The Fastest 3D Cards Go Head-To-Head

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Man, I just am totally baffled. This site. The more and more i read articles from this site, the more I amazed that anyone even reads it any more. Using under-rated cpu, only one board (maybe shoulda have been Amd setup in there), mid rand Ati cards against top Nvidia, old Ati drivers vs. refined Nvidia drivers, and so forth. Not to mention the lack of the 4870x2 card.

I use to really like this website,(years ago) but more and more, reporting just isn't up to par. Even suggesting that article was written two weeks before release, there has been ample enough time to throw in the 4870x2 at the last minute.

I would still dramatize the fact that reporting is still personal feelings and preference of writers, and not the respected way of being nuetral. Rarely done here.

One thing I will say is that finally nice to see ATI is back on top.

Now if we can get the Amd end of things back up to speed.
 
Man, I just am totally baffled. This site. The more and more i read articles from this site, the more I amazed that anyone even reads it any more. Using under-rated cpu, only one board (maybe shoulda have been Amd setup in there), mid rand Ati cards against top Nvidia, old Ati drivers vs. refined Nvidia drivers, and so forth. Not to mention the lack of the 4870x2 card.

I use to really like this website,(years ago) but more and more, reporting just isn't up to par. Even suggesting that article was written two weeks before release, there has been ample enough time to throw in the 4870x2 at the last minute.

I would still dramatize the fact that reporting is still personal feelings and preference of writers, and not the respected way of being nuetral. Rarely done here.

One thing I will say is that finally nice to see ATI is back on top.

Now if we can get the Amd end of things back up to speed.
 
Too bad they used old drivers and didn't include the 4870X2. I can understand the article was written some time ago, but why didn't we get it back then? Has THG become so huge that it takes half a month for an article to get past the red tape?

On the good side, I'm pleased to see that my 8800GTX is still up to the task. The G80 must have the longest carreer in GPU history. Its been king of the hill for a long time and now that it has been beaten its still good enough that if you already have one you should keep it and skip the current generation.
 
Just my 2-cents regarding the requests for a better CPU: these tests were done with a $1200 CPU. How many people actually own a $1200 CPU?! Maybe some do, but I think that a far more realistic one would be a $225 Q6600. I'd rather see the testing done with a setup closer to what I might actually have at home.
 
An outdated Extreme-Core Intel, lack of knowledge and driver support for ATI, completely leaving out ATI's top end card... I see nothing but red flags all over this article. Regardless of the time that this came out, a different Intel quad-core CPU could have easily been put in the place of that X6800. The title of the article is Taxing "MODERN" CPU's with powerful graphics. The X6800 is a Core2Extreme processor and is not even overclocked for this article. The first page he states:

"Third, which of the current cards is fastest? Fourth, are the drivers for CrossFire and SLI already well-optimized? Fifth, where can you expect increases in performance? And finally, how fast is the card you want at 1280x1024, 1680x1050, and 1920x1200?"

This test setup cannot provide a reliable look into which cards are the fastest, perform better in a multi-gpu modes, and which one someone should invest into.

Well-written article but should have looked more into driver releases and cards due out soon before creating a test that would be completely void by the date of its article debut.
 
Check other tech sites about the CF not out performing the single cards.
There is something wrong with the ATI cards or drivers for them(Games probably do not support CF). The majority of the games tested with them show little to no improvement.

Thanks Toms for doing multi-GPU round up.

The only thing that I could see wrong is maybe using newer drivers and checking the release notes to see if it would improve test resultt, otherwise f it.

And who the F said this article was in favor of nVidia? Look at the conclusion. Nice to see a hard conclusion with a true hardware recommendation again too.
 
A-Posting Loooooooooong numbers on Crysis very high- every single card setup is UNPLAYABLE above 1280x1024- the numbers are meaningless.

B- No 2560x1600 numbers: how can this article help the readers choose the best cards for "high end gaming"?

C- No numbers for the 4870X2 AFTER they published the preview AND the review of the card! Do i need ANY more proof that we are reading another TROLL article/post by NVIDIA- there has been NO shortage of these on the last 2 months...
 
It's a regurgitated German article that was originally published Aug 5th!

24 days to translate and dump on the North American market? Pointless, unproffesional even.

It makes THG look out of touch and ignorant compared to the to of reviews out there using updated drivers and proper setups, complete with HD4870X2 cards as well.

Not worth readin past the first page.
IMO Archive the article, get it off the first page, it just looks ignorant. And worse still it disrespects it's North American audience by considering them as ignorant (which we may be in politics or something high minded, but not in Tech).

Very Poor Job!
 
This is nothing but Euro-trash, nothing to see here, time to move on. Old, out dated, non informative. I liked the colors on the graphs tho, the ones that used colors that is. A total waste of time. But, it isnt like any other of the 30 odd reviews Ive read, it shows the exact opposite of them. Its crap, take it off here, only an embarrassment for Toms
 
wait a stinking minute.

Catalyst 8.6 and nvidia's latest drivers?

