTX280 ? O_O

[Die Auslese]

That's because the GX2 is run by two 9800 GTX cards , and a single 9800 GTX IS more powerful than a single HD 3870 . Even a 8800 GT is more powerful in gaming applications . Think things through , before you post .
Holy crap! 459 USD for a GTX280 ? O_O

Uhh.... did'nt you just prove my point that the 3870x2 gets beat by a 8800GT, still what ever I said, my bad, sometimes I'm just implusive.

[Radiator]

By two 8800 GTs in SLi .
And you do realise , that performance depends on the application quite a bit ?

[Die Auslese]

Whatever man, yes, I know that ATI works better than Nvidia in certain application, and vice versa. I surrgest we drop it, it starting to get to ranting.

[Radiator]

Well , you're asking why two 8800 GTs beat a HD 3870 X2... I answered it several times >_> .

[Casecutter]

This seems like a good place to chime in with this question. Do 8800GT's in SLI clobber a single HD4850?
I'm referring to Anantech review of June 25th. Are there any other direct comparisons (newer) anybody can find. I believe 8800GT SLI would be better, but sure would think in like a 1600x1200 and quality all up, there wouldn't be a the wide gap they indicated. Heck, Anandtechs numbers indicate 8800GT SLI scaled better then 9800GTX, and best'd a single 280 in some tests. Should we be dubious of their numbers... or is it just a case of the older drivers and the games and setting they used?
http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3341&p=20

[Radiator]

Two 8800 GTs in SLi , is a rather fast setup . The only problems are microstuttering , lack of vRAM ( 512MB+512MB , but still uses only 512MB in SLi ) and lack of SLi support in games . And where SLi IS supported , they should beat the single HD 4850 . However , you'll need an nVidia chipset motherboard and not an intel board for SLi .

[aVaLaNcHe]

I find the 8800GT SLI setup rather fast for my needs. I probably won't upgrade until every game is released with a Crysis-like engine.

[hdantman]

I love the 8800GT pair I have. Beat the absolute turd out of the 3870 x2 I have. Both of those cards are beastly even by themselves. I'm running mine at 9800 GTX speeds.

The downsides are exactly as Radiator stated, so no need to recap. I do notice that as I go on in Crysis in the longer levels, I start to experience slowdowns due to the lack of VRAM. I didn't experience slow downs with the 1GB x2. It was just slow consistently no matter the settings (in Crysis only--all other games it flies).

[-RK]

Uhh.... did'nt you just prove my point that the 3870x2 gets beat by a 8800GT, still what ever I said, my bad, sometimes I'm just implusive.


The cards work in entirely different ways. ATI's architectures use stream processors which can essentially run multiple operations per clock cycle. This is why you see so many stream proccys on ATI cards. They aren't physical proccys, but they "work" as them. The 3870 has 64 stream proccys which do 5 ops/cycle = 320 "effective" sps.

Unfortunately that much shader power is much less well utilized than NV's standard architecture's balanced power, not to mention the fact that it is less efficient to boot.


I just realized something... DX10.1's main new "feature" (aa with shaders) is perfect for ATI cards which have in the past been notoriously weak on AA... That probably has something to do with ATi using it... Huh... why didn't I think of that earlier?

[hdantman]

Well then RK,

It seems that if they would hurry up and begin implimentation of 10.1, I might get some decent performance at high FSAA settings with my 3870 x2. That would be a reason to switch from my two 8800GTs. The only games I can run incredible FSAA are Oblivion (16x) and Half Life 2: Lost Coast (16x). I can run COD4 with 8x and still get 60+fps. But I'd like to see some FSAA in Crysis. My 8800GTs can't handle even 2x extremely well at that game.

[-RK]

Well, that's the problem.

10.1 imposes restrictions on developers, so it's not going to be used fully.

[wyz135]

oh no... the GTX280 cost S$999 here in Singapore and the Radeon HD4870 cost S$499. GTX280 is too expensive...