Best Graphics Cards For The Money: April 2010

[cleeve]

March was a busy month for the graphics card industry, what, with the birth of the GeForce GTX 470, 480, and Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 Edition cards. Read more about these new models and where they fit in the scheme of things in this month's column.

Best Graphics Cards For The Money: April 2010 : Read more

 

[Guest]

Been waiting for this since last week.

I'm 1st, now I can finally sleep. Vote for this as one of the most popular monthly articles here in Tom's.

 

[matt314]

Yay finally up thanks Tom!

 

[adbat]

Still missing are the "Intel® HD Graphics"

 

[Annisman]

What ?

 

[touchdowntexas13]

Another great overview. I think next month's(or the month after that) should prove to be a bit more exciting though. Nvidia's cards will be on the market, and hopefully not too scarce. Maybe we can see some price drops from ATI, followed hopefully by Nvidia though I think it's less likely.

Just my thoughts anyways.

 

[triculious]

I'm still waiting for the Nvidia cards to be available... once they are the price war should start shortly after... then shopping for cards will become interesting

Also, one request here: would it be too much to ask the hierarchy chart to show the standings of dual card configurations?

 

[knowom]

G92 is the little engine that could I'm actually hoping Nvidia gives it another steroid shot from a die shrink to 40nm and maybe even make a 40nm X2 that's SLI capable version a good design has so much lasting power just look at Intel's Atom that's basically just a highly refined P3 essentially.

 

[Silluete]

dammit my 4650 ddr2 not even in list anymore *sob*

 

[IronRyan21]

IMO, I wouldn't have included Nvidia's GTX 470/480 Not even available. They've only release like 8000....

 

[nirdinur]

giving a single card a honorable mention makes sence because not everyone has xfire/sli mb but I don't understand the reason behind giving it to 2 5770 setup compared to a single 5850. Even if you have a xfire mb and performance is a better a single card at the same price is a better choice because you have a good upgrade option later adding another card.

 

[micky_lund]

5770 CF can beat 5870 in some titles. surely it should be given some consideration, specially as they are much more available than most of the 58**s

 

[XxOsurfer3xX]

Waiting for the price drops! I want my 5870!

 

[mitch074]

I'm feeling mighty good: my 2 yo 4850 is still a recommended product! ... If I hadn't had to change the HSF for an aftermarket one. And tinker with its VBIOS base frequencies.

Well, maybe I could try and overclock it, now - the HSF I got seems a wee bit oversized.

 

[jkcajkca]

[citation][nom]adbat[/nom]Still missing are the "Intel® HD Graphics"[/citation]

do you have any idea on what you are talking about?

 

[neiroatopelcc]

The HD4670 section still points to the 9600 as superior alternative. Didn't you mean 9800? (5 bucks more expensive in your list)

Anyway. Cleeve. Question about graphics.....

Do you think we'll see non-flat floors in a game any time soon? tesselation is for non important stuff right? and bump mapping doesn't properly work on floors - even the crysis 2 screenshots very clearly show a flat floor with objects placed on it.

I'm soo looking forward to the day where the geometry doesn't feature painted on grass or shader grass on flat surfaces (that was good in oblivion, but that's ages ago).

 

[nottheking]

Really, I think that you give the GTX 400 series a bit TOO much benefit of the doubt. Especially when it comes to the GTX 470, given that it often LOSES to the 5850, seemingly more than it wins, it makes it a head-scratcher at $60US more; how could it get an honorable mention for slightly inferior performance with a ~20% higher price? And when the 470 does win, it tends to be a very narrow margin; compared to an often-wide margin when it loses.

The GTX 480 isn't quite as bad off; it USUALLY wins over the 5870, but then again, it can be quite questionable to ask for the nearly $100US pemium over the Radeon; certainly a more questionable premium than jumping straight to the 5970, which at times seems to offer better price/performance than the 480.

Similarly, it makes it another head-scratcher that you went out of your way to list the 470/480 on separate, higher tiers than the 5850/5870. With the former of each pair, the 470 most certainly CANNOT be argued to be outright superior; at best it is really on a par. As for the latter, while the 480 shows itself to be typically stronger than the 5870, It's relatively small margin most of the time.