Do you really have to push that far to even remotely show that Nvidia can't compete right now?

Catalyst is on 8.8 Nvidia is on 177.39. That's a HUGE difference right there as 8.7 and 8.8 are crossfire support.

Even more questionable is I have seen other reviews done on Tomshardware that show not only higher results but use the 8.8 Catalyst Drivers. What's going on here guys?
 
Fastest 3D Cards? ...Toms Hardware excluded the fastest video card ...the 4870x2!

Like someone mentioned here before me...Nvidia's high-end versus AMD's mid-range.

What's happening to this site?

 
This article is late to the game and since it was released now in light of the changes that have happened over the past couple weeks, it's simply dishonest. The truth several weeks ago is not the truth now, so publishing this article now is akin to lying. Where's the journalistic integrity? The amount of data involved is no excuse (Why bother even having 27 different nvidia variations? Being selective is a good skill). I don't even think the title is appropriate for the article.

This site is starting to get a little too commercial for me despite it's faithful service in the past. There's also some sort of weird identity crisis going on here with articles like "Dorm Room Tech" and "Tech Gear with Color and Style." Every now and then there are good articles here but they're becoming more scarce amid the crap. I know I'm not the first one to declare this, but I think Tom's Hardware has sold out. I've defended THG tooth and nail in the past but things like this are not acceptable.

P.S. - I'm using an nvidia graphics card and I like their stuff but this article is WAY too biased in their favor.

Goodbye Tom's Hardware, I'll visit you guys every now and then, but you're no longer bookmarked.
 
honestly im not sure how much different it would be from Qx6850 to x6800,both older and both around 3ghz, quad vs dual.Here is my question, I own the 9800gx2 and it was usually on top for the benchmarks at 1680x1050 and 19x12, and i play alot of COD4 which my card is 1 or 2 in every test i saw "do to the more texture units" from the words of an older article. Now this article says because of that having 2 cards in one,basically more texture units,its not even close to the top. ? Is it because of the dualcore.? Who owns toms hardware now?, and weres the current 2008 benchmarks on all products! CPU,OC CPU,VIDEO CARDS,OC VIDEO CARDS,SLI>CROSSFIRE VIDEO CARDS! I need some benchmarks PLZZZ!!!
 
u see ppl nvidia have paid for tom's hardware for results u can see clearly and u dont need to genious to find it out>.. 9600gt faster than hd4850? hd4870 is slower than hd4850? i dont think so... tom's hardware are last bastards fooling ppl around... shame on u motherfuckers!!!!!
 
Hey Tom's! Is this supposed to be damage control or did the 4870x2 simply forget to CRASH THE PARTY? You guys KNEW this card was out, and even if you did the test weeks ago, you guys KNEW that this card would most likely outperform the competition. Not including it for lack of availability is one thing, but calling the article "fastest" WITHOUT THE FASTEST CARD is a letdown, to say the least.

I have to also concur, if you're going to shout out a winner here, you had better be prepared to OC your CPU and your GPU before you show anything. Enthusiasts will and do push the limits, we want to know how far hardware can go, especially when the question of "fastest" is put up.
 
I had been waiting for a good review of current gfx cards by Toms for quite some time--their previous ones are quite dated. This was a great info-fest. Yeah, yeah, yeah, people are whining about why they did this or didn't do that or use that driver (FYI--these studies aren't instantaneous), and I don't see why the picked the CPU they did, but for the most part, they knocked this one out of the park, and I was happy to read it (well, I never read the entire things, just the results--there's so much fluff...).

Looks like the uber-geeks (said with envy) that have been using SLI'd ultras for the last two years are still good to go for the most part...LOL
 
I've noticed the TH reviews seem much slower to publish since the buyout/site redesign and often very few new produces are actually reviewed.
 
cosmic said:
What's with all these ATI fanboys flaming the article? I agree that a better CPU, and better ATI drivers should have been used, but c'mon guys, give Tom's Hardware some credit, I don't see any of you doing extensive graphics card testing...
Click to expand...
+1
 
Hopefully Tom's didn't actually pay someone for this article? I've done better testing jobs myself for free. Those 4870 CF numbers are out to lunch. I'm no ATI fan boy, but come on folks -- Cat 8.7 was out over a month ago, 8.7 Beta two months ago.

And you're seriously telling us that a 4850 out performs the 4870???

I've got the GTX 280 SLI and 4870 CF -- the 4870 CF in Crysis has dominated my testing at 1920 x 1200 using the same resolutions (different motherboards of course, but same CPU).

But this article is just obviously NOT done well and simply wrong -- I wonder if Tom's released this as some joke or something -- seeing if anyone is paying attention?


 
The article needs to take in account for PhysX support.

Altough today, only a short list of games, enjoy physX support, and even then, need manual tweaking, the 8800 GT achieve an important advantage over the 4850 if you plan to buy one of them.
 
When the article says you need a reliable power supply between 380 and 420 watts for Xfire, does this mean you need a 420watt power supply, or would you need a power supply that is rated higher?
 
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