I am sad about HD 5870

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runegate

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this is so stupid. the same price with GTX 295.
but less power than 295.
one thing that is better than 295 is

295 - 300-350W
5870 - 200-250w

I am going to sell my 5870 and wait for 5870X2 or GT300.

one more question. um...

somebody told me that 5870 will be better then 295 when the new drive for 5870 is out.

true?
 

Gulli

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Then who decides what cards belong to the same generation? Is it based on being each other's competitors? Does the 8800GTS 512mb/9800GT/GTS 250 belong to the same generation as the HD 4850? We're getting to a point where, what is essentially a 8800GTS 512mb, will be competing with something like the HD 5670 and the 8600GT with the HD 4650, even though they belong to different generations.
With one company launching new generations halfway the generation-cycle of the other company and one company's dependence on older cards for their low-end and mid-range segments it's not easy to say which cards belong to the same generation.
 
I am not arguing over what card belongs to what gen. What I am saying is that once Nvdia drops the 3XX series then we can do a REAL comparison between both brands and see what is better price/performance-wise. The comparison will be done regardless, it has always been this way.. You cannot say that Nvidia's new cards are superior cause they had more time to work on the cards. Both companies had the same exact time to come up with a next-gen GPU, Nvidia took longer this time to release but that does not mean they had an advantage, on the contrary, they had a major disadvantage due to thier yields among other issues. Next time AMD should do the same and see if it works for them.
 

Dekasav

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If it takes 6 months after the HD 5870 came out for the GTX 380 to come out, and 5 months after that the HD 6870 comes out, shouldn't we compare the GTX 380 to the HD 6870. They were released closer together, maybe we call the HD 5xxx series an intermediate, half-generation.

The point is, it doesn't matter what generation any card belongs to, what matters is what time their out, their price, and their performance (performance including FPS, but also temp, noise, and power usage).
 

Gulli

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So when ATI drops a new generation six months after G300 I expect you to say that the G300 should be compared to the HD 6xxx series because ATI had just as much time to develop 6xxx as Nvidia had for their G300, they just decided to release it a bit later...
Dekasav raises the same point.
 
I agree, what I am saying is this:

The GTX 295 was compared to the 4870x2 and they are basically the same IMO, giving a slight advantage to the 295. Now everyone is comparing the 5870 to the 295 and of course this is only fair due to the fact that Nvidia has nothing more powerfull ATM. Once the 5870x2 and Nvidias x2 card is release THEN we can compare both and see what is better price/performance wise. My point is that you cannot compare old tech to new tech and brag about what is better since the outcome is obvious.
 

Gulli

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True, but you will be comparing older tech to newer tech when you compare 5870 and G300.
Now of course you can compare the 5870 with G200 and say that it is better, but that in itself doesn't mean ATI has better technology, but the fact that ATI has released a new generation and Nvidia hasn't, does prove that ATI has better technology and thus the best cards at the moment, if Nvidia could have released G300 by now they would have done so, but they didn't, so ATI clearly has a technological advantage, that may change in six months time, but right now ATI is just better.
 


I am not saying what GPU you can compare to what, I am saying that once Nvidia drops the 3XX series then all of us can compare both brands w/o saying that one company had an advantage over the other. So then I stated, lets wait till the 3XX drops and then we can compare the AMD/ATI (next-gen) vs the Nvidia (next-gen) and THEN decide what is better for the money...
 

Gulli

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The point Dekasav and I are trying to make is that you can't simply call both of them "next-gen" because their launches are so far apart compared to the length of a generational-cycle.
Now, if they were launched 2 months apart and a generational cycle takes 18-20 months, than yes they would clearly belong to the same generation, but they will probably have a 4-5 months gap between them, while generations only last 12-14 months.
 


Again I disagree, both companies have more or less the same time to come up with new hardware. Both companies use different tech and architectures. The reason why nvidia is LATE has nothing to do with aquiring better tech, its a fact that Nvidia has had many more issues with their 3XX series vs. AMD's 5XXX series... Look at it this way, if both companies launched on the same day then we would not be talking about this issue, we would be comparing both brands and deciding what is better for the price.
 

