I'm no gpu guru but maybe you guys can help

cmaki2008

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First off please don't flame me I think this is kinda a dumb question but i'm going to ask it anyways to see you guys opinion I got one already in my head i just want to see what you guys say because usually I find out alot more when I ask you guys opinion on anything alot more then I knew and usually helps me out alot. :whistle:


I saw a post over at teamliquid because i'm a big sc2 nerd and im looking for something that will run my 23 inch monitor at 1920p at like 100 fps my 5770 is running it at 45 fps max and that's just not acceptable to me... I was thinking about getting a 5870 and now that the 480 is released i'm starting to wonder if I should just get a 480.. I like running games with crazy high graphics settings.. Does anyone know if crysis is going to be "best played by nvidia" or anything like that this time??'


anyways this guy was basicly saying that nvidia is screwing themself out of the market... =/ I got an ati card and enjoy my 5770's crossfired and everything but I just cant help but think having phys ix isn't hurting performance in some of the games I got etc...

So what is really more future proof I guess is the question a 5870 or a 480? I don't have anymore then 499 for a 3d card actually paying 499 is pushing it but since I was going to dish out the money for a 5870 which is around 450... I figured another 50 bucks isn't going to hurt when your spending that much in the first place.

Also anyone know of a benchmark of sc2 running on a 480 gtx the only one I can find doesn't have it on there..

I'm not asking to start a flame war between nvidia and ati fanboys but more for my investment purpose.. If nvidia is going to be going down in flames I don't see any point in getting a 480 even if it performs a little better because later on down the road wouldn't all the games be programmed mainly for ati like it seems most of them are programmed for nvidia right now.

this is the thread if anyone wanted to comment on it or whatever
http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?topic_id=124090

"The purpose of this blog is to educate fellow TL members regarding the discrete GPU market and help all SC2 players who are looking to upgrade their GPUs make an informed decision.

Let me start off this blog by stating that I have bought many GPUs from both ATI and Nvidia in the past, I claim loyalty to neither company; I have always bought what offered the best price/performance ratio, richness of features, along with consideration of some other factors (heat output, power requirement, etc). I love competition, I want both ATI and Nvidia to do well so that prices can be kept low and rapid innovation can be ensured.

With that said, I bought into the Radeon 9xxx series against the Nvidia FX5xxx series back in the day (my 9800 pro was light years better than the FX5800/5900 series), then I went with a Geforce 6800 against the Radeon 8xx series (the Radeon 8xx series had neither true HDR nor SM3.0 support). Next, I went with a Geforce 7900GS against the Radeon 1950 PRO, simply due to the fact that both were great cards but the 7900GS had a slightly lower heat output/power requirement, meaning I was able to overclock it further. I went with the Green Team again for the next generation of video cards, I bought a Geforce 8800GT which was in every way superior to the shitty Radeon 2xxx series, even 4 years later the 8800GT still offers very respectable frame rates in most games. As a testament to the success of the Geforce 8800 G80 architecture, the Geforce 9xxx series was simply a shrunken die based on the same architecture, but it was still vastly superior vs the Radeon 3xxx series. I bought a 9800GTX because the ATI messed up the 3xxx once again (the 9800GTX raped the Radeon 3870 in just about every benchmark).

Things looked grim for ATI at this point, but ATI was bought by AMD and finally got their *** together; the Radeon 4xxx series was a tremendous success on ATI's part in comparison to the GT200 series from Nvidia. Offering better power efficiency, lower power draw, higher overclockability, better driver support and features (DX 10.1 vs only DX10 for Nvidia, which improved frame rates considerably in DX10 games), and most importantly, better price/performance ratio. Notably, the GTX280/285 did marginally beat the Radeon 4xxx in term of raw performance, but those cards were so ridiculously overpriced at the time ($500 ~ $600 CAD) that I didn't even bother, I simply spent an extra $30 to buy a better GPU cooler and overclocked my Radeon 4890 to GTX280 specifications for about $200 less ($290 for the card + $30 for the GPU heatsink).

Finally, in the current state of affairs, ATI is looking to drive Nvidia out of the discrete GPU market all together with the release of the Radeon 5xxx series. Partly due to their own engineering success after joining AMD and partly due to the massive ***-up by Nvidia with the GTX480/Fermi cards, the 5xxx series has driven Nvidia out of the high-end GPU market all together since October of last year (the Radeon 5xxx series was released back in Sept. 2009, but availability did not improve until Oct/Nov of 2009). This time, not only did the Radeon 5850/5870 completely destroy the GTX280/285 cards, but the Red Team did so at lower cost of manufacturing, lower power consumption, better overclockability, AND eyefinity/DirectX 11 support; higher-end Nvidia cards were simply made obsolete right after the release of the Radeon 5xxx cards. At this point, I disapproved immensely of Nvidia's coporate practice; because the GT200 series were now obsolete, Nvidia created an artificial supply shortagein hope of conning naive mainstream customers to keep buying its aging cards. Sadly and apparently, it still works.

