Best Of The Best: High-End Graphics Card Roundup

[Guest]

Why don't you throw in the 4850 x2 you keep puting it in the best graphics card for the money list as the highest end setup that actual worth paying for for the most part.

 

[theangrygimp]

[citation][nom]crazychickens[/nom]Why don't you throw in the 4850 x2 you keep puting it in the best graphics card for the money list as the highest end setup that actual worth paying for for the most part.[/citation]
Why don't you donate them? I guess people think that Toms is made up of rich folks with nothing better to do.
Thanks for the time and effort it took to make this article guys.
I personally think that a few of the benchmarks are getting outside of relevant for the cards being reviewed, but since people still play L4D and such, I guess I can understand. Still, something a little more punishing would be nice to see. I would also just like to see(for kicks) a bench of fallout with some texture/graphics mods bogging it down. I don't get nearly those framerates, but I have several high res texture mods, SSAO on, and the Mutant Mod(MMM), so no surprise.
Keep up the good work. I might grab a 275 next month after seeing all these bench's coming out.

 

[SpadeM]

I might have gotten some information from the wrong place but:
1. Isn't the i7 platform nVidia "unfriendly"? Wasn't there a bottleneck present on said platform when u guys tested it against the Phenom II. Cause if that issue is still present (since i haven't heart of a fix) then all the test don't represent geforce's full potential.
2. On the ATi issue, indeed the Hawks bench made me think i need glasses. I do understand the need to level the playing field when benching as to get an apple to apple comparison but was the settings choice done as to limit ATi cards in regards to nVidias limitations on the i7 or .. why?

 

[bill gates is your daddy]

Seems to have been a little Nvidia biased.

 

[yoda8232]

I love the whole use of all the Nvidia cards while there is only one ATI card. No HD 4890? No DX 10.1?

Come on guys.

 

[radguy]

Until there are several games that are harder to run not including crysis or crysis warhead in the benchmarks with the best of the best: high End graphics run up was a stupid idea. Same to be said about graphics gaming charts. Not that I am a big fan of the game but it needs to be included.

 

[bill gates is your daddy]

[citation][nom]theangrygimp[/nom]Why don't you donate them? I guess people think that Toms is made up of rich folks with nothing better to do.[/citation]

EVGA GTX HydroCopper - cannot find price but BFG's price is $759 so I have to believe its comparable.
Geforce GTX 295 - $524
Zotac GTX 285 Amp Edition - $320
MSI N285GTX Superpipe OC - $349
MSI N280GTX OC Hydrogen - $600+

That's $2500 for only 5 Nvidia cards

4850x2 2Gb - $299

 

[blackened144]

[citation][nom]bill gates is your daddy[/nom]EVGA GTX HydroCopper - cannot find price but BFG's price is $759 so I have to believe its comparable.Geforce GTX 295 - $524Zotac GTX 285 Amp Edition - $320MSI N285GTX Superpipe OC - $349MSI N280GTX OC Hydrogen - $600+That's $2500 for only 5 Nvidia cards4850x2 2Gb - $299[/citation]
Your assumption that Toms paid for all the cards in the review is wrong.

 

[tomm09]

how come last remnant really doesn't like ATI cards, is it a driver problem. There is no way that a 4770x2 would perform that poorly with an xbox 360 port.

 

[Kaldor]

EVGA HydroCopper = Epic Fail

"The cooler on the graphics card is, however, anodized both inside and out. The copper contacts on the GPUs are also nickel-plated to limit corrosion. For long-term use, EVGA recommends a non-conductive coolant to block corrosion and algae growth."

Corrosion anyone? Never, ever mix aluminum and copper in a water cooling system. Go search around the net for pics of the internals of this waterblock. It looks like it was made in highschool shop class.

The 295 is a beast of a card, but EVGA needs to stick to making circuit boards and leave the water cooling to pros like Danger Den, EK, and others. The MSI in this review is an example of a decent waterblock and BFG got smart and just uses Danger Den blocks on their cards.

 

[bounty]

. One of my beefs with ATI cards... Usually Nvidia is good at some games and ok in the rest. With ATI they're good in some, ok in some others and fall on their face in non-optimized games. It's probably where the elegant arch falls behind the brute force style of Nvidia, when dev's don't program elegantly.

 

[Huttfuzz]

Nice article overall. Only thing is i would have loved to see the eVga gtx 275 FTW instead of the BFG OC version. The eVga is way more "high end" and would love to see how it faired against GTX285 and the like.

 

[boulard83]

IM personnally in love with my BFG GTX285 OC2 (694core)

 

[walp]

*massive facepalm*

Im gonna buy another cheap SuperOC´ed 4890 and post the CF-results, WHOS YOUR DADDY?
Really? Im wondering who´s paying for your food etc?

I just looked up the word bias in the dictionary:

bias ['baies] 1. a partiality that prevents objective consideration of an issue or situation (e.g tomshardware reviews)
2. give a bias to, as in a race cause to be biased (i.e v. tomshardwared)

*Big picture of tomshardware-logo*
(In italics:Biased)

Keep up the good work! lol..

 

[dman3k]

Thx to Tom's for listening to readers by adding slots to the table!

MSI N280GTX OC HydroGen FTW! Single Slot!

 

[bill gates is your daddy]

[citation][nom]blackened144[/nom]Your assumption that Toms paid for all the cards in the review is wrong.[/citation]

No. theangrygimp's assumption that Tom's purchases all their cards is wrong. I am intelligent to understand that for reviews a lot of hardware is donated or loaned.

theangrygimp's reply was "Why don't you donate them? I guess people think that Toms is made up of rich folks with nothing better to do." when crazychickens questioned why a 4850x2 was not included in the test line up when Tom's lists it as one of the best cards for the money.

I was merely pointing out that in his belief of them purchasing the cards, there should have been room to purchase a run-of-the-mill 4850x2.

 

[TurinX]

It was briefly mentioned in a post above, but as someone looking at upgrading to one of these cards, benchmarks at 2560x1600 would be very helpful. Really, I think that probably the only reason to go for top of the range cards (I have a 8800 GTX that works great for me at 1680x 1050 - but I have a feeling it will struggle once I upgrade!)
Otherwise, enjoyed the article - would be nice to see Crysis & maybe GTA4 on there?

 

[truehighroller]

The funny hing is that I have a Q9450 @ 3.86GHZ~ 4GB of DDR2 @ 1156MHZ~ 2 x 4870 1GB Cards @ 860 / 950, in crossfire and 2 x 320GB RE3 WD Drives in Raid 0 and it pulls a score of 20100~ in 3dmark06. I would like to see what my system would pull if it was using the I7 920 setup they are using here.

 

[truehighroller]

The game GTA IV is a piece of #### and they have already established this. What is it wth people not knowing that game is a poorly coded piece os ####.

 

[LATTEH]

LOL wheres the benchmark for CRY... *gets shot*

 

[truehighroller]

@LATTER

 

[aspec733]

4770 CF benches please

 

[balancedthinking]

Wow, the green goblin must pay great these days.

Exchanged Crysis for the crappy "the last remnant" with the sole purpose to put in a game where ati totally sucks and to bust the overall rating.

Yeah, using DX9 for HAWX in an highend roundup suddenly makes sense too. Nvidia can not do DX 10.1 so let us use DX9 to slow down ati. This is sooo sad guys

 

[Guest]

I've been lurking this site for years. I will now stop coming to tomshardware. There are plenty of other sites which do more than try to frame nvidia cards in the best light possible.

 

[scrumworks]

Tino Kreiss sold his soul to green satan for peanuts.