Gulli

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Exactly, IF they released on the same day we wouldn't be having this discussion...
There's a reason Nvidia struggled with its design, it either uses inferior technology or it's so advanced it couldn't possibly be launched until months after 5xxx (even if they hired ATI engineers with all their knowledge), making it a newer generation.
 
And I agree with you also on that one. I guess now the real issue will be Nvdias pricing, not all companies work the same way as Intel and Nvidia, meaning if you sell a GPU for 600.00/700.00$ you are most likely to have most of them sit on a shelf forever, as opposed to reducing the price and selling many more units. Never understood this pricing sheme, hopefully the prices of the 3xx series will be more or less the same as the 5xxx series....
 

Gulli

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You make the same amount of money by selling 100 $600 units as by selling 200 $300 units, that is if those $600 units are better than the $300 units, so I can understand Nvidia charging a whole lot of money for their flagship card. However since ATI will probably have an answer up to, and including, the GTX 360, I guess only fanboism and the myth that "more expensive = more quality" makes people buy any non-flagship cards from Nvidia, there are still plenty of idiots who will buy a GTS 250 while there's a HD 4850 for $20 less lying in the shelf next to it.
 
Well, in the interview with the NVidia guys they said they would not make the same mistake they made with the GTX280/260 of pricing them too high at launch. So we can expect more reasonable numbers this time around, especially since the ATI cards are already out. The real question is, when NVidia starts selling their cards, will ATI try to undercut them again? Or will both companies just be content with making money and try to keep prices out of freefall?
 
Yea, what I meant is the pricing on the 295/975 EE .... For example, if Intel would have sold the 975 EE @ 599.99, they would have sold a boatload of them compared to selling them at 1k ..... Same thing with the 295, who would even think about buying a 295 when you can get a 5870 for less? If the 295 was priced at 299.99 then that would be another story....
 

Gulli

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The i7 975 is top dog, as was the GTX 295 until September 23rd, and you can charge as much as you like for your top dog, because there's no cheaper alternative for the consumer. So I do understand the high prices of the i7 975 and GTX 295, what I do not understand is people still buying a more expensive product when there's a cheaper alternative of equal quality available (GTS250 and HD 4850 for example), fanboyism and price/quality myths are irrational, but as long as they're out there Nvidia will use them to make a profit.
 

Zen911

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I would consider the 5xxx and the 3xx the same generation, obviously they're the 1st cards to handle dx11 from the both companies, they both are built on 40nm tech, we could have been anticipating the 3xx in late this year if it didn't have any production issues, and the delay in releasing the 3xx doesn't mean it will be benefiting from better technology as pointed earlier by OvrClkr.
A little off the point, but i'm a little sad about the 5870 as well, this card should theoretically have 2x the performance of the 4890, but we see the 5870 fluctuates between around the performance of the 4870x2 (which is around 170% the performance of the 4870, let alone the 4890), we saw AMD doubling everything (shaders, rops.. etc) except for one thing it wasn't doubled, the memory bandwidth.
This leads me to think that the 5870 is bottlenecked with its own memory bandwidth, of course how much the card is bottleneck depends entirely on the way the application is coded, for me that's why we see the 5870 lags behind the 4870x2 who has the same specifications on papers but with increased bandwidth, although it suffers from scaling issues, and and surpass it in other applications that doesn't depends largely on memory bandwidth.
 

Gulli

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Wait for better drivers, the 4870 (and 4890) got a lot better with more mature drivers.
 

Zen911

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on paper it should, it has the same frequency as the 4890 and twice everything(but for the memory bandwidth). plus i don't think AMD was like : Okay let's make this card 1.7 the performance of the 4870, they just go for the best specification they can have that doesn't break their manufacturing cost ratios so as to be competitive.
and no, the 5890 (if ever exists) won't be 2x the performance of 4890. coz simply the 5870 isn't 2x the performance of the 4870. and if wht i'm thinking is true(the card being bottlenecked by its own memory bandwidth), then an overclock won't do much to its performance (of course u can argue that it will in the application where the card isn't bottlenecked by its memory bandwidth, but this will be increasing the performance of the card in the areas where its already good and doing very little in the areas where it suffers).
 

Gulli

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Judging from the benchmarks I'd say the 5870 does double the performance of the 4780 right after the latter's release date, in fact we see the 5870 often matching or beating a 4780x2 which has more mature drivers.