Nvidia was SUPPOSED to release the GTX4xxx series 8-9 months ago to compete with the Radeon 5xxx series, but due to hideous yield problems at TSMC and the terrible architecture of the GTX4xxx series, they still have not released a fully functional GTX4xx series card to date. The Geforce GTX480 "available" (you have to pay a $50-$100 premium above it's MSRP to get these cards) right now is a castrated version of the intended Fermi card. As a result, ATI posted a profitable Q4 2009 quarter quarter due to its monopoly on DX11 GPUs, selling millions of cards in a matter of months. Nvidia took a HUGE risk by buying 5000 risk silicon wafers last year in hope of speeding up its GTX4xx cards, but sadly it did not pay off. In fact, yield and engineering problems are so revolting and unfixable that Nvidia had to fake fermi cards to keep investors happy, got dumped by various coporate deals, and had to yet again, castrate its high-end Tesla compute cards which historically offers the highest margins.

I almost lost hope at this point for the Green Team, I had hoped the release of the Fermi cards would be the great success it was hyped up to be and in turn drive down the prices of the Radeon 5xxx series. I currently own a 5850, was hoping to get another one for crossfirex but due to the failures of Nvidia, I still have to wait because the prices on the 5850 cards have been increasing for the past few months A testament of how much fail there is to be found within Fermi. Even after releasing GTX480 demo cards to mostly pro-nvidia review sites (who cherry-picks benchmarks and skew settings to favour Nvidia cards), the reviews still mostly agree that the fermi cards are huge disappointments. On average, despite being 6-7 months late to the market the GTX480 is only 5-15% faster than the 5870 and 15-30% slower than the Radeon 5970 in the vast majority of benchmarks, but at a 15-30% higher cost while sucking up almost twice as much power and heating up to almost 100C degrees. Admittedly, the 5970 is a dual-GPU card, but that fact does not matter at this point because despite being a dual-GPU card, it uses LESS power than the GTX480 and runs much cooler than the GTX480, meaning you can overclock it higher to get even more performance. And oh yah, with the ridiculous power consumption and heat problems of the GTX480, don't expect Nvidia to release a dual-GPU version of the GTX4xxx series um, ever.

But you might ask, if Nvidia can recover from the massive failures of the FX5xxx series and ATI could bounce back from the shitty Radeon 2xxx and 3xxx series, surely Nvidia can recover from the disastrous GTX4xxx series right? Well, if the 5970 wasn't the nail in the coffin, then this surely must be it. ATI has taped out its next-gen graphic cards, meaning new cards will hit market in roughly 6-8 months time before Nvidia can even release its full line of GTX4xxx cards.

So my question is, WHY ARE PEOPLE STUPID ENOUGH TO CONTINUE TO PURCHASE NVIDIA CARDS at this point in time? Simple. Nvidia has been lying to analysts, shareholders and Green Team fan boys alike ever since Q1 of 2009 dumping massive amounts of money into its PR games rather than ditching the Fermi cards all together to work on a new architecture, and coupled with the success of the Geforce 8xxx and 9xxx series I can only assume that Nvidia fan-boys still trust in the Nvidia "brand name", however laughable it has become in 2009/2010."
 
Solution


Like that post from team liquid says it reaches 100 degrees celsius so there is now way that all that heat is being blown out the back. Will it make things around it hotter? Yes, but so will the 5870 just to a lesser degree. Is it worth it IMO to get a 480? No, it just costs too much compared to the 5870, runs hotter than the 5870, and uses more power than the 5870 which in my book isn't worth it.
Wow quite the post there. I'll be honest I skipped a lot but as to SC2, you'll be well off with a 5850 even. And if you get 2 5850s for ~$600 it's super phenomenal, any game at highest detail 1920x1080. But yeah, SC2 beta wasn't compatible with crossfire, so I ran a single 5850 OCed by me with absolute highest detail settings and it was running extremely smoothly all the time.
 

cmaki2008

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ya i got two 5770's crossfired kinda ticked that crossfire isn't supported and blizzard isn't really answering if they are going to support it so i'm selling my 5770's and upgrading to "something"

ya I want to play sc2 smoothly but really im looking more at crysis 2 I know that's going to have to be a gpu crusher...
 

wh3resmycar

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you dont need 100 fps for an RTS game. hell even 30fps would cut it.
 

cmaki2008

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Ok I shouldn't of said sc2 but im more worried about what that guy was trying to say how nvidia would be so far behind on making the chips or w/e so I was thinking about just going with a 5870 even though the 480 seems like its better? keyword seems
 

anonymousdude

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Like that post from team liquid says it reaches 100 degrees celsius so there is now way that all that heat is being blown out the back. Will it make things around it hotter? Yes, but so will the 5870 just to a lesser degree. Is it worth it IMO to get a 480? No, it just costs too much compared to the 5870, runs hotter than the 5870, and uses more power than the 5870 which in my book isn't worth it.
 
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cmaki2008

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I agree it isn't worth it to heatup my whole case just to have another 10fps or w/e in tessellation lol =/ now just to decide weither to get the 5850 or the 5870 and i know me it'll prolly end up being the 5870 and i'll wonder why I spent that much for not even a jump in performance in my other games and then sc2 will start supporting crossfire/sli LOL :)