GTX260 vs. HD5770 vs. HD4890

[theaska]

Hi,

I was sure about buying a superclocked version of GTX260 but I've been hearing a lot of different opinions and now I really don't know which one to buy...

Basically, I'd like to know which one of these 3 would be better or what would really be the best deal below 185€.

By what I've seen in reviews, the HD4890 is the best of all 3.
But my doubts pretty much are:
- Between the GTX260 and HD4890, is the difference of performance worth the 20€ difference price?
- Or would it be better going for the HD5770 because of the dx11/price although its performance isn't as good as the other 2?
- Will the dx11 be very important so soon? ...

Greetz.

 

[KidHorn]

DX11 probably won't matter for at least a year and even then, DX11 may not perform well on a lower end DX11 card like the 5770. Most video games are now written for the PS3 or XBox and then ported to a PC. Used to be the other way around. I don't believe the two gaming platforms support DX11, so it may a long time before many DX11 games are available.

4890 and 260 perform about the same. Some games do better on each. I would probably opt for the 4890 if costs were the same, but 20€ is a pretty big price difference, so take whatever costs less.

 

[brockh]

DX11 probably won't matter for at least a year and even then, DX11 may not perform well on a lower end DX11 card like the 5770.

DX11 will perform better or on par with the HD 5770 than the HD 4890 I would guess (we're talking +25% or so with it enabled on native hardware in the early stages), but in everything else the HD 4890 will be clear the winner.

Most video games are now written for the PS3 or XBox and then ported to a PC.

This isn't correct. Borderlands, for example, was written and optimized for the PC, but was released on Xbox 360 a week earlier. Just because games are released on consoles first does not mean they're written for them. Do you want to know why they do this? An Xbox 360 version of Borderlands cost $60 USD. The PC version, new, cost me $36 USD. They're still written for the PC then ported to consoles, then released for the consoles, then released for the PC. It's a money grab.

Used to be the other way around. I don't believe the two gaming platforms support DX11, so it may a long time before many DX11 games are available.

Widespread adoption will be much faster than DX10, but it still may be a few months before it really needs to be taken into consideration -- however, that doesn't mean it's not a good idea to think ahead. Also, expect the next generation of consoles to have DX11.

4890 and 260 perform about the same. Some games do better on each. I would probably opt for the 4890 if costs were the same, but 20€ is a pretty big price difference, so take whatever costs less.

The HD 4890 is the better card. The only time a version of the GTX 260 beats it is when it's severely overclocked, in which case it'll probably cost more as the HD 4890 is really cheap these days. Also keep in mind the HD 4890 can be overclocked, and lately I haven't seen any factory overclocked ones around anymore, like Sapphire's Toxic/Atomic HD 4890s, just Vapor-X ones.

 

[KidHorn]

DX11 will perform better or on par with the HD 5770 than the HD 4890 I would guess (we're talking +25% or so with it enabled on native hardware in the early stages), but in everything else the HD 4890 will be clear the winner.

I'm not sure what you're saying. DX11 won't work at all on the 4890. It sounds like you're comparing the DX11 performance of both cards.

What I'm saying is the 5770 will likely perform worse using DX11 than it will using DX10. Just like games generally perform worse using DX10 than DX9. My hunch is if you turn on many of the DX11 enhancements, you may have to sacrifice other video settings, like resolution or AA, to get a decent frame rate.

 

[brockh]

I'm not sure what you're saying. DX11 won't work at all on the 4890. It sounds like you're comparing the DX11 performance of both cards.

What I'm saying is the 5770 will likely perform worse using DX11 than it will using DX10. Just like games generally perform worse using DX10 than DX9. My hunch is if you turn on many of the DX11 enhancements, you may have to sacrifice other video settings, like resolution or AA, to get a decent frame rate.

I am comparing the DX11 performance of both cards. The HD 4890 doesn't have DX11 so it's performance in DX11 games sits at 100% of its DX10 performance (because it can't use it, which also means it looks worse), while the HD 5770's performance will sit at 125%+ of its DX10 performance. This is because the new compute shaders used by DX11 (and also tesselation) are hardware accelerated, which means it will add feature sets and still perform better, unlike you're seeing with DX10. You can look at benchmarks for BattleForge with DX11 and SSAO enabled and see the performance differences; some see up to a 38% increase. You'll see as we progress more "eye candy" can be added while maintaining or improving performance using new feature sets of D3D. People need to stop acting like DX9 is some kind of magical godsend.

Searching quickly I found two benchmarks for DX10 vs DX11 here and here, but unfortunately its using the HD 5870. Regardless, you'll see the same relative performance increase in percentage with the HD 5770.

 

[rawsteel]

KidHorn

ALL DX11 features bring speed optimisations except one - Tesselation.

However I guess in games you will be able to turn on/off that feature. This gives you the option to use all speed optimisations and have SAME or better graphics than DX10.

On another hand you can turn on tesselation which by my humble opinion is the MOST SHOCKING jump in computer gaming graphics for all the time (Just check Unigine Heaven demo if you havent already)

 

[Mousemonkey]

KidHorn

ALL DX11 features bring speed optimisations except one - Tesselation.

However I guess in games you will be able to turn on/off that feature. This gives you the option to use all speed optimisations and have SAME or better graphics than DX10.

On another hand you can turn on tesselation which by my humble opinion is the MOST SHOCKING jump in computer gaming graphics for all the time (Just check Unigine Heaven demo if you havent already)

SSAO also incurs a performance hit as well.

 

[theaska]

Thanks a lot guys, I went for the HD4890