[citation][nom]neiroatopelcc[/nom]Question about graphics.....Do you think we'll see non-flat floors in a game any time soon? tesselation is for non important stuff right? and bump mapping doesn't properly work on floors - even the crysis 2 screenshots very clearly show a flat floor with objects placed on it. I'm soo looking forward to the day where the geometry doesn't feature painted on grass or shader grass on flat surfaces (that was good in oblivion, but that's ages ago).[/citation]
First off, Oblivion's grass wasn't all that complex an implementation; it simply was a procedural-generation routine that on-the-fly populates the ground with grass "clumps," with the chance, color/texture, and size of them appearing determined by the ground texture(s) used for that vertex.

As far as the floor surfaces, what they look like is largely determined by the programmer; if one wanted, one could readily apply paralax mapping (or even a more complex shader) to ground surfaces, it's just that they typically don't. I honestly don't quite know why, (perhaps Cleeve would) but my two hyptheosis are that it could be a design choice to distinguish "walkable" terrain, or that it could be a limitation of the terrain-heightmap subsystem. (possibly calculating it over very large surfaces?)

 

[notty22]

Nvidia has the fastest 1-2 single Gpu video cards (as compared with ATI's 1-2), deal with it.
Every review shows this.

 

[nforce4max]

This is to those who are into buying a 9800gt. Avoid every thing that says eco or green and don't be tinder footed about it plus the cards with the 6 pin connector are able to clock much higher any way as for power consumption you wont notice one. I own two 9800gt 1gb editions. If they are just a little to pricey over eco and green crap go buy a gts250 its far better any way.

 

[neiroatopelcc]

[citation][nom]nottheking[/nom]First off, Oblivion's grass wasn't all that complex an implementation; it simply was a procedural-generation routine that on-the-fly populates the ground with grass "clumps," with the chance, color/texture, and size of them appearing determined by the ground texture(s) used for that vertex.As far as the floor surfaces, what they look like is largely determined by the programmer; if one wanted, one could readily apply paralax mapping (or even a more complex shader) to ground surfaces, it's just that they typically don't. I honestly don't quite know why, (perhaps Cleeve would) but my two hyptheosis are that it could be a design choice to distinguish "walkable" terrain, or that it could be a limitation of the terrain-heightmap subsystem. (possibly calculating it over very large surfaces?)[/citation]
I didn't mean to imply that the grass was implemented very well. Merely that back then this method was okay, as it was a very good improvement over the painted on surface that it replaced. The point is, that now we're two generations of directx and 5 generations of gpu hardware futher down the road, and no more improvements have been made.
The edges and flat surfaces of the used geometry are still very visible, and somehow every developer seems to focus more on lighting and shadows than the finished product. It doesn't seem to matter to them that all those fancy soft shadows are cast on flat layers of painted on gravel and flat walls with bumpmapped tiles.

 

[eyefinity]

I think this list needs to return to the days when being a good card got you on the list, not being one that was recently released.

As for the 470 and 480, there is no justification for having those on the list at all. I remember you removing the 4850 and 4770 from previous lists because they were in scant supply, but I'd be willing to bet that they have always been in far better supply that the non-existent gtx 470 and especially 480.

 

[pluripotent]

Question:

I currently have a 4870 1Gb sapphire card. This chart says that putting another one in my system would be as good as a GTX 480, and just below the 5970. Is anyone currently doing this? Is it a worthwhile upgrade to buy a second older card or better to wait for price drops for newer stuff?

Thoughts?

 

[motamedn]

can someone point out to me where exactly xfired 1gb 5770s would fall in this chart? im new to this...

also, what was the 2nd resource provided? the first is a graphics heirarchy chart..and the second is...?

Thanks!

 

[huron]

Always love this monthly article. It's good to see some competition again - though I think the minor performance gain from nvidia is not worth all the extra power it needs.

Love the hierarchy...gives you good perspective on current and last few generation cards.

 

[neiroatopelcc]

[citation][nom]pluripotent[/nom]Question:I currently have a 4870 1Gb sapphire card. This chart says that putting another one in my system would be as good as a GTX 480, and just below the 5970. Is anyone currently doing this? Is it a worthwhile upgrade to buy a second older card or better to wait for price drops for newer stuff?Thoughts?[/citation]
Unless your current games are feeling sluggish I wouldn't add another. It means you'll be using more power, and chances are you don't currently have a power supply with 4 pcie power connectors and enough amperes on your 12v rails.

I have an 4870x2 and a 4870 single gpu card in my system, and for what it's worth, I can't feel any significant difference between one and three gpu's @ 1680x1050 resolution in any game I've tried. I suppose crysis would change that, but I haven't played that in years.